After a hard days work, prepping the property for the ‘Hen Fest 2014’, I got to get the Tri Copter out for some fun after a little storm blew through.
Enjoy…
More Tri-Copter goodness.
Tri-Copter Fun Flying.
Tossed the legacy Contour HD camera on the Tri-Copter today. Keep in mind this is pretty much hard mounted and there is no gimbal so it’s not nearly as smooth as previous Dead-Cat, or Hex Gimbal videos.
Details of the build are here in Part 1 and Part 2
Some video from two different batteries.
SimpleCopter Tri-Copter 2.0
Hanging where it rests…
I would most definitely FPV this thing. It flies that well… A smidge under powered with the Contour HD but that’s a heavy camera. FVP gear is next up on the list, that and finishing the micro 3D Printed quad that I have almost all the parts for.
Tri-Copter Proof of Life
OK, I got some tail swivel parts from my buddy, and got her all back together.
In reality the left arm is still broken, just wedged in the body for this demo proving that she does fly.
Tri-Copter / SimpleCopter Proof of Life
This thing is going to be loads of fun once I get the arm fixed and a few things touched up.
Like adding some color to it for orientation and some lights.
More later.
Tri-Copter for the Win!
The Tri-Copter Part II
So about a month ago I started putting together my SimpleCopter Tri-Copter.
So in part (1) I had started to migrate the crash parts from my HongKong F330 acro knock off over to it.
The HK330 was a lot of fun, super stable, rock solid actually, provided you didn’t smash it into the ground. Honestly it crashed pretty well too, but I’d had a few crashes, some hard enough that it pulled the pads off of a couple of the ESC’s. I’d repaired them but finally one was ruined, so now down to (3) of them I decided to migrate it over to the Tri-Copter.
For what it’s worth… I’m using DJI 980KV knock off motors, they have keyed prop adapters built in, and I have lots of DJI props so it seemed like a good plan. My Armattan quad uses 1800kv motors (faster), and the SimpleCopter guy recommends 1400KV motors. but 1000kv with larger props should accomplish about the same thing but won’t be quite as ‘nimble’. Less hot rod like.
Why am I telling you this? Cause sometimes you should just use what the guys recommend. Had I just ordered up 3 new motors, I could have built this by now. My motors don’t have mounts, so I needed to order those and I needed to order them 2x because the orders kept getting screwed up. This literally cost me a month of waiting.
While I really dig the selection and pricing from readytoflyquads.com, the guy is a one man band and while I don’t really have an issue waiting 2-3 weeks for some things, when that order is fulfilled wrong, and things now take 5-6 weeks that starts to irritate me. To his credit he made things right.
So this is a story where you get what you pay for and sometimes trying to save a buck only costs you more in the long run.
This weekend I finally received my motor mount, which was the missing component to be able to use the fancy tilt block that my buddy 3D Printed.
I had what I thought was a really good plan… Put the ESC’s under the Body and made up some really sweet extension cables from the motors to the ESC’s with bullet connectors. Got it all together. Configured the flight controller, calibrated the ESC’s and was just about ready to put the props on and take it for a spin.
I picked it up, and since this thing is kind of big, (and foldable) I folded it. But the way I had routed the wires, it just pulled the bullet connectors off the ESCs. Drats. These were already salvaged ESC’s, meaning I’d broken the connectors off before and soldered them back on, sometimes to the regulator itself. This was no good and ruined one of the 3 remaining functional ESC’s. So, I had the motors mounted, but now was short at least one ESC.
I remembered I had ordered 4 ESC’s for another quad I wanted to build so I started to swap them all out.
This time putting the front one’s on the arms, and changing the extension cables to the other side of the ESC with pull apart bullet connectors.
As murphy would have it, one of these ESC’s was bad, when I plugged in the battery to configure it, the magic smoke was let out and it also fried my flight controller 
So, using my remaining ESC, and remaining spare Flight Controller I was finally in business ready to fly.
The first test flight went really really well. (Sorry no video, kids were tied up.)
After a couple short test flights I was ready to turn up the gains, tweak the pids and get more aggressive.
I took it out to the field and started to get Jiggy with it. On my first Flip, something broke, I think it was the 3D printed swivel thing. It started flat-spinning like a Frisbee, from about 30 meters.
Boom.
The Damage:
– One tilt swivel
– One Arm, the beauty of which is I can buy 8 feet of this 1/2 x 1/2 inch material from the hardware store for next to nothing.
– And of course, instead of separating at the bullet connector, one of the bullet connectors ripped off the ESC. But I think I can fix that.
I *think* the flight controller survived, though some pins were bent but we’ll find out soon enough.
With some luck we’ll be flying again after the weekend.
The Tri-Copter
So my buddy has one of these, and since I recently smashed up one of my acrobatic quads and broke a speed controller. I now have 3 of something so a tri-copter seems like a good plan.
I was really impressed with my buddy’s tri. It was quite acrobatic and stable. Actually looks like an as-good if not better camera platform than some of the DJI based quads.
So I ordered a frame. The SimpleCopter 2.0 There’s lots to like about this:
- It is relatively cheap, about $50, for the frame and landing skids (with shipping).
- Only 3 motors and ESC’s
- It’s really light, and the booms are 1/2 x 1/2 pine boards that you can get, oh, at just about any hardware store.
- IT folds up for easy transport
- Most of the mounting things are simply wire-ties. So you can break a motor mount, and it costs you less than 10 cents.
My buddy has already made some improvements, he has a nicer 3D printed tail yaw control. The motors I have don’t have the brackets to mount to it though. I’ve ordered some. He also whipped me up a couple 3D printed mounts for my motors for the front arms. If your motors have the simple brackets you just strap those babies on with wire ties.
I had some time tonight to gut the crashed quad and start on this.
The 3D Printed motor mounts for the front arms which still attach with wire-ties:
His awesome 3D printed rear mount with shiny new Servo:
Power distribution board all mounted up (more of a test fit):
Test fitting my Naze32 Flight Controller and RXR:
Still unsure about where to put the ESC’s, in between the top and bottom frame parts I suppose.
The motors are 980kv, which are super fine/super fun on a 330/350 size quad with 8” props so I’m expecting to swing 10” props on this and we’ll see how that goes. If I don’t like it, then we’ll get some 1400-1800vk motors. But for what I think I want this for, FPV that might work just fine.
I should probably paint this thing to protect it. Maybe I’ll do that with the next one, cause you know there will be more than one 
I’m semi-interested in APM or Pixhawk on one of these too.
More as it develops.