Dishers.com – Page 11 – Disher Family Fodder

April 7, 2014

DeadCat Quad Gimbal Video

So in preparation for FPV, I started building a ‘Dead-Cat’ style quad.

So out of the box, I’ve hot this HK frame, and crappy arms which I replaced with DJI arms. It flies well with Stock DJI (red) 2212 920KV motors with stock DJI 30A opto ESC’s and 10 Inch props.

But when I weight it down with the Gimbal it’s a tad overloaded.

DeadCat Quad Flights.

For the most part I’m happy with the video quality, there’s still some Jell-O in the footage though. It’s pretty clear in it’s current state I can’t add the weight of FPV gear. So if this becomes an FPV rig, the Gimbal in it’s current form, has to go.

Perhaps a move to 4S batteries is required. I’ll have to do some more research. It’s not a steady as J’s Team BlackSheep Discovery Pro, which is heavier. But is also using 900kv motors and 10” props which I’ve also only flown with 3S batteries.

I still enjoy and prefer the PixHawk Flight controller to the DJI Naza V2 that’s on the TBS. Even with it’s pre-arm button ridiculousness.

March 28, 2014March 28, 2014

Saving a Lotus T580+P (Part 3)

So following up on:

Saving a Lotus Part 1 and Saving a lotus Part 2

And that didn’t take long. Sadly no video. No kids were willing to come out and do the camera work.

Bottom line, it flew and flew pretty well. Big and slow. 14” props, yeah, not my kind of machine. I flew it for a good 10 minutes, then decided to try a couple different modes on the Naze32 flight controller, tipped it over a foot of the ground and broke a prop. So it’s done.

It would be fine if I could source the props, but I didn’t like this enough to a new matching set since I can’t find the originals plus spares to keep this thing in the air. So I’ll re-use the parts, probably chop up the CF frame and use it for other things.

So there you have it. Multi-Rotors, the hobby. About 6 hours give or take, of hard work mixed with fun, for about 10 minutes of flight time. Certainly if I had more spare parts, I’d get a better return on investment than that. But c’est la vie.

Still it’s better than spending 6 hours at a steel match where I actually only get to shoot for about 64 seconds Winking smile

-MD

March 26, 2014March 30, 2014

Saving a Lotus T580+P (Part 2)

In Part 1 I talked about what a big turd this thing is but I failed to mention that anyone selling it as a legit copter should be prosecuted for fraud. Including one ebay seller who’s in Hawaii, you know who you are.

Turns out the frame is OK, maybe the motors are OK, and the props, well the props are pretty cheap. But we’re giving it a go at making this as legit as I can.

In Part 1, I cleared out the suboptimal flight controller and ESC’s that come with it. Cheap, cheap crap. And installed the 4:1 ESC. At the time I didn’t have a spare flight controller laying around and was trying to decide what to put on it.

I had ordered a Naze flight controller. Actually a full Naze32 as well as an afro acro Naze32. (Which I think is a play on Naza, cause the guy that makes them absolutely loathes DJI, but I’m very curious as to where the afro part comes in).

But I digress.

Basically the difference between the two:

Acro, is just that. Simple flight stabilization, gyro and accelerometer, but no barometer or magnetometer.

The full Naze has all four components and can handle GPS as well, but no GPS is provided, you have to add your own. The additional components get you some compass smarts, as well as altitude hold. Which I have yet to experience with a naze32. Which reminds me, I need to pop the top and cover the barometer with some closed cell foam.

In fact you get to solder your own headers on too. It’s very DIY, but it’s a slick board. The same flight controller that powers my Armattan 355. I ordered them directly from Japan, and delivery was actually pretty good, about a week, maybe 10 days. There is at least one US Supplier but he was out of stock when I ordered.

The documentation sucks, but there’s some good info on the web, specifically a youtube video going through the options. It’s a port of the multiWii software I think. Called Baseflight and you configure it using Baseflight plugin in Google Chrome which works quite well. Given it’s performance, this is the best bang for the buck out there that I’ve found and I’m cheap so you can take that to the bank.

So after receiving them in the mail even though one was slated to go on a quad build for Matthew that mamma poo-poo’d on, I thought I’d borrow it and install it on the Lotus. I figure if this things gonna fly, the naze will do well by it. As good or better than a $200 PixHawk though admittedly without any of the autonomous features. So here we go.

I soldered the headers, and mounted it on top of the ESC.

Oh, I’m putting the full naze32 on here. I want altitude hold on this.

3M Dual Lock is your best friend for stuff like this. The one with the big hooks. Great adhesive, sticks to just about anything, and holds really well. It’s removable and you can easily pop stuff off or reposition it.

I have no vibration damping in this other than the dual lock that holds the ESC, and the dual lock holding the Naze to the ESC, or rather the board that the naze is mounted too to the ESC.

I’m also using a $15 Lemon/Spektrum Compatible receiver. Again because I’m cheap and a real Spectrum AR8000 clocks in at about $129.00 But I do realize you get what you pay for. Instructions are nil, but the board is well marked. I originally mounted one to my Armattan, but had an ESC/Motor issue and removed that to make sure it wasn’t this el’Cheapo Rxr. And it wasn’t so it’s on this now.

