
DIY Drones - jacquesm
http://diydrones.com/
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beambot
Indeed. DIY Drones is a great community of amateur UAV builders that was
founded by Wired's editor-in-chief (Chris Anderson). The company is a
canonical example of an open hardware outfit. According to a recent report
their 2010 revenues are approaching $1M.

[http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/05/03/two-open-hardware-
robo...](http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/05/03/two-open-hardware-robotics-
companies-near-1-million-revenue)

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AretNCarlsen
Chris is a brave man. The good people over at DIYDrones have to skirt the
boundaries of legality, as they can only operate under the FAA's "model
airplane" definition ( _very_ lightweight, in sight and control of human
operator, etc). I wonder where UAV development would be today if we allowed
them to run free over private land, as we allow for autonomous ground
vehicles.

I, for one, have reluctantly chosen not to develop UAVs specifically due to
the legal dangers under current regulation. I sometimes think of my
counterparts in other countries, who have reached the same fork in the road
and were able to continue in this field. [This is why "brain drain" happens.]

~~~
younata
well, if you decide to drop the money to get a pilot's license, you can do a
whole lot more, as you can now operate it under a different class of aircraft.

~~~
rdl
A pilot's license is $5-10k and maybe 400 total hours of time (50+ flight
hours, maybe setup and commute to/from, ground school and study). Most of the
good/cheap flight schools are in Florida (since the weather is consistent,
land/fuel/etc. is cheap -- one of the main issues with doing VFR training in a
place with variable weather is that VFR conditions aren't always met). I think
Arizona and Texas are popular too.

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th0ma5
my dad is a mod of a rc board, i think the big thing (in the US) is for flying
your own drone, it has to have an observer. plus full first person video
requires a lot of bandwidth, and the power you're allowed to use negates
hardly any range, even if you can use FPV at all... a lot of the devices over
the last few years that had FPV turned out to be over the legal limits of
power

