You say toy, I say aerial mapping and development platform

While the geography department have a bunch of fixed wing and multirotor UAVs, what I really was after was something small.  The guys were good enough to purchase a 3DR Solo quadcopter as a tool for staff to use,  mainly as it mitigates the hassles that occur when you stack the big Draganfly into the ground at speed.

And in one colour....black

This thing is cool, it flies like a charm in pretty high winds, is completely open source and python scriptable.  While the Gopro support is okay,  my only issue with it is a lack of serious firepower for photo mapping.  After reading a bunch of posts (the Solo has a great hacking / modding community) here's my plan for a bit of an upgrade. 

The hard part is finding the right camera.  I went with the Sony QX100 as its super light and has no LCD screen.  It uses a smartphone as the camera control which is cool unless you have a new Nexus 5x like me and the Sony software doesn't support marshmallow yet.. Idiots.

How can I do selfies with this?

The QX100 supports control over wifi, so I'm going to use a VP-systems camremote. These are cool little boards that allow you control cameras via remote control channels. This allows three PWM channels (i.e.RC servo channels) to control various camera functions. 

The beauty of the Solo is that it has an accessory bay that allows you access to USB and a few servo channels.  So via ground control software such as tower or mission planner, I can set a servo command to trigger PWM, which will then trigger wifi, which will then trigger the camera. Yay! 

A few more parts I'm using are a IMP concepts gimbal plate and dampers (to reduce camera vibration) and a neat breakout board from OSH Park. Finally, after all of these changes I then realised that the Solos legs were two short for the QX100 to hang underneath, so I added some Relish3D leg extenders.  

Hopefully all this will play nicely and allow the gopro to be used for FPV while the QX100 will give high resolution surface photos. Unfortunately, we are still waiting to hear back if we can use it in the field this year, but my plan is to use the solo for low altitude (<5m) mapping of  glacial geomorphology.  I'm particularly interested in doing some multi year SfM monitoring of polygonal ground in Antarctic similar to the work by Kaab et al (2014). This will give us a great way to non-invasively study this fragile landscape.

Polygonal ground in the Victoria Valley. Photo by Rod Asher. Antarctica NZ Pictorial Collection