After binding my transmitter and setting up the Flight Controller.

It’s alive. ESC got sync’d, and it should be ready to fly. Of course it was 1am when finished so no test flights yet.

Once convinced all motors were good to go, I balanced the props. I don’t seem to have any of the motor stall/sync issues with this 4:1 ESC, unlike the POS factory one. At least none on the bench so far.

It fits nicely, though it is big. And the leads from the motors fight right into the lugs so that was easy which reminds me I need to make sure all of those are tight before flight.

Here she is in all her beauty:

Props freshly balance and it should fly nice. I expect this to be nice and docile. With the big 14” props.

Here’s a shot with the 355cm Armattan under it for a reference.

Yeah, it’s kind of big.

That dome cover on the top is a pain. A pain to screw on and a bigger pain to line up the screws. It’s probably not going to last long. I certainly hope I get more than a few flights out of this. I have exactly 0 spare props so it’s likely out once it hits the turf for the first time. Though a motor mount will probably break first and since they seem like really weak points I’m not going to source props for now.

If it flies as well as I think it probably will with new brains and components, I will probably venture into GPS enabling a Naze and see how that goes. If that works, it will get a PixHawk, but that’s looking forward two whole cycles and if you’re not familiar with this hobby. Well, that’s highly unlikely. If it crashes and burns, we’ll chalk all of this up to a learning experience and re-use the Flight Controller/Receiver/ESC’s maybe even the motors on something else. Maybe a Tarot frame from RCManChild. Or finally something for Matthew. Though he’s not getting anything with 14” props. I’m not completely crazy. Smile

Video will be posted if it works out.

Total build time in this is about 4 hours give or take, including dicking around with the flight controller, ESC and Receiver.

Happy multi-rotoring.

March 23, 2014March 23, 2014

FPV, Let the games begin

FPV (First Person View)

It’s all JD’s fault, he dragged me into this. As mentioned in a previous post he jumped into the deep end of the pool by purchasing a Team Blacksheep Discovery Pro frame. This frame is sweet, and includes a 2 Axis Gimbal built into the front of the frame.

Initially he just opted for the frame, we built that, he test flew it, but we didn’t hook up the Gimbal. He finally plugged it in but the roll motor was DOA.

Last weekend he was supposed to come fly with me but tore into it, ran into some soldering trouble, then crashed it during a test flight. I asked him to give it to me, I’d put it back together and get his gimbal back in business. I exchanged a few emails with TBS and the are sending us a motor. I should have that Monday.

In the mean time, JD picked up the TBS / FatShark FPV system. I told him I’d install that for him while I was fixing/cleaning up his other mess.

Still waiting for the Gimbal motor, I decided to go ahead and install the aforementioned FPV goodness.

All and all it was pretty straight forward once I got the camera mount and cables. JD had the pieces, he just neglected to give them to me.

I did manufacture a bracket for the video transmitter. It’s a tad ghetto but it will do the trick.

The results are amazing. I took me quite a while to get my controller set up. Previous to today I had 0 experience with Naza flight controllers. It took some time, research and I can’t wait to test fly this tomorrow.

This is going to be so much fun.

This is a really nice quad copter.

Proof video is working, and other shots of how things are assembled.

March 16, 2014March 16, 2014

Multi-Rotor Madness

Saturday March 15th was awesome. The weather was perfect and nobody was home but me. The perfect opportunity to get outside and do some flying. A buddy was supposed to come up and partake but he had “issues”, so it was a solo day.

First we spent some quality time with the Armattan, my current sport quad.

Some sporty flying…

After burning up a few batteries with that, I moved on to my newer “Dead Cat” Quad. Built from a cheap frame upgraded with legit DJI arms, and utilizing PixHawk for the flight controller.

It flies awesome. It’s not a hot rod by any stretch, but it will flip and roll too. I had some issues testing the acro mode in Arducopter 3.1.2-r2 so I’m waiting for 3.2 before I try it again. I don’t have a good camera mount for it yet, no gimbal, nor FPV gear so I ‘temporarily’ attached the ContourHD camera to the front. All and all for as ghetto as the mount was it did pretty good.

Dead Cat with ContourHD

I ran it through a bunch of different flight modes. Even executed a pretty significant autonomous flight. Had some fun with guided mode from the tablet too. Thought I almost lost it too.

In guided mode I flew it out over the pond at the gravel pit, then over to the east, then asked it to come back, and well, it was trying but while it technically wasn’t beyond visual flight distance, I couldn’t see it from where I was standing.

It was apparently on the fringe of my telemetry radio’s range. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I did eventually flip “Return to Launch” and it came back. So all is well.

I also got out the Hex, which has the gimbal installed. I still need to fix the Jell-O-cam issue which seems very EFI’ish to me. But still, this hex is a stable flier.

Hex Gimbal Footage

So this was an all around very awesome multi-rotor day. I can’t wait to get the FPV gear and get going. I really can’t wait to get my hands on a TBS Discovery Pro frame.