Results are in for the Medical Express Challenge. This year no team won. It was a tough one! The first 6 team in the rankings were all using Ardupilot, a testament to its quality and flexibility. Ardupilot has been dominating drone challenges in the recent years.     Teams were given the address of a farmer, Outback Joe, needing a … Read More

With funding provided by Craft and Theory, the ArduPilot team recently added general purpose support to the serial 5 port, which used to be a dedicated debugging port. ArduPilot users can now use any serial equipment (MAVLink, rangefinder, FrSky telemetry) on serial 5, just like they would on any other serial port. To activate the port in ArduPilot, simply set … Read More

Like many electronic devices today, the FrSky products run code on a chip (firmware) which can be upgraded to get the latest improvements and address various bug fixes. For instance, upgrading is particularly valuable for European users since FrSky released for 2016 their LBT firmwares which has a much-improved range performance and stability compared to previous versions (https://www.frsky-rc.com/lbt-eu-firmware-official-release/). If upgrading … Read More

In his October edition Painless360 shows setting up telemetry on ArduPilot is no headache. He covers two wireless telemetry options for ArduPilot/Pixhawk 2.1. The first option is the standard telemetry radio, which allows you to talk to your vehicle over the air waves, like a long virtual USB cable between your vehicle and Mission Planner. The second option is FlightDeck … Read More

Pixel by pixel, bit by bit, we made FlightDeck fit into the 128*64 LCD screen Taranis Q X7. Compare that to the 212*64 LCD screen of the Taranis X9D Plus and you’ll understand that we have had to make some significant design choices to make sure that the most important flight information would still be easily available on the Taranis … Read More

Today Craft and Theory announces FlightDeck 3. Since the release of ArduCopter 3.4 Stable, FlightDeck works without the use of a modified firmware. Having the required telemetry protocol directly included within the ArduPilot codebase is a game changer because users previously had to install a modified firmware. This is no longer the case with FlightDeck 3. Pilots can now obtain critical ArduPilot flight … Read More

Craft and Theory was in the room at InterDrone this year when ArduPilot announced that they were separating from DroneCode and that ArduPilot was going to be looking for commercial partners. We are very happy to join and support a project that we love. Long live ArduPilot! Pictured (from Left to right): Tom Pittenger (ArduPilot, Airphrame), Robert Lefebvre (ArduPilot), Tom … Read More

We reached out to John R. from Duluth, GA who has uploaded a video on YouTube featuring our FrSky telemetry cable and user interface. His video shows an experiment in which he tries to improve the flight time of his aircraft. John R. was kind to respond to our questions. John told us he has been flying drones for 7 … Read More