Remote controlled flying things-Quads, Hex, Octo or anything

[Crisp Image]

G'day Crispy,

With all the bells and whistles, my all up weight for my Alien 560 is 2264 grams with a 4000MAh 4S battery.I'll be getting some 12 inch props for my Emax motors, but haven't flown it yet on the 11 inch props.

With thrust figures like you have quoted, your Alien will be balistic.

Cheers, Marschy

Which EMAX motors did you end up with?

[Marschy]

MT3506 650kv. They are a clone on the tiger motor. Didn't get to go flying this weekend. Too windy yesterday, and it is my wedding anniversary today.

50% throttle for hover is what is recommended by arducopter

[Mandrake]

Finally finished all calibrations , added the Radiolink R10D and all switches and sticks are working as they should ... I have to put it all back together and then maybe when the wind drops below howling I'll nip up the park and send her up .... the sensor for the OSD in the Radiolink only shows the two voltages at receiver and main battery - GPS , and Altitude need another sensor apparently .
 I do have them on the FPV so not a total loss --

[CBRK]

You guys are making me feel better, I'm not the only one getting no flying in this weekend :-)

When not being my areas duty officer I have had time to knock together a thrust measuring device too :-)

Due to where I drilled the hole for rotation I think I'll be within a few percent of the real figures so overall pretty happy with it.  All for under $4 I have to say I'm happy (of course this is using my wife's kitchen scales  )

My pics:







Note that I'm still working on a motor mount so I cable tied on a spare frame I had to hold the motors (in hindsight I should have used the spare arm I have off a QAV250 instead of the pinwheel thing I've put on....)  I think I just worked out my motor mount :-)

I was getting around 335g of thrust out of these little multistar elites.  Stupidly I forgot to put the current meter in the equation, only thought of it after I packed up......  I will do the test again on Monday as my daughter hates the noise of the little motors spun up.  But if my current meter on the APM is to be believed then it should be around 30A / 4 so around 7.5A.  Not too with 5x3 props.

Will test my DT750's (with 10x4.5) on Monday.

Hoping that this weeks rain is more afternoon rain rather than this set in rain.....  Making me wish I had ordered the CorrosionX so I could fly in light rain.

Chris

[CBRK]

Thanks Artie for your advice.
I have a DJI 450 flamewheel and NAZA which is easy to fly and has a gimbal on it for the gopro so gets nice video.
I am playing with an APM at ATM which is much different to the NAZA. All good fun.
So todays fun had been stopped by the wind so no flying today. I have spent the best part of the morning on the www using ecalc (even paid for it) and have come up with some motors worth considering for the folding Alien 560 from HK.
So here is what I have found. All prices are in USD. all thrust levels with 12inch prop
Sunnysky 3508 700kv 1680g $39
Sunnysky 2814 700kv 1980g $37
FoxtechFPV 3508 700kv 1680 $45
T-motors 3508 700kv 1360 $70
T-motors 2814 700kv 1460 $66
T-motors 2814 770kv 1600 $66

Now when using Ecalc I am aiming for about 50% throttle for hover. Does that sound the right thing to do?
I need to start a shopping list.

Anyway what motors are you using on your alien560 and has any one actually flown it yet?

Head sore now from research. Must rest
Regards
Crispy

Hi Crispy,

The 50% figure is what most aim for, it depends on what your trying to build.  If it's a slow AP platform or a fun thing to flick around?, or is it an endurance machine which carries little payload.

50% is a good happy middle, if you want something that will rocket about then having a higher power to weight ration will give you the ability to arrest falls quicker and will generally be a more nimble beast.  My tricopter is around 40% with no payload and it rockets along, in fact I rarely take it above 75% throttle with no payload, now I will load it up with a camera and it quickly moves to 50-55% and it is a bit more sedate and I use the full range if I have a quick drop.

I wouldn't take it anything higher than 60% otherwise you will find it hard to arrest a fast decent.  All of that is on the basis that the CoG is right in the middle of the frame, if not then it changes again.

I don't own a Alien 560 the others can advise what they have found.

