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Thanks for the feedback. Maybe it is too complex.
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Jan 9, 2013 22:53
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ickna posted:auto-pilot via gps on an RC heli? you're looking at several hundred in gyros and micro controllers, and you will be writing some custom software because I've never heard of it outside of a fail-safe mode for fixed wing planes that leave RF range, and even then it won't land it for you, it'll just put it on a heading back towards where it last had signal. They certainly exist, but they're not cheap unless you go it alone (in which case, it's a significant investment of time, and still some cash). A quick google search just now pulled up a few commercial examples, all near $1000 USD. As a side node, DIY Drones has a summary of various autopilot (not just stabilisation solutions) at http://diydrones.com/profiles/blog/show?id=705844%3ABlogPost%3A19367
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Jan 10, 2013 00:11
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A quad solution for this would definitely be cheaper than a heli, but still not cheap.
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Jan 10, 2013 00:33
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I can't wait for the hong kong order from hobbyking with all of my batteries to arrive, I just did another order this morning for a battery from the US warehouse so I can get this plane in the air.
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Jan 11, 2013 00:58
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A couple questions: First (and I know that I've asked this before): What do people think of using prop savers with multicopters? Would any sweet flying maneuvers cause them to fall off? Can they introduce additional vibration from the propeller? Second: Is it preferable to bend a motor shaft or damage a bearing in a crash? Some of my motors have prop adapters that mount directly to the rotor case, and those seem to be more resistant to light crash damage, but the bearings will get hosed in an actual crash.
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Jan 11, 2013 22:29
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Prop savers are prone to failing at inopportune times. Most times when you bend a shaft it bends at the first bearing under the bell. It doesn't really matter how the prop is mounted.
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Jan 12, 2013 06:13
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helno posted:Prop savers are prone to failing at inopportune times. drat, I was afraid of this. helno posted:Most times when you bend a shaft it bends at the first bearing under the bell. It doesn't really matter how the prop is mounted. Eh, I gotta disagree. Any forces applied to the prop (or directly to the end of the motor shaft or prop adapter) will result in a far greater torque around the contact area between the shaft and bearing--looking at one of my current configurations, at least 5-10X as much, judging from the dimensions. I'm just not sure if there is some other issue I'm overlooking with this configuration, like possibly damaging the motor catastrophically or something.
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Jan 12, 2013 06:28
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So I've finished modifying my 9x transmitter for now. I've added: Smartieparts programmer + er9x firmware + blue backlight. TelemetryEZ board + FRsky module As well as the fancy inserts also sold by Smartieparts. Are there any other meaningful life improving mods I should do to it? Also my ArduFlyer (APM2.5 clone) board has arrived, I'll try to get some shots of my clone TBS discovery body assembly.
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Jan 13, 2013 12:32
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nogthree posted:Are there any other meaningful life improving mods I should do to it? Yeah, go fly. 
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Jan 13, 2013 15:02
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Just thought I'd share Markerplace's January 10 podcast. Discussed Drones with Chris Anderson of DIYDRONES. http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/drones-war-machine-today-helpful-tool-tomorrow Interesting... Though I don't see drones delivering pizza?
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Jan 13, 2013 20:46
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First EDF jet hand launch tonight after work, wish me luck so I don't nose a brand new plane straight in the ground. 
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Jan 15, 2013 13:45
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devmd01 posted:I can't wait for the hong kong order from hobbyking with all of my batteries to arrive, I just did another order this morning for a battery from the US warehouse so I can get this plane in the air. That's a great jet. Very easy to fly and kind of fast as long as you have a good battery in it. I flew mine stock for a while then got bored with that and spent several times the cost of the stupid thing on a HET 6404 fan, Don's Wicked 4000+ motor, Gens Ace 4S 2200 30C packs, and a Hobbywing 60A ESC to make it go faster. lovely video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMZgrS79LWc The airframe got pretty beat up from repeated landings on our rough grass field and is looking kind of ratty. I want to find a fiberlgass airframe to put the fan and stuff in but there isn't much available for 64mm fans out there, it's either 55mm crap from GP or 70mm from everyone else.
