Inspire The Pond Scater ...

[Dobmatt]

Lake Flyer, my apologies if you've sensed traces of absolutely unintended sarcasm in my response to your "noodle" solution. Blame my poor English, in never ending process of learning as a second language ...

Yes, the frightening vision of gear raising mechanism activated suddenly with no reason crossed my mind, indeed. Miniature servo toggle switch? Great idea, thanks! I'll implement this feature for sure ...

Back to my design principles ... Of course the idea of floats attached to the landing gear directly (as being very obvious and simple) was considered at the beginning. However, I believe that this approach doesn't provide stability good enough to handle shaky water or really uneven surfaces, particularly sideways. Other, perhaps more important issue, was related to a down wash force from propellers. Finally, the raising arms mechanism exhibits specific looseness, translating to often violent low frequency vibrations caused by the standing wave phenomenon. That's why I opted for definitely more complex, radical but 100% effective solution ... Again, our goals are slightly different in details ...

 

[InspiredOne]

Dobmatt, where were these two videos shot? The scenery is beautiful!

 

[Dobmatt]

Dobmatt, where were these two videos shot? The scenery is beautiful!

Arrow Lake, BC, near Nakusp town ...

 

[Raymondo]

Amphibious drone, another words ... Unsinkable, with advanced landing gear ... Whatever, this is a DIY mod, not available commercially. It was developed to allow for take-off and landing on water or rough surfaces, where hand launching or catching is not a viable option. It works beyond expectations, I must proudly state ...

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Great idea. A thought for a future version. If all the additional rods has pivot rather than rigid fix points, the legs could then be raised. Although the bottles would be still slightly lower than the bottom of the legs, it would give you gimbal panning if the camera is tilted slightly down. The rigidity would be maintained as you would still have a triangle construction. Not dimensioned, only sketched in paint, but could this work?

 

[Raymondo]

Amphibious drone, another words ... Unsinkable, with advanced landing gear ... Whatever, this is a DIY mod, not available commercially. It was developed to allow for take-off and landing on water or rough surfaces, where hand launching or catching is not a viable option. It works beyond expectations, I must proudly state ...

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Love the production too.
How did you keep the props running after landing? How easy it was it to manouver on the water?

 

[Dobmatt]

Great idea. A thought for a future version. If all the additional rods has pivot rather than rigid fix points, the legs could then be raised. Although the bottles would be still slightly lower than the bottom of the legs, it would give you gimbal panning if the camera is tilted slightly down. The rigidity would be maintained as you would still have a triangle construction. Not dimensioned, only sketched in paint, but could this work?
View attachment 9882

No, to put it simply. The gimbal panning feature is practically useless for single RC set-up, which is my case. I have no issues whatsoever filming in FOLLOW gimbal mode with landing gear fixed at lowered position, and floats never appears in the frame. The struts efficiently eliminates any looseness (vibrations) of Inspire's structure, providing the best possible rigidity. To put it another way, the pivoting mechanism of raising arms is not sturdy enough to successfully handle additional stress caused by the floats attachment ...

 

[Dobmatt]

Love the production too.
How did you keep the props running after landing? How easy it was it to manouver on the water?

This is a bit tricky. The drone's brain doesn't consider landing on any surface as the end of the flight, until the pilot execute shut down command (throttle stick down for 3 sec). When not, the copter may attempt to launch again, particularly on shaky waters, which is dangerous. By the rule of thumb, after every landing I shut down the motors. If I need to move the drone, I'll start again with this ridiculous "wroom, wroom", and apply either forward/backward or yaw stick command to maneuver in whatever direction. Both birds react nicely and smoothly to such approach, moving over the water surface until I apply throttle up or shut off command.

 

[William Gaddy]

Ok all you would-be Inspire aquanauts out there, get a load of THIS. I'm still cleaning off my jaw after it dropped on the floor before I re-attach it. Fully SUMBERSIBLE quadrotor drone, acts like a submarine with its props when underwater, and ejects water from the ballast to go BACK up above the surface into the air. It does this with a powered ballast that it uses to take on water to be submersible and eject it to become airborne again. Now if they could just figure out how to get FPV from underwater (maybe with a ejectable buoy?)... be sure to watch the video. Unbelievable.

A drone that can fly, float and dive underwater

..WANT

 

[Dobmatt]

Ok all you would-be Inspire aquanauts out there, get a load of THIS. I'm still cleaning off my jaw after it dropped on the floor before I re-attach it. Fully SUMBERSIBLE quadrotor drone, acts like a submarine with its props when underwater, and ejects water from the ballast to go BACK up above the surface into the air. It does this with a powered ballast that it uses to take on water to be submersible and eject it to become airborne again. Now if they could just figure out how to get FPV from underwater (maybe with a ejectable buoy?)... be sure to watch the video. Unbelievable.

A drone that can fly, float and dive underwater

..WANT

Yes, sky is the limit (pun intended) in robotics development ... In this case muddy bottom is the limit as well ...

 

[William Gaddy]

Yes, sky is the limit (pun intended) in robotics development ... In this case muddy bottom is the limit as well ...

By the way, do you have a BOM for your mod worked up? Would love to try it. I even have a spare Inspire airframe that I can use for it

 

[Dobmatt]

By the way, do you have a BOM for your mod worked up? Would love to try it. I even have a spare Inspire airframe that I can use for it

Do you mean Bill Of Materials? That will not do you any good since almost all vital parts are custom made on CNC machinery. Aside floats assembly, critical parts are water-jet cut and formed, strut rod ends are machined with L & R threads for adjustability etc., just to give you an idea ... Eventually I may be able to supply you with these critical parts, BOM and instructions, if you're up to a serious assembly work ... PM me [email protected] ...