Quadcopter Build

[nechaus]

You should give it ago, just turn all modes off, no angle baro or anything.. that is acro/gyro only


It's not that hard to hover around, you are just using the sticks to correct more because it is not self leveling, just be prepaired for it first time, dont use big stick movements.
Going to a nice big field you will get it to fly like a plane once you get the right pitch and throttle, you can just use yaw to turn around.
This will help you fly better, they say to practice figure 8 patterns using yaw only
And then fly more 3d style with pitch roll and yaw..

 

[nechaus]

Got the mini quad motors/esc's today, they are so damm tiny!

I still need to build and assemble it, motors came with nice long wires, had to solder bullets on esc and motor wires..
i doubled up on the heat shrink with the female esc wires..

But here are some pics showing what it will kinda look like...
It will be pretty neat and tidy because all the esc's and power wires will be under the first plate.. ontop of the plate with standoff's..
Top plate will have rx, fc, fpv gear..

I will post pics when its completed, should be by tomorrow as im eager to try this thing fpv

I cannot decide if i should put the naze32 or put the multiwii pro board, I plan on getting a rx with fail safe that will trigger rtl when connection is lost.
Thinking gps will be pointless because the mag is onboard and cant move it away from the power wires... so ill probably stick to the naze32 which should arrive tomorrow..

 

[nechaus]

Ended up changing frames AGAIN to the t4 mini because its not as heavy, about 80 grams lighter..


Anyway, First tests, I used a crappy 1000mah 20c 3s battery so, Ordered nano techs 1.5ah and 2.2ah all 3s..

It is more powerful than the hkfpv250, Also more efficient, i am getting more run time with the same battery.
The 3 bladed props are more punchy than the 2 bladed carbon.. I only had crappy bent and damaged 3 bladed props so will be good to test with some new ones soon.

What i love about the 5x3 carbon props, they are sooo rubust, but have ordered 30 plastic 5x3 3 blade props tho... and some 5x4..
I figure instead of going to bigger props, Ill just make a hex when i get bored.

Ended up using the multiwii pro board, did not get the naze32 yet... so ill put that on when i get it which will make the top plate less messy..

Here are some pics and a crappy video with the 2 bladed props and dodgy battery
[youtube]1OTtz5rcL6A[/youtube]

 

[nechaus]

my antennas are to close as well.. I am not sure how well the 2.4 rx is liking the 5.8 500mw tx being so close


I did a fpv flight earlier, I flew behind my body, about 300 meters away I lost signal, video was still good tho, I could not move and felt the thing kick into fail safe mode which needs to be adjusted to like 1350 throttle, fell to fast, crashed, nothing broke.. just got some dirt in the motor mounts.. but is fine.
Normally I get way more range...


What I am not sure of, Was my tx antenna polraisation, It was all in my bag and i forgot to even check it when i pulled it out, because I put my goggles on and switched it on and started flying... So I have to test again, I normally am very conscious of it but today was a hot day and no trees were to be found that were close.

 

[fechter]

If you orient the antennas at 90 degrees to each other, you can minimize the interaction (theoretically).

I saw a huge ugly cell phone tower in the background of one picture.
If you tethered a paint filled water balloon to the copter, you could repaint it.

 

[nechaus]

The cell towers near my house run on frequencies pretty close to what im using..900mhz... 850mhz..

I have flown past the cell tower and watched the thing loose rf signal... Fail safe kicked in, I jumped my fence in the back yard with RTL holding the remote over my head.. It went from dropping to gaining RTL altitude, 40 meters at the time, and flew home.

I don't fly near cell towers any more..


When you fly this stuff alot, you notice a big difference on how good the signal is in certain areas you fly, even with los all the time.
+ you get osd with feed back to tell you your signal reception,which i don't have but need to get...

Ill do a big upgrade on my transmitter gear soon going to 433mhz. I hopefully wont ever need to worry about losing reception again.

 

[nechaus]

If you orient the antennas at 90 degrees to each other, you can minimize the interaction (theoretically).

I saw a huge ugly cell phone tower in the background of one picture.
If you tethered a paint filled water balloon to the copter, you could repaint it.

ill face my video TX so its the opposite of my 2.4ghz.. Sounds good!

 

[nechaus]

This is what happens to thundersag cells when you have no compression..

They turn into fattyboomba's.. Hammer anyone?