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Jan 18, 2013 16:56
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More progress on my Hquad. Got one of the arms completed. I need to buy some short motor mount screws or cut down some of the M3 hardware I already have. Motor leads are totally enclosed in the arms and are fitted with bushings to stop them chafing.  Motor mounts are riveted in place.  Everything was deburred first.  
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Jan 20, 2013 23:43
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As jealous as I am of that very clean, very nice looking work you've done, I'm still going to be a petty bastard and laugh my rear end off when it invariably crashes and the arms bend.
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Jan 20, 2013 23:57
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helno posted:More progress on my Hquad. drat, that's pretty sweet. If you want to be extra-protective, I'd put some silicone putty around the sharp edges of the arms near the motors. I've found that those rctimer motors are pretty solid internally, but the solder joints connecting the magnet wire and the motor tend to fail. That, and in an even more catastrophic crash, you should prevent the motor leads from getting severed when the connection between the motor mount and the arm fails.
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Jan 21, 2013 00:05
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I put a GoPro on my plane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzPxeUOEG6w
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Jan 21, 2013 18:39
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What video TX/RX band are you using and what kind of tx power? I had a fatshark 5.8ghz 100mw tx and the range on it was abysmal even with circular polarized antennas
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Jan 21, 2013 20:29
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That video was flown on 1280mhz at about 600mw. I was using a cloverleaf tx antenna and crosshair antenna on the receiver. This combo is probably good for 20+ miles easily. I've also used 2.4ghz and 5.8ghz. You probably had bad luck on 5.8 because you're using the Fatshark setup which is low power but more importantly the receiver isn't very sensitive. The Foxtech brand 5.8ghz stuff is excellent, I can fly 1+ miles on 200mw on Blubeam omnis and I've taken it out to 3.5 miles with a helical battery limited, still had a great picture. Also using a Rangelink 433mhz UHF system so I never have to worry about my control link.
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Jan 21, 2013 20:42
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This poo poo never gets old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONOopBbB8jY
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Jan 29, 2013 00:57
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Looks like you were about to lose it at ~1:30 or so. What happened there?
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Jan 29, 2013 04:37
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Rotor off the downwind slope, bad stuff haha.
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Jan 29, 2013 05:01
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Most ambitious project so far: rewinding a 480-class burned out motor. It started out as a 35x36 8T 1020Kv motor, burned up trying to push 38A (360w) on a 12x6 folding prop. Now it's a 9T 907Kv motor using solid 22 gauge Radio Shack magnet wire. I've already rewound several 2712 3000Kv blue wonders with good results. I'll have to see how well this one does. It took me three tries to do it correctly. *edit* New motor winding cranks 308 watts @ 31A with a Master Airscrew 12x6 folding prop. It still gets pretty warm around the base after 1min of full throttle, but this is way better than before where it just burned up. CrazyLittle fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Jan 30, 2013 |
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Jan 30, 2013 06:34
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hello rc thread, how are you? I've been sort of halfassedly following this thread for a while because while i think it's cool, I live where it's almost always fairly windy, say like 10, 15mph, and I had heard that this was really sort of Not A Thing with rc copters. So a couple things: 1) is this true? 2) has anyone done anything with tethered vehicles? Like if I can just get a copter to go straight up for ~100ft and take some sweet panoramas of the ocean or something it might be neat. also i case it crashes into my neighbors yard maybe i can use the cables to pull it back? i dont know anything about anything.
