DJI 450 Y3 Tricopter?

In a moment of weakness I announced that I would be building a quadcopter for the winter. But then I found this! Clearly it works, and clearly it is cooooool  8) I have the KK2, the frame is only $31 and I have most everything else...

BUT, this time the yaw will be on a bearing, the servo will be small, the servo will be digital, the servo will NOT move with the tail.....

Flying starts at 1:08

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCalKzjxLOY&hd=1

If I was going to make a tricopter that is almost the way I would do it.  What I would do differently would be to make the front arms angle wider similar to the TBS Discovery so it would be better suited for FPV.  As it is in the video the arms maintain the angle of the DJI F450 so in forward looking FPV the arms and propellers will be a problem.

I was kinda thinking the same thing, and have started to think about some sort of traditional helicopter skids and a belly mount camera so not only do you not see the props, but can use a servo to look straight down. I also want to go back to a FPV camera for flying and a GoPro for HD, the lens makes it hard to fly close to something.

I think for FPV you really want to look forward.  Looking down and/or to the side can be useful, but the primary function is to see obstructions and if you want to fly through the house like Juz you also want to be able to judge the spacing of obstacles.  I think the arms and propeller "shutter effect" will be detrimental to the already grainy FPV camera.  This is of course not a issue with the slightly angled HD camera.

Maybe you should get a TBS Discovery frame and do the tricopter mod to it instead of the DJI F450 frame.

The TBS Disco is cool, but two things. One, we have evidence that the regular frame does work (flight), so I am utilizing engineering at someone elses expense (mostly thier time to do this and make a video). And two, cost, I hear the regular frame is $31 where the TBS is like $75 plus Intl shipping?

So where do we get the regular frames for $31.00? And is the Hobbywing ESC still the one? or have we moved on to something else? Same motors still? Where do the double female cables come from (rx to kk2)?

GPS if I happen to see you sometime this week I would like to borrow that broken arm you have to work on a yaw system.

Tiger, is that frame FR4? How do you drill it? HSS ok? or interpolate with carbide EM? Be nice if I could just drill it on the Bridgeport.

I would get a genuine DJI frame for $32 here:

http://www.uavproducts.com/product.php?id_product=25

Or here if you want to buy from a Oregon shop:

http://www.rcdude.com/servlet/the-2398/DJI-Flame-Wheel-F450/Detail


You can have the arm when I see you next.

The DJI frame is FR4 and you can't use HS drills.  You need to use carbide and turn them as fast as you possibly can.  Best to use real circuit board drills which are ground special for the application.  You'll want to use the special DJI screws so just buy a drill (or two).  I can measure the screws if you want.  Lots of places to buy the drills.  I prefer http://www.thinktink.com/    I need to buy some also so maybe we can go together on those and save a little freight.

...Tiger

Frame is ordered, sort of. Spent 15 minutes slogging through yet another "sign up for a useless account if you want to send us money" process over at UAV Products. But got PHP errors when trying to send them money. So hopefully customer service can work it out in the morning.

I have't used their web store since they switched to Prestashop.  I think it looks a lot better than their previous shopping cart system.  Looking for things also seems a lot better with this layout.  Were the problems at checkout?

If you haven't received any email confirmations I would call them to follow up.

Been in contact this morning with them through email. There were PHP scripting errors during checkout, something wrong with thier SQL server database or something?

This is a bit off topic but our Oregon based shop has moved. 
Check out the bottom of their home page.

http://www.rcdude.com/servlet/StoreFront

That's a bummer.  I've purchased from RCDude.  I wonder why you would move from Oregon to Nevada?

Here is the same tricopter but with the new V1.4 firmware, it spins like it is mounted on a bearing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du7O2Z4gfs8&hd=1

That's is pretty cool.
I wish the NAZA-H 1.04 firmware update did that for the helis.

I don't know. Nevada must be pretty friendly to hobby dealers, there are a good number of them there.
I've used them before too and just recently actually.