About Me: General – Dingming Lu's Lab

On this page, I will introduce myself and briefly talk about the stories between drones and me.

Some pictures may take a little bit more time to load.

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my website. I appreciate your time to put my domain into your browser and stop by. This website is completely built and maintained by myself, and you can find my work experiences, course projects, personal projects, and other things.

If you are more interested in the drone side, the content on this page and the projects started with AT on the Course Projects page have a higher concentration.

If you are more interested in the ME side, the Personal Projects and the projects started with ME on the Course Projects page have a higher concentration.

But feel free to visit both, it’s possible for you to find what you are looking for.

I. About Me

My name is Dingming Lu, I am majoring in Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) and Mechanical Engineering (ME) at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Due to double majoring, my estimated graduation time is in December 2024.

Course projects are the projects I have done from the Purdue courses, including core Aviation Technology (AT) courses: AT209, AT219, AT309, and so on, and core ME courses such as ME375-Control II.

Personal projects include the solutions to the daily problems I encountered, such as a camera rear mount for the car, and the areas I am interested in, such as the quadcopter flight controller on Arduino Mega.

With the help of useful tools, including skills in using the machines in the machine lab, 3D printing lab, etc, researching, learning, and problem-solving skills, I wish I could help as many people as I can.

II. Early UAS Experience (10/2013 – 7/2014)

1. First Flight (09/2013 – 10/2013)

I discovered an online community where people share everything about RC aircraft and drones, then I began to read the threads. Before this, I was dreaming about flying RC aircraft, but my knowledge about the power system was limited by the toy helicopters, they are weak, and I had no idea how to make a larger aircraft. In the community, people taught the basics of aircraft, how to build aircraft, and how the electronics work. I also watched the tutorial videos, several of them are from Flight Test. (Youtube was and is blocked in China, but there were people who download the videos, added the translated subtitle, and upload them the internet.) After reading the threads and watching the videos day and night, I had a basic knowledge of model aircraft and wanted to give it a try. I convinced my mom to buy everything I needed. I also went to the print shop where they can print the design of the aircraft in 1:1 scale. Then, my first model aircraft, Bloody Wonder, was finished.

Figure 2.1.1: 10/10/2013 18:05, I was installing the control mechanism of the elevator.

Figure 2.1.2: 10/28/2013 16:43, my first aircraft and its controller.

Figure 2.1.3: 10/27/2013 14:52, I was installing the fuselage.

October 27th in a stadium. I didn’t expect that there were some people playing around. I set up the aircraft, and then let it go. It had a lot of power and flew extremely fast. After several minutes, it landed on the grass field in the middle of the stadium. There were at least three things I did wrong. First, I used a 7” propeller on a 1400kv motor (that’s why it’s so powerful), which should be 6”. Second, I should not flying it over people, at that low altitude. But that was my first flight, so my control was awful. Third, I didn’t even know how to connect the ESC and the motor properly. I don’t remember if I really used the heat-shrinking tubing, but I do remember I glued the three cables with hot glue. Anyway, it was a flight.

2. First Quadcopter (01/2014)

I built a quad drone with an airframe called F450 and the flight controller NAZA-Lite. That was the first time using the product from DJI. The process was not easy, because there were always some problems when building it, most of them were from setting the flight controller. I also prepared a lot of propellers, just in case if I crashed. There were no GPS and FPV systems on it.

Figure 2.2.1: 01/20/2014, my first quadcopter was finally done.

Figure 2.2.3: 01/25/2014, I was flying on the square in front of my hometown’s City Hall.

Figure 2.2.1: 01/20/2014, my first quadcopter flight was in my mom’s bedroom.

Figure 2.2.4: 01/24/2014, I was checking the wiring, my dad’s friend was watching.

3. Upgrading and More Flying (03/2014 – 07/2014)

In this stage, there were a lot of things going on. There were GPS and FPV added, controller upgrade, frame upgrade, and power upgrade. Once you check out the pictures below, you’ll know how things were happening with time.

*There are both landscape and portrait photos in the following carousel, even though I change the photo size in the code, the actual size would not change. I apologize. If you know how to solve it please leave a comment, the plugin I am using is “Slide Anything”.

[slide-anything id=”345″]

III. Aerial Photography as a Job (7/2014 – 3/2016)

Elegant. This is my comment to DJI S1000. Even the machines nowadays have better performance, they don’t impress me anymore like S1000 impressed me 9 years ago. That was in 2014.
Dingming Lu

Hired by Greenpeace, my father and I were going to take photos where the environment was heavily damaged in some of the provinces in China. (If you don’t know who my father is, click here and/or here). In July, We bought DJI S1000 (click here for the music if you will), DJI Zenmuse Z15-5D for Canon 5DIII, six 6S batteries, and two Futaba transmitters.

1. Before Departure.

We bought a whole set of DJI S1000 at the DJI store and assembled it there, meanwhile, I learned more about the machine so I knew how to do the maintenance and preflight check or even fix the problem. These were the things I need to check every day: the IMU, which was installed with only two pieces of 3M double-sided tape, the carbon fiber airframe, every piece of propellers, screws, and the batteries.