 

[dirkdiggler]

You need to try the satellite receiver on that mini quad. It would save some weight and clean up the wiring. I thought Multiwii boards had an input for them, but could be wrong.
Incredible that people can just print out their own quad. Looks awesome. I might have a need for a printer after all! How much do you figure it costs to print all that out? After trying some 3d modeling I didn't think I had the skills to make anything, but if I can use other's models and print them, a few hundred dollars invested in a printer might be worthwhile.
Somewhat improving on the FPV. I can look into the monitor for about a minute without freaking out about where the quad is at. I've had one mishap where I ran into the neighbors house, but the quad survived and the house. Crazy that I can get about 13 minutes flight time with the st360 and I'm getting only about 7 minutes now on the 450 with gopro and landing gear. Might need a new battery for it. Thinking of trying out a 4s 5000mah battery, but don't know how the esc will hold up.

 

[nechaus]

I officially suck with wiring neatness.. any tips would be awesome because im such a messy bugger..
as a child, my mum always got annoyed with how messy my computer wires use to get...


I am getting long range tx and Rx soon, I forget what its called "cppm or ppm" uses one signal wire for all channels, should make it cleaner again.


Here are some more pics, my my naze32 board, Guys you should get one, its only $30 bucks, I am really pleased I did a test flight before, more stable and responsive than the 8bit multiwii..

Also the board can do voltage sensing of your battery pack so no need for a separate low voltage buzzer.. :lol:


got new props as well, 5x4 instead of 5x3, way better, and I can see 6 inch would be pretty insane, the 5x4 prop makes the mini quad about as powerful feeling as the bigger quad with 10 inch props... so i am happy with that but wish i did not waste getting the 5x3 3 bladed props now, have like 30 coming.
+ x2 2200mah battery, get the nano techs on wed or Thursday..

 

[nechaus]

I just updated the firmware and the thing has all the sudden started to YAW randomly...
So it must be a pid or settings that was on or different before to make this not happen..

Had 20 minutes of fpv with naze32 with firmware from the factory was all sweet just needed to change the yaw rate and was unable to update settings without updating the firmware version.... then did the update, kept stock pids and increased the Yaw rate to 0.10 and it feels like the yaw rate has not increased.. i need to change it back down and see if it will still do it... Apprently these boards are pretty sensitive to vibration but it seems the same to the other multiwii boards iv had... so could just be bs talk on forums.

More mucking around to figure this all out.

 

[nechaus]

fixed that problem just now,

P Yaw was on 7, Increased to 11.5, No yaw movement yet without stick input, looks mesmerizing compared to the other board.
Increased Yaw rate from 0 then to 0.10 and worked my way upto 0.70 and that feels about the same as what I had it before on mw2.3 mwp..
It has nice quick yaw movements now.

So stock PID's do fly, but they need very small adjustments from getting it to fly semi stable to awesome mode and with the NAZE32 it seems that the YAW is very weak, you will need to play with YAW pid and rates if you get this board, other than that, so far so good, I need to plug in a buzzer now and figure out a way to hook up voltage sensing and led's so it wont look messy

 

[nechaus]

just did a 3 min fpv flight around my house, yaw problem seems to be definitely fixed.


I must say WOW, FPV seems to be much better again, I feel like I have more control, And it's more stable when just hovering in level mode, I feel quite comfortable going closer to objects even in the wind via FPV..

Im surprised there is this much difference really.

 

[nechaus]

I just calibrated my ESC's all at once,

HOLY frocking HELL.

it's about 10 times more powerful.

 

[nechaus]

will take video asap tomorrow.. it's shockingly faster

 

[izeman]

@nechaus: do you have some experience about what can be done with buzzer/led?
i got it working somehow: i've connected one LED to D7 (= PORT H4) and a buzzer to A7. the led is off and starts blinking when armed. but i'd like it to go solid lit when i takeoff. is this possible? and how?
the buzzer is strange: i got i buzzing everytime i changed a mode (level, arm, acro etc ...) and when arming and disarming. now it just sends 3 short beeps, repeating all the time.
is there some good manual/tech repo to read? posting on multiwii.com is totally useless. even though the devs write there, noone seems interested in helping you out with basic questions. and rcgroups.com is so confusing with MEGAthreads that you will never find info needed.

