Looks like this policy would have been good enough for 4th at 16.342s. Anduril #AIGrandPrix

Latest addition to the lab, upgrading the Bambu A1 Mini with a Chitu PlateCycler. This thing automatically ejects the build plate after a completed print and cycles a new plate in. Run a stack 10 deep and run a $200 printer unattended for days.

First FPV drone racing gate almost complete. Seems pretty workable! Thinking superglue the magnets (on both the framing and the banners), and cold laminate the banners. Feels pretty solid.

Finally getting somewhere. After tracking down mysterious motor failure on takeoff, battling with ESC firmware and tuning PIDs, we finally have some flights that don't end in crashes and some startup melodies. Ordered: OpenLager and 3-blade propellers.

Update from yesterday: good news, bad news. The good news is I finished the design for the VTX antenna and GPS mount and collected some flight logs. The bad news is in the ultimate flight I crashed into a tree. Thankfully the only loss was my GPS module which was mysteriously missing after the flight. After looking around for it I decided to review the flight video and hilariously you can see the drone yeeting it across the yard (see video). From reviewing the blackbox it looks like I had a loose arm that caused roll vibration and Angle mode tried to correct and started fighting me on throttle. I'm pretty bad at piloting the drone and would have managed to crash it on my own, but can't take full credit during the flight. Pre-flight checklist keeps growing though. More flights soon. I picked up a Velocidrone license meanwhile. I also got into the Jetson / Betaflight interface. There are some tricky bits. There is a ton of work to pull off the transfer. For first encounter with a new physical platform? My prediction is unless Neros supplies teams with a healthy amount of flight logs and optimized interface code, probably surprisingly few teams pass #AIGrandPrix Physical Qualifier. Mostly the labs that have already flown physical on their own hardware. Too much to try to do in one week and with limited flight slots.

Now entering uncontrolled airspace.

GPS is working too. Next up, a mount for the GPS chip and these lollipop antennas from the VTX. Another thing of note: I wasn't prepared for how hot the VTX gets (apparently normal). #AIGrandPrix #fpv #droneracing

Fits like a glove. First video from the Avatar HD Pro recorded from the goggles here too. I spent about 2 hours trying to track down black video but perfect OSD from the VTX. I finally popped open the cable compartment of the VTX and the cable connector just dropped out onto the bench. Seems ok now. #AIGrandPrix #3dprinting #fpv

Almost perfect. Probably useable like this if I force it. Let's try astra with one more prompt for the two-shot. I do wonder how much of the Arducam is going to show up in the Walksnail Avatar cam. Better than the other way around though. "Almost perfect. 1) see image in ~/Desktop/remove_material_for_knurled_ends.png -- we need to subtract enough material here for the knurled ends of the M3 female–female posts so that it can sit flush. See if you can find a model / STL or STEP of these posts with the knurled ends and bring it into the blender scene. 2) See ~/Desktop/deepen_pcb_slot.png the slot for the PCB is about 1 mm too shallow (ie I need to slide the PCB in about 1mm deeper into our part, so remove material) in order for the screw holes to line up." #AIGrandPrix #astra #CAD #fpv #3dprinting

Dual camera mount, first prototype. #AIGrandPrix

The drone is getting VTX and GPS. Will need to print a dual camera mount and antenna mounts. But first my son insisted we print a T-Rex. It's wild how good and cheap these have become. The first printer I ever bought (a Formlabs Form 1+) was more than 10x the cost of this little mini at like $3.2k #AIGrandPrix

The Jetson chip shows some signs of being a bit unhappy about my abrupt landings. I'm just seeing that Betaflight has an EZLANDING feature that I need to try to wire up #AIGrandPrix

Manual flights. I am not (yet) a great FPV pilot. Still all in one piece so far! #AIGrandPrix

I bricked my Tango 2 during a firmware update and codex had to reverse engineer and hot patch the updater to bring it back to life. Progress though, finally. #AIGrandPrix