Hello Chris,
The lights are el-cheapo RGB LED's that you get from China on a metre roll.
I'm going to give the tethered Rate Roll and Pitch P Tuning a go shortly as per the video on the arducopter web site.
I can tether my quad between my pergola posts which should be a more than suitable location. The only thing I have to work out is how I can attach the tether to the quad in a reasonably central position in both the roll and pitch axis. By the look of the video, the tether is drawn very tightly, so I need to be able to tighten the tether without causing damage to the frames.
The battery calibration is finally working for me since buying the new Hobbyking PM's. The 2 dodgy PM's I have will be go in the spare parts drawer because I am going to get a micro version for the mini quad which is the new integrated power distribution board and PM version from Hobbyking. That should save me a few grams of weight.
It looks as though the mini quad fully loaded with a tilt gimbal FPV camera, miniAPM, GPS, telemetry and all other mandatory hardware is going to be a little bit on the heavy side. I am already up to 470 grams and still haven't added the minimOSD, telemetry radio (couldn't get the bluetooth module working, bugger) and 5 volt BEC for the tilt gimbal servo. I have my new nano-tech 1500mAh battery, which is only 45 grams in weight less than the Zippy flightmax 2200mAh battery. I reckon by the time everything is loaded the mini quad will be just over 600 grams. I should still get a better than 2:1 power to weight ratio, but not as good as I would have liked.
Cheers, Mark
Ah, I have a roll of that stuff laying from my camping lights I made. I have been thinking of doing the same but thought I dont need anymore power drain on my little batteries :-) They draw bugger all though, let us know how helpful they are during daylight, if I was night flying then I'd definitely see the point.
I think I'll have to do the tethered method to for the tricopter, it just hasnt got it right yet. I'll give it one more go and then I will do the tricopter tethering method
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhJsXTu46y8. I love how Google and YouTube makes problem solving so much easier :-)
I was surprised how well the tricopter handled the strong winds compared to the quad, it either just tilted a little bit and held it's position much better. I would say that it stayed within 2mx2m box when loitering. Cant wait to switch this over to the pixhawk and run two GPS's. I'd also like to invest in the Ublox M8N GPS which is even better, they say that instead of the 1.6m resolution you can get it down to 0.9m, I'd say the tri will hold position in a 1m x 1m box then :-)
I also noticed a slight drift when a very stong gust hit it, one that would have had the mini quad almost tumbling. I was hesitant to put the tri up in the strong winds.
Another thing I noticed is that the tri is fast, I barely had to tilt the tri forwards and I was jumping to 20-30km/h in about half the time the quad takes. It made doing banking turns so hard because I'd push forwards like I do on the quad and it would accelerate so fast. I try to keep the tri under 40km/h as I had it fall out of the sky at around 50km/h and I'm worried it will happen again (before that getting up to 60km/h was normal, with my fastest speed ever recorded at 85km/h).
It also holds the speed, so if you build up a 20km/h speed and then level off it will take twice as long to slow down as the mini quad. Odd that my tri is so much more nimble.
Bad news is that my hover % is now 55%, so the extra weight is noticeable. Its around what I was expecting so not surprised, it was able to climb fast when I needed it. I only put it up 15m today as I could see low level cloud hauling ass and I didn't want to have a fly away. I will have to look up what the wind speed was here today.
Chris
