Lifeboat Foundation

Autonomous drone mapping startup Emesent has announced its latest survey-grade LiDAR payload: Hovermap ST. The lightweight, IP65-rated solution is being launched with Emesent’s new Automated Ground Control feature that, the company stresses, enables autonomous data capture in harsher environments than ever and for a wider range of use cases.

Emesent’s LiDAR payloads leverage a process called simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), in which a drone builds a map and, at the same time, localizes the drone in that map.

As battles erupt in Kyiv, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense appeals private drone owners to use or donate them to repel invading Russian troops.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has called upon citizens who own drones to use them in support of the country’s armed forces in their battle to prevent the invading Russian Army from capturing the capital, Kyiv.

Continue reading “Ukraine’s Defense Ministry asks drone owners to help repel invading Russian troops” »

SpaceX prepares its first orbital Starship flight.

Drone capture 360-degree video of SpaceX Starship.

SpaceX is currently developing its Starship rocket at the firm’s Starbase facility in Texas. The project could lead to a giant, fully-reusable rocket system.

Specialized Atlanta-based UAV consulting firm Skyfire is itself launching into aerial action with the release of its SF2 drone, which is designed and manufactured specifically for public safety and critical sector operators.

Skyfire’s entry into specialized drone manufacturing with the SF2 was motivated by the understanding, insight, and feedback it gathered in its work with hundreds of US public safety and critical sector clients as they navigated the Federal Aviation’s certification of authorization process. Relying on that information flow from diverse partners, Skyfire decided to provide solutions to shortcomings and close operational gaps it was hearing about.

Draganfly is celebrating a major health and safety milestone with its spraying drones disinfecting more than 500,000 seats using the company’s proprietary pathogen and surface sanitizer technology.

The company’s spraying technology was also implemented ahead of NASCAR’s June 2021 tripleheader weekend at the Nashville Superspeedway and Barrett-Jackson’s March 2021 collector car auction in Arizona.

DJI is rolling out a new firmware update for the Mavic Air 2 drone. At the same time, the technology giant is updating the DJI Fly app to version 1.5.10.

According to DJI’s release notes, the update “optimizes user experience and improves overall software stability.”

For those building their own remote controlled devices like RC boats and quadcopter drones, having a good transmitter-receiver setup is a significant factor in the eventual usability of their build. Many transmitters are available in the 2.4 GHz band, but some operate at different frequencies, like the 868/915 MHz band. The TBS Crossfire is one such transmitter, and it’s become a popular model thanks to its long-range performance.

When [g3gg0] bought a Crossfire set for his drone, he discovered that the receiver module consisted of not much more than a PIC32 microcontroller and an SX1272 LoRa modem. This led him to ponder if the RF protocol would be easy to decode. As it turns out, it was not trivial, but not impossible either. First, he built his own SPI sniffer using a CYC1000 FPGA board to reveal the exact register settings that the PIC32 sent to the SX1272. The Crossfire uses channel hopping, and by simply looking at the register settings it was easy to figure out the hopping sequence.

Continue reading “Reverse Engineering A 900 MHz RC Transmitter And Receiver” »