I'll assume you are after a more sedate machine as you are using the 12 inch props and going for lifting power.  Out of what you have there I'd go for the Sunnysky 2814's they look like they provide a descent amount of thrust for a reasonable cost, but I'd consider something a little less gutsy to be honest and it will keep the costs reasonable too.  If you have spare cash put it into a good gimbal mount they make a huge difference oh and have spares.

With the sunnysky motor you'll have 1.9kg x 4 = 7.6kg of thrust, even if you have a 3kg bird with payload you are still way ahead.

Chris

[Crisp Image]

Well I did have a little fly this afternoon and crashed (like normal) it is lucky I have very spongy couch grass.
But when I crashed I broke a boom. So I thought I should make a new frame.
So off to the shed I went in search of suitable materials.
I had a look around and found what I was after. Now for the design. I kept it a X quad but made it a little differently.







So after some time out in the shed and then time in the cool of the evening I managed to do this.





Recalibrated the compass and checked all the motors and then put it up for a short fly to see how it goes.
I really need to get to the field as I am a bit nervous flying there. It still drifts a bit in stabilize but not to bad.
I need to get some new props for the DJI motors on it as the are a bit battle scared.
Anyway happy days again. Night shift tomorrow night so if the weather is kind tomorrow I will have a fly at the soccer fields near by.
BTW AUW is 1360 but is 50cm between motors diagonally so is quite big. 7mm ply for the top plate and 4mm for the bottom and arm supports are 10x19m pine.

Regards
Crispy

[Marschy]

Your building skills put mine to shame Crispy. I can't put a bought frame together as quickly as you can knocking up one from scratch. It took me the better part of a full day to just install 4 ESC's and motors on the ZMR250 frame.

There is actually a lot of work involved getting to this stage. Including trimming nylon spacers to 7mm and 10mm to fit the ESC's between the bottom plates, unsoldering the capacitors on two of the ESC's and moving them 90 degrees so they can fit within the space available. The motors are soldered directly to the ESC's so if I got the motor rotation wrong, it's not as simple as unplugging the bullet connector and swapping over 2 wires. Trial fitting the plate that covers the ESC's shows where you need to reroute wiring, so there is a lot of trial and error with how everything is routed.

That's the hard part done, now I can move onto mounting the flight controller.

[Marschy]

Note that I'm still working on a motor mount so I cable tied on a spare frame I had to hold the motors (in hindsight I should have used the spare arm I have off a QAV250 instead of the pinwheel thing I've put on....)  I think I just worked out my motor mount :-)

Hey Chris,

Here is my motor mount for my thrust tester. I'm using the aluminium motor mounts that come with most 1000kv class motors. The hole drilled right through the thrust meter frame allows the centre of the motor motor to be aligned within a millimetre or two to get reasonably consistent results. It just slides off once the nuts are loosened, then I poke the drill bit through to align the mount.

Cheers, Mark

[Mandrake]

Its amazing what you find out in a real time flight test ...
1 - Throttle up and FPV and OSD stopped working - small battery for FPV / OSD circuit ??
2 - Motors are not balanced front 2 are more powerful and Alien lifted up and flew straight backwards at me ...
3 - Tried to adjust that with trim buttons -- got it sort of sorted but still not happy - I can't fly manual so unable to balance it with sticks ..
BUT and this is a HUGE BUT .. by altering trim you cannot disarm or arm the motors !! The throttle has to be zero or negative , any change from -100% on the other 3 A E and R creates
this arm and disarm problem.. Is this specific to Naza FCs ??

Anyway not a total disaster and nothing broken ( just my pride ) as I only got about a foot off the deck ...

Back to the tether board to try and balance these motors -- Any suggestions guys without using Trim ? The ESC seems to have done the throttle max and min OK ..
Could it be because the rear motors are on longer cables ? Maybe I need to centre the ESC 4in1 ??

Cheers

Steve

[Crisp Image]

Sounds like a cog problem. In the Naza assistant are all the stick values entered when your sticks are? If not the sub in the radio might be the go. You may have to recheck the stick calibration in the assistant before committing to flight.
Regards
Crispy


Sent using fat fingers on the iPad thingy

[Mandrake]

Didnt think about COG ... Battery is at the back and haven't put the video camera and gimbal on yet ( which will balance the battery .) - Thanks I'll give that a try ...