  /**************************************************************************************/
  /********                      override default pin assignments    ********************/
  /**************************************************************************************/

  /* only enable any of this if you must change the default pin assignment, e.g. your board does not have a specific pin */
  /* you may need to change PINx and PORTx plus #shift according to the desired pin! */
  //#define OVERRIDE_V_BATPIN                   A1 // instead of A3    // Analog PIN 3

  //#define OVERRIDE_PSENSORPIN                 A1 // instead of A2    // Analog PIN 2

  //#define OVERRIDE_LEDPIN_PINMODE             pinMode (A1, OUTPUT); // use A1 instead of d13
  //#define OVERRIDE_LEDPIN_TOGGLE              PINC |= 1<<1; // PINB |= 1<<5;     //switch LEDPIN state (digital PIN 13)
  //#define OVERRIDE_LEDPIN_OFF                 PORTC &= ~(1<<1); // PORTB &= ~(1<<5);
  //#define OVERRIDE_LEDPIN_ON                  PORTC |= 1<<1;    // was PORTB |= (1<<5);

  //#define BUZZERPIN_PINMODE DDRH |= (1<<5) ;
  
  //#define OVERRIDE_BUZZERPIN_PINMODE          pinMode (A5, OUTPUT); // use A7 instead of d8
  //#define OVERRIDE_BUZZERPIN_ON               PORTF |= 1<<5 //PORTB |= 1;
  //#define OVERRIDE_BUZZERPIN_OFF              PORTF &= ~(1<<5); //PORTB &= ~1;

/******************************** LED FLASHER ***********************************/
#define LED_FLASHER
#define LED_FLASHER_DDR DDRH
#define LED_FLASHER_PORT PORTH
#define LED_FLASHER_BIT PORTH4
//#define LED_FLASHER_INVERT
#define LED_FLASHER_SEQUENCE 0b00000000 // leds OFF
#define LED_FLASHER_SEQUENCE_ARMED 0b00000101 // full illumination
#define LED_FLASHER_SEQUENCE_MAX 0b11111111      // create double flashes
#define LED_FLASHER_SEQUENCE_LOW 0b01010101 // Fast blinking every .125 seconds

 

[nechaus]

You have more of an idea than me man, I did not get that far. I could not get the buzzer to work on that mwp board.. I probably gave up to soon... they made it incredibly easy on the naze32 so i just did it. Maybe post somewhere else on this forum? I know there are alot of experts with arduino on here..
Yeah multiwii.com is useless hey, you can only learn and get so much help from there. Nothing like ES.

 

[nechaus]

Well here is an average video , "resting camera on chair"
But i wanted to show you the difference, I no longer need to go with 4s and i doubt ill need 6 inch props on this thing for sometime.

its plenty powerful now. Just tapping the throttle really, Going to do some fpv with it @ the park.
My younger brother is coming over and ill try see if he will video it for me, Should be able to do some pretty awesome hi speed dives..
Ill be buying more of these motors I think, only thing that sucks about them is the shaft looks puny, about 2mm or less.

[youtube]jO2e2N-F-hc[/youtube]

 

[izeman]

@nechaus: you could maybe try out this little software: http://appadvice.com/review/hiddengem-crop-on-the-fly

 

[izeman]

so my copter is working quite nicely. i'm still waiting for a BC639 to switch the leds with my remote and dependent on arm/not armed status. the beeper is working nicely as well and is a real nice addition. it tells me that the copter has received changing flight mode from the remote, and beeps when acc calib is done. double-beeps if there is no remote signal (failsafe). i can also enable a constant beep-beep-beep ... in case the copter is lost and i go search it.

the green leds on the front arm, and red on back make it flyable in the dawn and even at light.

 

[nechaus]

I really like it, looks clean as!

you just need to put some FPV gear on it now 8)

 

[nechaus]

another video of my mini quad...
Just in the backyard.. Going to mow the lawn this weekend, its so overgrown.


[youtube]MQrNLt6PvK4[/youtube]

 

[nechaus]

it feels faster than it looks on the video btw, after about the first 2 or 3 meters after hitting full throttle you can really see it pick up...
a few seconds and its so hi in the sky you have to be careful, this is why im only really hitting full throttle for a second or two because by the end of the 2nd second, its already 50 + meters and the minis are hard to see....


I have the sonar hot glued onto the front, it works much better than a baro, but your limited to like a meter of altitude with this current sonar.
Not something ill ever use, but i had it laying around so thought id just add it on...and was so easy to put on it was crazy not to.

 

[nechaus]

Uploading another video right now,

I have lowered the P in pitch and roll, seems to have less vibrations now when i hit full throttle..

Just got my missus to record a video quickly, you might be able to notice it.

 

[nechaus]

[youtube]UomgiXuBKps[/youtube]