We then performed several test flights near the end of July and got on the train to Shanxi.

Figure 3.1.1: 05/01/2014, during the China Model Exposition, my dad showed a high interest in this machine.

Figure 3.1.2: 07/28/2014, the first flight.

Figure 3.1.3: 07/28/2014, I was changing the battery.

Figure 3.1.4: 07/28/2014, I was checking the battery installation plate.

Figure 3.1.5: 07/28/2014, the last test flight of the day.

Figure 3.1.6: 07/29/2014, all the equipment that my dad was going to use during the flight. He would be controlling the gimbal and the camera.

Figure 3.1.7: 08/08/2014, I was doing the final check before departure.

Figure 3.1.8: 08/09/2014, we were taking the equipment to the elevator. The largest black case had S1000, and the green case had all batteries, battery charger, and the monitor holder. Everything else was in the silver case.

2. Flights near the Yellow River (08/09/2014 – 08/14/2014)

(1). Hequ, Shanxi

Our first destination was Hequ, Shanxi, a small town next to the Yellow River. From Google map, I estimate the coal mine we were looking for was here. The big black area was the coal mine, and there’s another one to the SSE of this one.

If you want to know what we saw there, follow this link, and search “Maoergou Coal Mine in Hequ Shanxi 2014” in the article. I believe you can imagine how large the coal mine was based on the scale of the excavators and trucks.

We stayed there for about two or three days. Every day at 5:30 in the morning, we got up, brought the equipment into a car, and a private local driver took us where we wanted to go. The sky was dark blue, and the lights in the local factory were the brightest in the town. We had breakfast at a restaurant and headed to the coal mine. Hundreds of trucks were driving on the road next to the Yellow River. Even though the road was paved, it was already covered by a thick layer of dust and looked like a dirt road. We were behind a truck, the only thing we could see was its taillight which was about 8 meters ahead of us.

Figure 3.2.1: 08/11/2014, S1000, the coal mine, and I. The river behind me is the Yellow River, and the dark area, near the horizon, in the far distance was the coal mine.

I still remember in one of the flights, we got on a hill, and it was only a road away from the coal mine. We took off from the roof of a villager’s house. At the point of take-off, it was already about 100 m above the coal mine, so the AGL wasn’t too high (usually it’s so high that we had to reserve 2 to 3 minutes to descend and land with a maximum descend speed of 2m/s). But this time, we flew 800 meters away from the take-off point. I just hope we have enough power to bring it back, and the foggy weather wouldn’t cut the transmitter’s signal. The only trace we knew it was still flying was the video transmitted back on the screen. Luckily, it could fly very fast horizontally, and it landed safely. As long as it touched down, I unplugged the battery, folded the arms, and put it on the car without putting the propeller-protecting foam on, meanwhile, my father was putting everything else on the car, and we ran away. I think this was the mission that brought the prized photo back. Sending a $13000 machine 800m away from us without seeing it and bringing it home safely is just ridiculous. If one thing went wrong, we would lose everything.

(2). Ningxia

We stayed in Shanxi for two days and went to Ningxia, another province that is west to Shanxi. Still, we took photos near the Yellow River and the chemical factories. This time, there was an incident. Since we were flying very high, I couldn’t see the position, I also couldn’t control it. I enabled return-to-home, but it didn’t look like there were any actions. Somehow it’s in return-to-home mode, and it landed safely. I never used yaw, so if I pull the pitch it should come back, but I couldn’t see it come back. Furthermore, the video from the camera was stabilized and the camera could be pointing in any direction. These two reasons caused me to lose orientation or faulty judgment.

Figure 3.2.2: 08/13/2014, I was preparing for taking off. On the other side of the river was the factory, one of my father’s friends was watching them from the bridge.

Figure 3.2.3: 08/13/2014, my father was setting the camera. The factory was behind the hills.

Figure 3.2.4: 08/13/2014, it took off for the mission.

Figure 3.2.5: 08/13/2014, I was checking the battery installation plate and the frame

Figure 3.2.6: 08/14/2014, I was checking the landing gear.

Figure 3.2.7: 08/14/2014, it’s going for another mission.

Figure 3.2.8: 08/14/2014, and another mission.

Figure 3.2.9: 08/14/2014, and the last mission of the day.

3. 08/2014 – Summer 2015

Flying DJI S1000 was not the only thing I did.

Figure 3.3.1: 08/30/2014, I was flying with friends.

Figure 3.3.2: 09/2014, Building of Tarot 650 was done right before the school sport event, just in time. It had a 2 axis gimbal.

Figure 3.3.3: 09/2014, my second quadcopter Tarot 650 with 15 inches carbon fiber propeller.

Figure 3.3.4: 12/15/2014, we were flying near a factory in Handan, Hebei Province. We couldn’t find a hard land, it was full of sand and dust. So we put S1000 on the top of the roof the car, and landed it on a sheet of plastic.