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Jan 30, 2013 07:12
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Until you get into the really big copters, wind will make your heli act like a kite and just fly off into the horizon. Even small planes have trouble on windy days. Those "easy to fly" copters that have stacked rotors on top don't handle wind well at all because the wind causes the oppositely spinning blades to hit each other. You can't really tether a helicopter. If your tether pulls in any particular direction, it will knock the helicopter off balance. Real helicopters very carefully hitch loads directly under the center of gravity. It would be very hard to do the same with a small model helicopter. You -COULD- mount a small camera on a beginner/intermediate copter, but I doubt that's the kind of results you're looking for. I met a guy over at the Berkeley Marina that does aerial photography using a kite or helium balloon. I'm guessing from how he described it, even kites/balloons are a non-trivial effort. Here's an example of one of his kite shots: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ml_kap/8411768696/in/photostream/lightbox/
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Jan 30, 2013 07:48
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i was actually thinking about a kite as the easiest, but that kinda ... i dont know, there's no OOMPH.
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Jan 30, 2013 07:53
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rotor posted:i was actually thinking about a kite as the easiest, but that kinda ... i dont know, there's no OOMPH. When I was a kid I would sew or construct my own kites. I made my own parafoil which could be used to lift loads even in light winds. Being a parafoil, it was steerable to some degree while tethered, and it was fairly easy to make it go up or down. I had it on a line that I had on a large fishing reel which I'd stake into the ground. I used to hang one of my stuffed toys in a harness from it, using a RC servo to release the catch and he'd fall with his own steerable parachute which I'd control with the other channel on my RC unit. HobbyKing have a premade parafoil on their store. I've never tried it, but at around $20 it'd be worth a shot.
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Jan 30, 2013 13:01
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rotor posted:i was actually thinking about a kite as the easiest, but that kinda ... i dont know, there's no OOMPH. You sir, don't know enough about kites. If it is that windy just use a power kite.
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Jan 30, 2013 17:42
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Just took some spare wood and $5 worth of hardware and pipe insulation and built some ceiling mounts for my planes. 
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Jan 30, 2013 18:38
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Vitamin J posted:I put a GoPro on my plane: I've never even flown an RC Plane and love watching stuff like this, I'm jealous. I did a double take when I saw 'Daniels Park' in the title, hell yeah Castle Pines represent! Do you get your RC stuff from that place off Quebec with the RC car track? e: shittt watching more of these videos is making me want to drop some money and build a plane. How practical is this for hunting? Is flying in the mountains even possible? can I hook a FLIR/infrared camera and GPS up to one of these RC planes and take it in the mountains to find deer/elk/antelope during hunting season? is this legal? Please tell me otherwise before I spend a lot of money, this poo poo is awesome. I LIKE COOKIE fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Jan 31, 2013 |
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Jan 31, 2013 15:28
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Haha right on. Naw that place off Quebec overcharges like mad, even more than everyone else. Colpar Hobbies is pretty good. None of the shops really know anything about FPV or care to learn. Pretty stupid IMO, every RC in 5 years will have a camera standard I bet. I've brought my planes in and they just kinda give me a hairy eyeball and try to make me admit I broke the law somehow. All I buy from shops now is raw building materials and propellers, everything else I get online. Check out FPVLab.com for more info. Look up "Dehogaflyer." Yeah you could use a FLIR and RC plane to hunt but I think the going rate for a cheap FLIR cam is about $8000. You can definitely fly in the mountains. High turbulence is a problem but some of the best sights are up there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX7JFe4kYa4
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Jan 31, 2013 17:11
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CrazyLittle posted:You can't really tether a helicopter. If your tether pulls in any particular direction, it will knock the helicopter off balance. Real helicopters very carefully hitch loads directly under the center of gravity. It would be very hard to do the same with a small model helicopter. For whatever it's worth, a well tuned quadcopter can handle off center weights pretty well. If the weight is applying off center forces, it can just spool up the appropriate motors. This is one of the reasons they're popular for cameras, it doesn't matter where the camera is mounted.
