Quadcopter

Anybody flying any quadcopters with cameras or FPV?

I'm going to start building a tricopter soon I hope my next venture.

I saw a guy on ArcHeli who made a nice tri-copter.  I think the tail has to move with a servo like a regular helicopter's tail pitch somehow doesn't it?

yes the two forward 120 degree arms have solid motor mounts, while the back one will turn for side to side.

I'd like to see some pictures when your build your tricopter.  Maybe a parts list?  What material do you intend to use for the arms?

Here's a link, This guy has the basic set up that i will be doing, I'll probably throw in a few mods along the way. enjoy
http://www.rcexplorer.se/projects/TriV2/TriV2.html
and yea I will show some pics as I build.

Flightbox - I noticed in your link that the guy had built the KK board.  Just wanted to make sure you were aware that HobbyKing has a clone of that board available for $29.  That's much cheaper than what your guy did.  I'm flying the HK board in mine and it's fine (for a 3 DOF board).  I'm attaching a pic of my little quad (4-1/2" between motors).


09/20/11  Updated to larger picture.

Did you have this quad at the school this weekend?

No I didn't.  The only one there Sunday was the little Walkera that Rick was flying.  He had just made a bunch of modifications to it and it was flying pretty well.  He's has a lot of trouble with breaking things on that.  It's really fragile and the parts are getting difficult to find.  Most quads are actually pretty tough.  When I bought my control boards from HobbyKing, I got one for Rick so he'll be building his own very soon.  BTW - Here is the link to that board.  I see they have dropped the price to $23.  Insane cheap!!!  http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=17537

...Tiger

P.S.  Is there a way to get a bigger picture onto these pages.  Maybe by linking to it rather than attaching it?  You sure can't see much detail in a 128K picture.

OK, that was Rick.  He was telling me that the quad started off as a different machine and he removed a bunch of parts.  It looked to me like it would be a ton of fun indoors, but a little light for outdoors.

I see that board in the link has potentiometers on it.  How well do you think they will hold up to the vibration?  Aren't many companies making gyros going to digital adjustments that won't be affected by vibration?

Rick originally had the older model of the quad and he has tried to modify it to be more like the later version.  Actually, both versions have been discontinued at this point, but you can still find bits and pieces.  As for the pots on the HK board, they were part of the original KK design so HobbyKing just duplicated what they had.  There is no issue with vibration.  Many of the newer controllers don't have pots because they are already being configured through a USB port.  The USB port becomes necessary as the boards become more complex.  I'd actually prefer they all had pots for gyro gain, because it's a lot more convenient to debug a new design.  It's not exactly handy to land, power down, and connect your laptop to make a minor adjustment.  I'm sure you can find someone that will tell you they are unreliable because they are mechanical, but reality is they are just fine if you use a halfway decent quality part.  Anyway... Older piezo gyros and mechanical adjustments are part of why this board is $23 and not hundreds of dollars like a HoverFly.    Don't get me wrong, the HK board does have it's limitations.  Still, it's a great way for someone to get their feet wet without breaking the bank.  It certainly wouldn't be my choice for a serious FPV application.  I'd use an OpenPilot or HoverFly board for something like that.


Do you happen to know the answer to the question I asked about the pictures?

If you click on the pictures in a post you will see the full size of what was uploaded, the system scales them for the default view.  I added pictures in this thread:
http://southernoregonrc.com/index.php?topic=90.0
The first few are 1024 x 768 (approximately) and the rest are 800 x 600, some are cropped, you have to click them to see the full size versions.  I used the open source program called "Gimp" on the original camera output files and I turned the quality down to 80% which gives the results you see in that thread.

Ok!  I updated the picture in my previous post to be 1024x768 with more compression.  I use Corel Photo to process my pics and I guess I never really had the need to lower the quality before.  Seems like I've always been happy with just making the picture a little smaller.  The 128K limit here seems small for this day and age.  Certainly not a problem for most things, but kinda small if you really want to show some quality or detail.  Seems like if the overall limit (4 pics) can be 192K then why not allow the 192K for a single pic?  Oh well!  I'm attaching another pic now that shows the HK controller board pretty well for anyone that might be interested in that.  Sure a lot of controller for the money ($23)!    ...Tiger

I know the upload limits are a little weird.  I am looking into increasing them.

The quad looks sweet.  Have you flown it yet?
I noticed that you are using three blade props.  There seems to be debate with plane guys about two or three blade props.  Why did you choose three blades?

I wanted three bladed props for the smaller size.  They are less efficient than a two blade, but I have more power than I know what to do with so that's not an issue.  It's really difficult to find counter rotating props in smaller sizes.  The props in the picture are from the ParkZone Mosquito (HorizonHobby.com).  They are about 4-1/4" which is actually bigger than I wanted.  Now I'm testing some 3-1/2" ones I found in Taiwan.  HobbyKing has some three and four inch counter rotating two blade props, but they are hopelessly out of balance.  One blade is 30% thicker than the other and it's impossible to balance them.  The Taiwan props are not great, but they are close enough to balance.  The Mosquito props are perfectly balanced right out of the bag.  They are excellent, but just a little bigger than I hoped to find.  The search continues for better props.  I may end up injection molding my own.  I will almost certainly do that if I don't find something better real soon. 

Yes - I've flown the little quad quite a bit and have had a lot of fun with it.  It's been an interesting challenge.  I'm going to build the next one with the OpenPilot board to see just how much better it really is.  I'm going to start that once I have the prop issue nailed down and everything on this airframe refined.

Did you cut your own frames?  They look like carbon fiber.

If one wanted to make a large size quad would the control electronics be the same as a small one?  Of course the ESCs and motors would need to be bigger, I mean the stabilization and so on.  For example: say one wanted to make one that could fly for >30 minutes and carry a DLSR size camera.

The size of the quad doesn't make any difference.  You just have to make controller adjustments on the board accordingly.  If you want to make one like you said, you'd probably want a more sophisticated board than the HK though.  It would probably be a challenge to make it fly 30 minutes.  I think fifteen or twenty would be pretty easy.  The more junk you hang on it, the more power it takes to keep it up there.  These things don't glide will you know. 

I was just looking at the SimpleMachines Wiki and it looks like you can set the upload file characteristics to anything you want.
http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Attachments_and_Avatars

You didn't mention if you cut the frames on your quad or if you purchased them.

I know how to increase the file attachments in SMF and I already had to do it once because we exceeded the defaults.  It's the hosting server that I am more worried about.  I have 86 domains, not all are active but some are a little resource intensive.

The frame in the picture is laser cut delrin.  It works fine, but it's not as stiff as I would like.  My next one will be CNC routed FR4 (pc board material).

Are the ads on these forum pages something you are doing or are they something that you just have to live with if you use the free software?

Why would you choose FR4 over carbon fiber?
If you were going to make a "Heavy Lift" quad what would you go with?  Do you think longer arms make the quad more or less stable?

I read up on the HoverFly board and the GPS board by the same company and they look really good.  The specs say more than four rotors but to do that must one daisy chain more than one board?

I think the nicest multi-rotor drone I have seen is the AscTec Falcon 8 http://www.asctec.de/asctec-falcon-2/.  It uses eight motors and the configuration is unique and very suitable for aerial video and photography because the arms holding the motors are in a pseudo 'V" configuration with the front wider so the camera does not "See" the rotating blades in it's field of vision.

 







I contacted that company last year but they do not seem to have a import license to the USA.

I am running some sponsored ads space on the site by choice.