Jcb's Quad copter Project,

So, Going out in an hour or so, so no huge write up!

I've been building this since halloween time going through multiple frames and multiple electronics!

so I present you my unfinished quad,
Attachment 8442
But I can do better then, so I did.
I haven't finished it yet, but here are some prototype arms I've been making:

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but these are a bit short now I've seen them in real life and too heavy at about 45gs

so I'm starting longer but lighter ones
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they should weigh about 30g and are 30mm longer but harder to make. hopefully they wont be too weak, I look forward to destroying a few!

That is a lovely truss, if you are still having problems with weight there are some nice frame designs 'floating around' made from fr4 fibreglass.

Quadcopter frame design (fiberglass).

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im just finishing off my quad. yours is looking really nice so far. I took a simpler approach to my frame and it seems to fly really nicely. Got to make a decent battery mount and a couple other bits then ill post some more photos.

Is there a reason you went with a 'truss' style arms instead of flat ones similar to mine?

I just thought it would be really cool to have a truss style frame, they aren't too heavy for the quad but it's more of a competition with myself to get it as light as possible!

I was planning on using the same arms for a hexacopter or larger and have some thing super stable that won't flex in any direction.

Are your arms 5mm thick aluminium? How much do they weigh? What kV are your motors and the prop size you are running on them? Flight board?

I'm very much a noob at anything rc wise. The last rc vehicle I had was made from Lego.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jcb121

I just thought it would be really cool to have a truss style frame, they aren't too heavy for the quad but it's more of a competition with myself to get it as light as possible!

I was planning on using the same arms for a hexacopter or larger and have some thing super stable that won't flex in any direction.

Are your arms 5mm thick aluminium? How much do they weigh? What kV are your motors and the prop size you are running on them? Flight board?

I'm very much a noon at anything rc wise. The last rc vehicle I had was made from Lego.

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Ever thought of using trex 450 booms, they're very light and very cheap :)

I'd rather make it myself,

the motors are hacker Style Brushless Outrunner 20-50S
i use 8045 props.
and use a multiwii lite CRIUS MultiWii Lite Edition Flight Controller v1.0 for mini Quadcopter $16.72 Free Shipping @GoodLuckBuy.com

i think the arms are 6mm but i cant remember how heavy they were, i think its close to 500g flying weight. To be fair i could save alot of weight on the arms and the center plate but wasnt sure on the stiffness of the design and may swap the ali center plate for a glassfiber one. it flys pretty well and hovers at less than half throttle which is pleasing. just need to learn to fly the thing better now haha.

I also have a hexacopter which is one of these Flyduspider Hexacopter Frame Set which is really nice but a bit scary to fly and expensive in props if it all goes wrong.

something id suggest is not to use connectors between your motors and esc's as ive had one work loose before which isn't good mid flight. I think other people have had this issue before also.

Cool, I've got a a set of 1200k and 2200kv motors.

The 2200kv motors can apprently draw 342w so I bought some buff ESCs but they're kinda redundant now and just heavy as they have a proper heat sink on them.

I'm using a kk 5.5 blackboard with kaptain kuk 4.7 firmware and I have an issue with it. when I increase the throttle, one of the motors will spin up and then stop again. I think it might be something to do with the frequency of the chip not playing well with the esc chip :S

what size battery do you have and what sort of run time do you get? I was a bit horrified when I looked at ecalc and it said I would have 5 minutes of flight!

from what ive read it seems the lower the kv the better? i used to use a kk board but i found the multiwii boards iare far more stable, especially when in stable mode (would you believe!). plus you get a nice gui to program them with which is nice :joyous:

i have heard of issues with the esc update speed being too slow and making it to slow to react to small changes but not of your problem sorry. maybe your gyros need reversing or something? i do remember messing about with my kk board for quite a while before i got it to work right.

my hex has a 4000ma 40c battery and it seems to last about half hour not sure about my quad ive only flown it briefly before the wind got the better of me. when i get home tomorrow ill get some photos of stuff for you.

I designed a flight controller for this very purpose, just not finished building the quad yet :)
Attachment 8453

Got the boards, just waiting for parts so I can test, its 10DOF and is GPS ready :) Its 5cm x 5cm.

That looks very nice! will you be basing your firmware on the code already available?
I was thinking about making a flightboard, if you board works with gimbals and such then I might be interested :)

i just took the wrapping off my ESCs and they have pads for programming it! win! gunna put Simonk Firmware on them :)

So flashing went successfully, they're much better with the new firmware and the throttle works properly.

I kinda almost finished my new arm,

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but as you can tell it's unfinished,
I had a little problem with it in the CNC. a structural issue that I'll learn from on the next model!
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Each side takes me about 5-6 minutes to do, but changing the tools and re-finding zero can take ages. I need to develop a manufacturing process :) and what order I do operations in.

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Originally Posted by jcb121

Each side takes me about 5-6 minutes to do, but changing the tools and re-finding zero can take ages. I need to develop a manufacturing process :) and what order I do operations in.

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It would be easy to make with a rotary tale and tailstock, but not really worth getting one for just these parts. Have you done any analysis to see if they're strong enough?

I can stand on it without it deforming and I weight 90kgs, I think they'll be strong enough :)

and I was thinking this would be easier with a 4th axis.

first class analysis me thinks :thumsup:

Wowo awesome mate .. you thinking about selling the frames when you have a fully working flyer , my Dads been looking for a project like yours to put together..?

