A new DIY project: Leicopter

CrisR

CrisR

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A few of you may know me from the 3D printed hood's i've been working on in another thread. Well, the feedback and comments were all so great, i thought i might share another project i've been researching and have started a new Blog for: Leicopter.com

The plan - to build a DIY multirotor copter which i can mount my M8 on for aerial photography, mainly landscape.

I'm starting pretty much from nothing here, and will slowly be teaching myself both the practical building and flight skills needed to achieve this end-goal.

I'm doing the whole thing step by step, starting small and slowly building up to a system reliable and failsafe enough to bolt an M to.

When it comes to the final system (or at least, the first solid enough to strap an M to) i will probably look for a very beat up M8 that's still in working order - not much to look at on the outside, but cheap as a result. I'm not looking to abuse the M, quite the opposite, but as my current M8 is mint, i'd rather keep it that way.

I'll be updating on www.Leicopter.com as regularly as i can, and can be followed on twitter via @Leicopter. All my videos (i'll have a HD flight recorder on board too) will go on www.youtube.com/Leicopter.

What about 3D printing? Well, being the guy i am, i'm sure i'll find need for a part or solution that just doesn't exist at the moment and will fabricate my own. If this is a Leica related part, or something to help others do something similar, i'll very likely offer them up in the same way as i have done with the hoods 🙂

The Leicopter Alpha build starts this Xmas as several parts are on the way.

Finally, i'd love to put together a book once i've been successfully out there, shooting from the skies, but hey, lets get the thing off the ground first huh?

A couple of links:

My first, introductory post: http://leicopter.com/post/38140931801/welcome

My first Gear post: http://leicopter.com/post/38167168400/the-gear-part-1-leica-m8-vc-15mm-f4-5

Hope you enjoy the project 🙂

Cris
 
Super awesome! Before I discovered rangefinders, I spent three or four months a few years ago researching aerial photography. At the time, quadcopters (and other multi-rotor machines) were just hitting the scene -- kite photography was where it was at.

Between the quadcopters, the rangefinders and the 3D printing (see also emachineshop and ponoko), I'd almost confuse you for me. I've subscribed to your RSS feed and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
 
This is cool... I have been curious to try this, but Ive had many totaled helicopters, wont try with any camera mounted on it....😀

About 10 years back, I used to do photography for a rally team (auto racing) here in the US, one time for a promotional thing, I hired a guy running a gas powered, fairly big, helicopter rig with a video cam... really cool flyover stuff during the race..
 
Cool to see i'm not the only one that thinks this is a good idea (and is worried about trashing it lol)

Ron (Netherlands) said:
Nice especially if making motion pictures. For still photography you could also choose for the kite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEprozoxnLY
http://www.kaper.us/basics/BASICS_picavet.html
Click to expand...

I thought about this, but with the advances in multirotor and high shutter speed, a little movement isn't too problematic. I'd like more control in exact positioning that that system would allow.

One of the ideas i have, given that i am probably going to need a multirotor with greater lift that Leicopter Alpha will provide, is to make use of both craft - the first - lighter, faster, more expendable - to scout out the area in 1st person flight mode, and use it to log the positions for each shot. The 2nd craft can then be programmed with these locations and effectively run on autopilot to go directly between the waypoints.

The idea is, the less time in the sky, the less opportunity for failure.
 
Thanks djcphoto!

I've posted a few updates on www.leicopter.com - my test mule / training build, Leicopter Alpha is under way - i've sorted the frame, motors and speed controllers so far


Leicopter Alpha / Hoverthings FTV Frame build by Cris Rose, on Flickr


Leicopter Alpha / Hoverthings FTV Frame build / Step 5 by Cris Rose, on Flickr


Leicopter Alpha / Hoverthings FTV Frame build / Finished by Cris Rose, on Flickr


Leicopter Alpha / Build Update / Motors & ESCs by Cris Rose, on Flickr


Leicopter Alpha / Build Update / Motors & ESCs by Cris Rose, on Flickr

I've got a pretty solid idea of what all the various components will be now, but i've recently been researching probably the most important part - the M8 gimbal to actually carry the thing up there!

There are a lot of them out there really, many are crazy expensive, or really too small and flimsy. Most are aimed more at lifting heavy Canon SLRs and so are oversized.