What do you think about the FPV disconnecting ?

[Crisp Image]

What do you think about the FPV disconnecting ?

Not sure there. Where does the power come from? direct from the battery connection? BEC? or what. Sounds like a massive voltage drop. Maybe you could use some 6 B&S to stop that
Crispy

[CBRK]

Didnt think about COG ... Battery is at the back and haven't put the video camera and gimbal on yet ( which will balance the battery .) - Thanks I'll give that a try ...

What do you think about the FPV disconnecting ?

Hi Mandrake,

I'd agree about it being CoG, have you done any CoG testing?.  Dont forget that you need to look at forward and backwards as well as left to right, balance and weight is very important.

On the FPV disconnecting can you reproduce on a bench test at home?  Don't suppose you can see the voltage as you power up.  If I remember correctly your using 4s?  If so can you do the same check but on the output of the BEC.

Chris

[CBRK]

I didnt get to fly today due to high winds, I just wasn't willing to put the mini Quad up for it's maiden flight with the mini APM since it was quite gusty.  So I had some spare time on my hands, I now have both my IXUS 115HS and A550 able to be controlled by the Tricopter's APM board.

Basically had to do up a custom mini USB cable, it has a USB Mini B connector at one end and a servo connection at the other end.  I connected the + and - wires up to Signal and GND.  I then configured it through Mission Planner to use A9 (RC9) as a camera shutter trigger, I also assigned ch7 as my shutter button, I also set the trigger type as a parameter to relay (not sure why servo option doesnt work), on the cameras I set them to allow for remote operations.

I can set a script that either takes a single shot as I pull CH 7 high or I can get it to initiate a script that takes a photo every X seconds and then stop when I pull it low again.

Now to build a mount to hold the camera so it can point to the ground.  The idea is to take detailed images with it pointing straight to the ground, these can then be stitched together and overlay them on the ground contours to give you a aerial map of an area.

I'll mount these in the long term on a flying wing but till then I'll have fun with them on the tricopter.  Tomorrow I plan to maiden the mini Quad with mini APM, then work on my mount for the 2D gimbal I have.

Chris

[CBRK]

Worked out my issue when changing models / receivers and having to rebind each time, it turns out one of my receivers is dsmx and the other is using dsm2.  So when i power up it is still sending out as the type I last did a bind on.  I just need to hit the bind button three times quickly on start up and it switches from one mode to the other.

This indicates my R615X is using DSM2 mode for some reason, it should be using DSMX....

Marschy you might encounter this issue with the mini quad, if you are using the R615X and the R800X like I am.  I'm planning on switching over to lemonrx's as they have some better CPPM options and are pretty well priced, even for shipping to Aus.

Chris

[Marschy]

Playing around with the mini APM as we speak. I've got CPPM working. Just cant calibrate the ESC's, but I'll work it out

[Marschy]

Worked out ESC calibration. It just takes a lot longer time with this release of the firmware.

Here is the way I do it.

Power everything off.
Reset all switches on radio.
Power on radio and wait for beep and tx module to start flashing.
Move throttle to full up position.
Connect battery to quad.
Wait for calibration tone from ESC's (taking upto 20 seconds after connecting the power)
Move throttle to full down position.
Wait for tone from ESC to indicate calibration is complete.
Test throttle response.

[Marschy]

Watch this video. This guy has just converted his Alien 560 into an Octoquad. It's ballistic.

http://youtu.be/6oBhGEmpR2o
	Small | Large

[CBRK]

Worked out ESC calibration. It just takes a lot longer time with this release of the firmware.

Here is the way I do it.

Power everything off.
Reset all switches on radio.
Power on radio and wait for beep and tx module to start flashing.
Move throttle to full up position.
Connect battery to quad.
Wait for calibration tone from ESC's (taking upto 20 seconds after connecting the power)
Move throttle to full down position.
Wait for tone from ESC to indicate calibration is complete.
Test throttle response.

Mine took some additional time too (you are using the blue esc's on it too?), wish I'd seen the post earlier I would have mentioned it.