Figure 3.3.5: 07/2015, my second fix wing was finished, the Skywalker 1900. It has a FPV system, a simple flight controller, and an OSD. It’s one of my favorite aircraft. Let me know if you want to see more building pictures of it.

4. Inner Mongolia Steppe (Summer 2015)

We were on a road trip to Mongolia. We brought DJI S1000 and Skywalker 1900.

First, we had some fun flights.

Figure 3.4.1: 07/14/2015, it’s another good day to fly.

Figure 3.4.2: 07/14/2015, no limit, just fly it.

Figure 3.4.3: 07/14/2015, another flight

Of course, there’s another reason we came here with DJI S1000. People found coal sources on this land.

Figure 3.4.4: 07/15/2015, it’s taking off, heading to the coal mine.

Figure 3.4.5: 07/16/2015, we were taking off near the herdsman’s moving home. You can actually see an abnormal view on the right of the picture.

Figure 3.4.6: 07/16/2015, I was replacing the battery for S1000.

Figure 3.4.7: 07/16/2015, I was calibrating the compass. It’s necessary every time we move to another place. The hills behind us came from the dirt underground, which was transferred by excavators and trucks.

They were friendly, perfervid, and curious. We had a whole fresh sheep for lunch in the middle of the grass land. Kids and even their parents were holding my Skywalker 1900 to take photos together. It was a good time.

Figure 3.4.8: 07/16/2015, and I just couldn’t waste this wide, beautiful, and limitless fly field. Having a nice field makes me feel happier than having a new aircraft.

Figure 3.4.9: 07/17/2015, we were heading to another mine. If you zoom in, you can see the trucks were dumping the dirt. That’s how those hills were formed.

Then we went to the place where my father took this photo many years ago. It may not be the same place, but this place also had fake sheep.

Figure 3.4.10: 07/17/2015, fine and racy sheep sculptures created a high contrast with the factories in the background.

Figure 3.4.11: 07/18/2015, the last flight of this trip. It crashed this time because first I couldn’t see it, the weather was a little foggy. Second, I though I lost orientation, but if I just pull the pitch back, I could bring it back. Third, I didn’t know how this place looks like from the air, and I couldn’t find any references on the ground. Finally, the battery was low. Yeah… it’s a lot of debuffs.

5. Summer 2015

Back from Mongolia, I continued helping one of my friends build his first drone: a hexacopter.

Figure 3.5.1: 07/19/2015, my friend said he was coming in the next day, but I couldn’t wait and kept building it.

Figure 3.5.2: 07/22/2015, and it’s done. The wiring was neat, the test flight was successful. He also bought a case. We cut the slots and put everything in there. Later, he brought it to Manchester, England.

Then we went to the DJI store, and replaced the main center board of S1000. No picture was taken 🙁

Figure 3.5.3: 08/11/2015, I disassembled Tarot 650, and re-did all wiring. Now it weighted less and looked nicer.

Figure 3.5.4: 08/11/2015, if I have a second chance, I would change another battery, and even change another flight controller.

6. March 2016

If you have noticed, if my father and I appeared in the same picture, that means someone else was taking a lot of pictures, and I can put many pictures on this page. But if there’s only me, that means there were only two of us, and most of the time we were busy in the flight mission, so not many pictures were taken.

From 03/10/2016 to 03/14/2016, we went to Minle Desert in Gansu Province. We took a train and then drove to a small town where there was only one hotel. There were abandoned villages everywhere, and most of them became ruins and only walls left. Everything was dry and full of dust.

Figure 3.6.1: 03/10/2016, I was calibrating the compass near an abandoned village.

Figure 3.6.2: 03/11/2016, this was where we slept last night, an old couple’s house.

Figure 3.6.3: 03/11/2016, this was the room we slept in.

Figure 3.6.4: 03/11/2016, we flew S1000 over this abandoned house.

Figure 3.6.5: 03/11/2016, this was the entrance of another much larger abandoned village. S1000 took off here.

Figure 3.6.6: 03/13/2016, we went to another town. We were on the way to a flying spot.

Figure 3.6.7: 03/13/2016, then even the graval road disappeared, and the FWD car got stuck on the road. We had to rescue ourselves because it was in the middle of nowhere and no one would come to this closed road. We dug out some sand from the front wheel, I was pushing from the head, and my father push to full throttle in reverse. Finally, we got out and give up this road (it’s all uphill if we kept going). On the way back it’s all downhill, we didn’t even press the brake until we got on the graval road again.

On the same day, we cross a time-limited bridge and came to this village. After the mission was completed, we rushed back and cross the river just about 20 minutes before the bridge was closed.

Figure 3.6.8: 03/13/2016, everything behind the camera was the desert. The village downhill was the one we were flying on.

We left the desert and went to another city, Chenzhou, Hunan Province (03/15/2016 – 03/19/2016).

Unfortunately, no pictures of the flights were taken. It was cloudy every day. We flew near several factories, near the rivers.

Then, I came to the United States in April 2016 and had never flown with S1000 since then.