I was going to go for a full 3-axis setup controlled by my flight goggle's head tracking, but on seeing the lightest is around 1kg, i'm now thinking of going for a 2 axis instead. At a weight saving of 400g, that's pretty worthwhile. It's also cheaper.

As i'm not going to be shooting video with the M8, i don't need the sorts of panning that video on a 7D might need, and i can still rotate the craft by hand, so it'll be a straight pitch and roll gimbal i think.

The one i'm looking at is carbon fibre and 600g, so around the same weight as the camera. I'm gonna get this soon i think, before i've even finished Leicopter Alpha, as working out what i need to lift will dictate the specs of the first proper M-lifter i build 🙂

Leicopter Alpha should be able to fly an X1/X2 easily enough tho 😉 shame i don't have one!
 
This is very very cool...

BUT....

What makes a manual focus rangefinder particularly suited to RC aerial photography? Or is it just that it's not any less suited than anything else?

I'd think a lighter NEX with a Leica mount would be better. Same glass, less weight, better sensor.
 
This makes me want to get a 300g balloon for a meteorological radiosonde and stick a digital camera to it with a radio slave trigger or an intervalometer. 300g of helium can lift 1.5Kg at almost 3M/sec. Considering the height I'd want to take the balloon to then recover it, it would be lifting probably .3Kg of anchoring string alone so the camera would have to be light.

I'd love to do this with some very light weight film camera which could be triggered to operate 10 miles above the earth some how. Powerful radio transmitter/receiver or a timer that physically triggers the shutter after X amount of time has elapsed.

My first 5 years in the Navy was spent as a weather guesser and one of my radiosonde balloons set a 3rd Fleet record reaching just a few hundred feet shy of 90,000 feet, launched in the near-equatorial region. I'd love to make my own photo of the world from such a height.

This is a cool thread and a cool project! I can't wait to see the images.

Phil Forrest
 
Very cool ChrisR!

I've used balloons with a D200 for aerial surveys of river beds. We are interested in quantifying algae and sediment transport over large scales under different flood conditions, and compare the results with physical models. With the decrease in He availability, this has gotten more and more expensive. And balloons are pretty sensitive to wind currents in the channel.

I'm currently looking into quad-copters as a cheaper alternative. They are still sensitive to wind, as I've seen with the light-weight AR Drone, but can be controlled more quickly than a balloon. I'd like something that can pick up a larger camera payload than the AR Drone, to increase grain-size resolution of the bed.

Looking forward to your results!
Mike
 
Just looked up the DJI S800 with Nex5/7 on a gimbal. Impressive.

Chris, are you going with a fixed camera mount for your M8?
 
Very intriguing. The only areal photography I ever did was hanging out the back of a Chinook while in Korea the first time. I used a monkey strap, and one hand for hanging on, the other for my ST 901 to get photos. Worked pretty well.

But I always thought it would be fun to try something like a helo. I recently saw a utube sequence where a similar helo was used to house a small video camera and paintball guns to show larger weapons could be used.
 
Thanks guys, i'll keep posting my progress and findings!

Mike: The Gimbals are either designed for small cameras like the GoPro or an NEX (i have one of them too) or the massive ones - sadly the smaller, lighter, more affordable NEX ones just won't fit an M8 but the other ones really are overkill. I may end up buying one to start with, then designing and building my own later on.

I'll be mounting the M8 on a 2 Axis gimbal, with 2 FPV cameras on the craft - one fixed to the front of the frame, so i can fly myself into position, then a second, which i can switch over to remotely, that is mounted on the M8 so i can accurately frame shots with the head tracking and craft's Yaw.

it's true that there is still wind, and depending on conditions, i may not fly at certain times, but different setups can handle wind better than others and a small movement sideways while shooting objects effectively at infinity, won't matter too much.

Unixrevolution: I have an NEX. I prefer the files i get from my M8. Not entirely sure where you got the "Better sensor" bit from, i consider my M8's pictures to be superior. A setup that uses the M8 can also fit the NEX, but not necessarily visa versa.

My M8 gives me results that i couldn't produce with my Canon, which is why i sold it, so why would i want to go backwards and get another Canon? It's not about how "suited" it is, it's about it being what i want to achieve, with the kit i love, to get the look i adore. As far as my research has told me, no one else is doing this, so why not?

The M8 will be set up with the lens set to the hyperfocal distance and shutter to A. I'll also be trying out infrared photography too, something i'm not going to be able to with a Canon.
 
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