[CBRK]

Watch this video. This guy has just converted his Alien 560 into an Octoquad. It's ballistic.

http://youtu.be/6oBhGEmpR2o

Very nice, a bonus of doing the X8 thing is the redundancy if you loose a motor your still good to fly, as long as the AUW isnt too much.

You need to use bigger batteries though with all the additional drain and weight.

Chris

[Marschy]

I've got the miniAPM working and calibrated. I have to get another Hobbyking pan-tilt servo gimbal as I used the bearings for my thrust meter. I'm waiting for a minimOSD to arrive and I have to order a telemetry air module, I don't need yet another ground module. I want to get one of these dual antenna mounts, but they have been on back order for a couple of months now. I might make something myself.



Haven't worked out the final position for the GPS yet. I need to purchase my flight batteries so I can work out where to put it.

[Mandrake]

Love the Octo-Alien ... Hmmmm thinking --- Nah just kidding ...

Contrary to what I said yesterday the FPV / OSD cam did function correctly - Stupid me was looking at the wrong video ... Also the GPS co-ords were spot on - I checked the position on Google Earth and it zoomed in to within about 5 metres of where I reckon I was standing - So pretty happy with that ....

I have moved the battery holder to a more central spot and seems to balance COG-wise - So off to the playground when the wind stops ... maybe after the rain too .. next week maybe ...

I just got word of a new parcel - This is some 5mm Tycab copper cable ( automotive use ) 10m of black and 10m of red for $30 -
http://www.rapidcables.com.au/auto-cable/
Thought I would check out the local product and see if its usable in quads ...
Steve

[Marschy]

I have moved the battery holder to a more central spot and seems to balance COG-wise

Did you see the scraps of MDF I use for working out the CG for my X-mode Alien Steve? I'm going to make something similar to use with the Alien560. It should take a bit of the guess work out of the equation by using a jig of some sort. I'm going to align the jig with the centre of the flight control board location which is on the CoG point on the frame anyway.

[CBRK]

I've got the miniAPM working and calibrated. I have to get another Hobbyking pan-tilt servo gimbal as I used the bearings for my thrust meter. I'm waiting for a minimOSD to arrive and I have to order a telemetry air module, I don't need yet another ground module. I want to get one of these dual antenna mounts, but they have been on back order for a couple of months now. I might make something myself.



Haven't worked out the final position for the GPS yet. I need to purchase my flight batteries so I can work out where to put it.

Looking good there Marschy, the building is almost as much fun as the flying  .  I'm using the stock short antennas on my R615X, no need for the fancy V antenna mount :-)  I've done a range test and at 40m it was still working so I figure my CF plates (which are most likely GF largely) dont seem to be interfering much.

I got my maiden flight in for the mini Quad with the mini APM, after returning from SES.  There was very little wind and had a good 25-30 mins of flying today went through 4 batteries, so I'm pretty happy.  Seems I get around 9 mins of flight time with the calibrated power module.  Batteries were all at 10.9V at time of landing, so I'm happy :-)

I did one battery almost entirely on ALT HOLD mode, i think the issues I had with the other APM board was to do with Z vibrations, this mini APM didnt drift at all on the alt, so I'm happy with it.  It uses approx 14 amps to hover at approx 40-45% throttle.

Banking turns went well, I have it dialed right down on the sensitivity so it's a calm and placid thing.  I'm happy I did but I think I'll increase the yaw response rate a bit.  It prefers turns to be nice and consistent, I did a couple of snap turns and it did wavier a bit and drop a bit of alt during those.

Still yet to review the video footage or telemetry data.  I will spend some time today or tomorrow to do up some vids and post on my channel.  I have so much video to go through.......  I kind of keep putting it off, but I'll need some disk space soon at this rate :-)

Will be ordering my lemon rx's later today, will see how good they are.

Chris

[Marschy]

Have you got any photos of your new carbon frame mini quad Chris?

I found a supplier on Aliexpress for the flange bearings used in the tilt-pan servo gimbal. They are 3x6x2.5 size and available from Hobbyking for $6.14 for 4, but I can them from Aliexpress in greater quantities and for less (10 for $4.00 US). They don't have to be top quality for the job they will be doing because they won't be spinning at 10000 rpm or anything stupid like that.