I’m looking to assemble a camera blimp, 5 meters long with 1x vertical and 1x horizontal thruster on each side, is there a firmware setting that supports this or one that could easily be modified? basically cameras are my thing, I’m no expert with robotics (I was excellent at maths and physics at school though so I’m not a complete idiot). I would also like to integrate a Real Time Kinematic GPS system to improve accuracy particularly for the camera angles, has anyone got experience of this? I’m speaking to some software development companies at the moment about modding either this or open pilot as there are various additions I would probably need to make but I would very much appreciate any input from anyone on here and there’s anyone in the london area who fancies being involved in a consulting capacity I could definitely stretch to bribery.
Using a blimp is great but only if you need to stay over the same place for a long time as they are usually tethered as they don’t fly too well when there it lots of wind (although there are some smart designs to try overcome this) but at the end of the day they cant handle wind as well as multicopters due to the lager surface area.
However you might want to talk to the guys at aerialcamerasystems as they have a camera blimp of similar size to what you are looking for (if you are planning for professional applications as it can get quite expensive).
However if you are planning to build your own from scratch you should have a look at the ardublimp project
Thanks for your response, yes I was hoping to make something with a significantly longer endurance than a multirotor but still free ranging. It would perhaps be more of a hybrid with a proportion of the lift coming from the engines and also powerful enough to overcome some of its aerodynamic handicaps (hopefully). Thanks for the links