+1 for a bad case of quadcopter infection! lol. No time to build one so bought RTF came today and now it rains for 4 days! grrrreat!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jcb121

That looks very nice! will you be basing your firmware on the code already available?
I was thinking about making a flightboard, if you board works with gimbals and such then I might be interested :)

i just took the wrapping off my ESCs and they have pads for programming it! win! gunna put Simonk Firmware on them :)

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It was desined around the Multiwii 2 code and has extra pins broken out for gimbal usage etc :) I'll dig one out and take a photo for you :)

Arms are looking good now, I'm not patient enough to make them, I bend too many :D

Attachment 8479

Knew I had a pic somewhere :)

I just bought a multiwii board on ebay

MultiWii Flight Control Board With Camera Gimbal Control | eBay

so one of you PROs are going to have to help me with it!

I'm looking forward to making the gimbal

So I'm 3/4 of the way there!
Also how the board sits in the frame.

wow dude thats looking awesome :)

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/03/22/numunyvy.jpg
Just a few more bits and bobs to do, then I have to wait for this rain to go away :(

Ergh. It is finally done-ish.

I'm missing a few nuts and bolts but the frame is done! The weight in the photo is 900g and that's with a big 5000mah battery so I've done pretty well.

I'm curious about the different colour of the props..... Do they have practical significance such as Port and Starboard?

front and back :)

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Originally Posted by WandrinAndy

I'm curious about the different colour of the props..... Do they have practical significance such as Port and Starboard?

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normally its so you know which end is the front

I've just stolen my step-dads camera so time for some better photos!

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I just need some cable ties for the ESCs and hopefully it'll fly!

total weight is just over a kilo.

Looks ace J, had to chuckle as i took delivery of two thousand of these today, bet they would be just right for this and i would have gladly popped down and given you 100 just to see it fly, live in wigan though so guess i'll have to wait for your first flight vids.

Subscribed.
.Me

you can drive down if you want mate! :P

I wish I knew if it would fly or not.

full throttle means the props will spin at 13k rpm.

I've no idea if that x4 will generate enough lift. exciting times :)

Quadtastic J, can't wait to see your hard work in flight. makes me want to get the old super60 out now

Well it flew, shortly. It was yawing like crazy but I managed to get it down safely.

i tried it again to identify the stick that needs reversing but I wasn't so lucky this time. I think one of the props hit something and it fell something like 15-20 feet out of the air.

only problem is one of the wires to the motor has been pulled and a single strand of copper has come off the stator.

so it crashes well!


unfortunately there are no pics as my step-dad is a muppet with a camera.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jcb121

Well it flew, shortly. It was yawing like crazy but I managed to get it down safely.

i tried it again to identify the stick that needs reversing but I wasn't so lucky this time. I think one of the props hit something and it fell something like 15-20 feet out of the air.

only problem is one of the wires to the motor has been pulled and a single strand of copper has come off the stator.

so it crashes well!


unfortunately there are no pics as my step-dad is a muppet with a camera.

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damn I mourn your loss .. but yeahhh it flys :) hell its what makes such a great project fun .. lol

It's looking super now that I've cable tied it all up!

I feel a bit silly just buying one thing at a time from a web shop. But it has to be done. Last time it was and RX and this time it's a motor.

If its yawing badly double check the the rotation direction of the motors. Sounds like you have 1 going the wrong way. Dont reverse the sticks just yet. I had it when i built my hex....but then it got attacked by pigeons!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jcb121

Well it flew, shortly. It was yawing like crazy but I managed to get it down safely.

unfortunately there are no pics as my step-dad is a muppet with a camera.

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Nice work, as good as the Wright brothers managed!
If you need a light weight camera for it I can recomend the 808 cams from eletoponline365 on ebay

HD Camera, Capacitors items in eletoponline365 store on eBay!

Those guys are the factory shop apparently so they actually make what they are selling, there are some knock offs floating around other sellers on ebay. There is a load of info the cams on Chuck Lohr's site and several uber threads over at rcgroups.com

808 Car Keys Micro Camera Review - Version #16

Quote:

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Originally Posted by D.C.

Nice work, as good as the Wright brothers managed!
If you need a light weight camera for it I can recomend the 808 cams from eletoponline365 on ebay

HD Camera, Capacitors items in eletoponline365 store on eBay!

Those guys are the factory shop apparently so they actually make what they are selling, there are some knock offs floating around other sellers on ebay. There is a load of info the cams on Chuck Lohr's site and several uber threads over at rcgroups.com

808 Car Keys Micro Camera Review - Version #16

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Thanks for the heads up on that! I just bought one with the D lense. I also bought a 500mw transmitter so now I have a few weeks to get good at flying!

I also bought 3 spare motors and I should probably buy a few more props to destroy.

I'm using the 4.7 firmware from here and the motors were setup in the correct config. :S

Did you find out what caused the Yaw?? I suspect it was just a balance thing..

Rick

no idea, I might just try flipping the yaw gryo and see if that helps.

it really was a spinning death trap when it took off!

could anyone on here help me with my multi-wii board? I've never used anything like it before and don't want to mess it up. documentation on my exact board isn't exactly easy to find either :(

I dont have the multiwii, i have the APM2 but the yawing sounds like you have a motor reversed. Have you checked them?