Waterproof drone

[juandoe]

http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/27/dji-farming-drone-water-resistant-dustproof/#continued

Hopefully consumer trickle down coming soon.

[PonoBill]

http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/27/dji-farming-drone-water-resistant-dustproof/#continued

Hopefully consumer trickle down coming soon.

Already exists. I have one of the older ones. http://www.quadh2o.com/ I have a partially finished new design I"m working on that's somewhat similar to the hexh20

[juandoe]

Yeah, I am waiting for one of the big companies to come out with cheap and easy ones.  No time to mess with these smaller outfits.  Reality is I need plug and play.  There was another company that was coating DJI Phantoms and selling them as waterproof. 

[PonoBill]

It's not a hard thing to do, just not a priority for most companies. The HexH2O is probably the best design I've seen, I just want to improve on it a little bit, add some stub wings and a lifting body to give better flight time and more wind resistance, and do it all in light carbon. I know people want plug n' play, but the capabilities in using open source hardware and software are so sophisticated that it's compelling. All the new drones (except DJI), and even some terrestrial autopilot vehicles, are based on the same system. A controller available commercially called a Pixhawk. Sold here in the US as a somewhat refined and more quality controlled product by 3DR (three D robotics) for about $300 or in a very complete form but absent customer support on Alibaba or eBay for about a hundred bucks. QuadH2O sells the airframe bits to build a capable waterproof camera drone that can handle a gimbal inside. Thats critical for photography. Gimbal motors can be waterproofed to a degree, and if they get wet, rinsing them with distilled water and lubing the bearings might save them, but it's chancy. Putting the gibal inside the body and shooting through a plate of glass or acrylic that's optical quality is a better solution.

Not what you want to hear, but I doubt anyone else is working hard on it.

[magentawave]

I think the one downside was that no one was making one with removable batteries. Is anyone doing that yet?

[OUTSIDEWAVE]

then theres lilly  it is water proof and about  1/5 of the h2o thing  but like the others the flight time in s about 15 minutes.  once they get a solid 90 minutes then you have got something..  I guess it comes down to battery efficiency

[PonoBill]

There's a declining benefit to the number of batteries until you make a big change in motor and propeller size, because the battery is most of the weight. So doubling the number of batteries gives you perhaps a 20 percent increase in flight time. The drone I'm working on gets a wing assist to extend flight time. There are multicopters that transition to winged flight, but that seems inelegant. My design uses wings and a lifting body with a preset angle of attack for body and wings that gives good lift with the 'copter tilted forward. the little prototype worked really well. I'm looking forward to getting back to Hood River to get it underway.

The Amazon delivery drone seems overcomplicated to me but probably isn't. the guys that are working on that are pretty sharp. Still, we'll see. My design also has the benefit of bein g very waterproof.