Newbie (Perth, Australia)

[TheRealDazzler 0]

G'day!

My name is Darren and I live in Perth, Australia.  I got into drones because I wanted to build my autonomous boat for bathymetric surveys.  When I discovered how easy off-the-shelf drones were to fly, I was hooked!  Now I work for Soar, a company delivering an online marketplace for drone, aerial, and satellite images.  

Cheers! 

[Spitfire76 285]

Hello Darren @TheRealDazzler and welcome to this forum. Did you build that autonomous boat ?. If so did you use ardupilot ?. As you may know the main developers of that flight controller software reside in Australia. I agree that off the shelf drones are easy to fly but I still like building my own - Richard, California 

Edited March 28, 2019 by Spitfire76

[TheRealDazzler 0]

G'day Richard and thanks for the welcome.  I had the hull made for me and I added the Blue Robotics thrusters, Pixhawk/Ardupilot, and side scan sonar (though this image was pre-sonar).  I wasn't aware the devs were in Australia, though I'm guessing in they're in Canberra?  I agree DIY is fun, and generally once you're done, it's time to move on to the next project!    

[TheRealDazzler 0]

Forgot to note, I'm a Californian by birth.  So technically still a Californian!

[Spitfire76 285]

9 hours ago, TheRealDazzler said:

I wasn't aware the devs were in Australia, though I'm guessing in they're in Canberra?

As you know, Ardupilot is an open source project so there are developers all around the world but one of its key developers is, Andrew Tridgell better know as "Tridge" is in fact located in Canberra. Also the flight controller hardware known as the "cube" was designed by Philipp Rowse also located down under.

9 hours ago, TheRealDazzler said:

Forgot to note, I'm a Californian by birth.  So technically still a Californian!

Actually I'm a brit by birth - cheers Richard