After our drone took a quick dip in the toilet water, we asked a partner, Russel Burroughs, if we could use his drone in order to get better data for the 3-D map of the field. We got some wonderful pictures, but are lacking in accurate GPS data. Here are some photos we took to try and see if we could get any GPS data from them. (We thought they were some nice photos mostly so here they are)

Just wanted to make sure to keep things up to date.

We have also ordered a replacement part for our Phantom 2 and finally gotten a replacement gimbal!

We're still unable to get GPS data, but are diligently working to complete this project and are optimistic of its conclusion.

We've also been working with the 3-D software, and orthoimagery. We were able to stitch together a map in Agisoft Photoscan Pro.

This is the beauty we ended up with. Issue is we have very little overlay and there is a fisheye lense on the GoPro. A feature that can be removed, but since the GoPro is out of commission we're waiting to get more data to make a new, more clean version.

About two weeks ago we were invited by Kim Tyler to survey the new waste water facility in Greenbrier with our drone. The whole city of Greenbrier's waste water goes to this facility to be separated. This was an awesome experience that we learned a lot from, and were happy we were able to have. Although, at the end of our day we were getting the last bit of our data when our Phantom decided to land itself in one of the old lagoons. Included on the drone was the GoPro Hero 3+, FPV systems, and gimbal.
Luckily enough they were able to fetch it out of the lagoon the next day, and we were able to work on it.

Regardless of this hardship we were glad to come and learned a lot about the drone and the facility itself. Here are a few photos of the facility and equipment.

The bubbles you see are actually from aerators. Those pump oxygen into the waste water to separate the sludge from regular water.

This is the decanter which takes the top water away from the sludge in order to put it back into the water cycle.

This is the automated bar grate which separates solids and anything that isn't meant to be in it.

And this is where our drone landed!

Here are some aerial photos the quadcopter captured

While our drone did land itself in the entire city of Greenbrier's waste, we learned a lot from it. After taking it completely apart, cleaning every component, replacing a motor and an ESC board, the drone was actually able to fly.

We believe the reason it landed itself was due to an invalid battery issue. Many others have encountered this. What happens is a safety feature meant to land the drone when the battery is critically low in order to keep it from falling from the sky, sometimes mistakes a full battery for low and will land it. No matter where, you have no control of it.

Here it is though, alive and well!

There was another rough landing that compressed the back left motor of the Phantom. Our parts finally came in and we were able to replace it.

Motor is replaced and prop guards have been added. We're also ready to send the gimbal in for repairs and hope to have it back in no time.

We also have our computer up and running. Below are the specs.

SPECS: Intel i7-2600 Processor

CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB

ASUS X79 DELUXE LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Corsair Carbide Series 200R Black Steel / Plastic compact ATX Mid Tower Case

Windows 7 Home Premium

Corsair Force Series GS CSSD-F240GBGS-BK 2.5" 240GB SATA III Internal (SSD)

Seagate Barracuda  1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

EVGA ACX Cooler 03G-P4-2784-KR GeForce GTX 780 Superclocked

CORSAIR HX Series HX850 850W GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

We built this computer for the 3-D mapping program we're using that requires quite a bit of resources in order to render our maps.

At this point we feel we're at a good spot in the project. Everything is working, and despite some regressions we've far surpassed them in progress!

These past few days we've been working with the groundstation software for autonomous flight paths.

We printed off a picture of the football field at the high school and made sure to mark off any obstructions for the flight path, then actually created the path using the PC groundstation. 

This is actually from yesterday when we took our very first autonomous flight with it.

Overall we've had a lot of success with the GS and have completed 3 successful autonomous flights with the drone. Two of which were around the football field at 40 meters high.

The Phantom's Crash

Unfortunately we had a... hard landing with the Phantom, thankfully we were able to have access to all the tools and help from the Launch Pad in order to get it back to working conditions.

 The gimbal is the largest concern. It took a lot of the force from the crash.

 One of the wires for the FPV Hub we're using was damaged so we had to improvise by soldering another spare wire to it.

It worked great, oddly enough!

We had Joel, master solder, help us with the circuit board. 

 A ribbon wire the connects the GoPro to the FPV system was torn while fixing the gimbal. Thankfully it came with another identical one which made this repair simple and uncomplicated.

And here's the Phantom put back together, nearly back to 100%!

Overall, we were confronted with a major setback in our project and it gave us the experience dealing with it. Our time at the Pad has been a learning experience that we appreciate.