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Feb 1, 2013 04:22
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Aurium posted:For whatever it's worth, a well tuned quadcopter can handle off center weights pretty well. If the weight is applying off center forces, it can just spool up the appropriate motors. This is one of the reasons they're popular for cameras, it doesn't matter where the camera is mounted. Even on multirotor helicopters it's way better to have all of its mass closer to the center of gravity, because then the motors have less inertia to fight against.
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Feb 1, 2013 05:11
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ante posted:The parrot looks pretty cool. I'll look at it some more when I get near a laptop. Any other similar suggestions are appreciated, too. The AR Drone is good fun. You can boost it's range with a DD-WRT flashed router and some other bits and pieces. Some good reading here: http://dronehacks.com/
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Feb 4, 2013 13:17
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Weather finally cooperated yesterday and I was able to take the Bixler 2 out for its maiden. It has a ridiculous amount of lift even before bringing in the flaps and is an incredibly stable plane. Unfortunately I didn't do a good enough job of gluing the bottom part of the wing that supports the wing carbon fiber support, and it popped out mid-flight and the wing broke off...oops. Damage wasn't too bad beyond the broken wing, just took a little bit of hot water soaking on the front. Since I had to strip it anyways, I took the whole thing apart and i'm doing a bunch of mods. - Relocate rudder/elevator servos to rear - Use the servo channels to add extra carbon fiber reinforcement for the tail - Add carbon fiber reinforcement to the horizontal stabilizer - Add another carbon fiber tube inside the wing support strut - Relocate the ESC and open up the interior of the plane for easier wiring - Add a door on the side for accessing interior wiring - Magnets on the wings for easier assembly I've also stripped off the waterslide decals, but have no idea on where to even begin on finding a paint scheme. I need a cheaper hobby, and I haven't even started in on the FPV road just yet. 
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Feb 5, 2013 17:17
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All back together and ready to fly with all mods done with the exception of two minor issues to deal with. Thanks foam safe CA!
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Feb 7, 2013 03:25
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Get 3M Tough Tape. You can use that to just cover the missing hold in the flap and that's good enough for a while. As for the canopy, just cut up some cardboard and tape it in place as a simple one. No need to get fancy I'm loving the servo relocation mods!
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Feb 7, 2013 08:12
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Anyone have (or know someone) that has a DJI S800 with the WKM autopilot? I purchased one last fall, but after seeing the firmware bug on youtube, kinda put that project on the back burner. Waiting to make sure all the firmware bugs were worked out.
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Feb 8, 2013 20:04
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I'm really interested in building a mid size quad that I can do some experimenting with ultrasonic sensing and tracking on. (In addition to ultrasonic altitude hold, doing multilateration tracking/pursuit of targets and the like, and possibly doing some machine learning algorithm work, that one of my professors does all his research in.) It seems like a real simple setup costs, frankly, peanuts. (As far as frame, battery, escs, motors, props, goes). Ardupilot is like $180, sparkfun and even seeed will charge you $100+ for 9 degrees worth of sensors, yet on ebay I can get small breakouts for the common gyro, accelerometer, and magnetometer boards for like $5 each. Obviously from China, but can they seriously all be fakes? Similar story with GPS, though the price discrepancy is not so bad. The main reason being, we'll be using only a RF data link (long range 900mhz ZigBee's) for control, without a traditional radio in all likelihood. And the control software will be heavily customized, though probably using ardupilot's low-level stabilization loops. So is it crazy to just put together custom hardware? That must have been what everybody did before the ardupilot and the like came along. Obviously converting a lot of the open source code algorithms will take some work, but it's probably worth doing for us.
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Feb 14, 2013 22:12
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I got started in RC thinking that I would go straight to FPV, but I ended up getting massively drawn in to the joy of of building kits, flying, learning tricks, and otherwise refining skills. Now I have a whole fleet of planes and a small CP helicopter to play with. A buddy recently gifted me a quadcopter kit and this has kicked off my interest in FPV (and of course the videography that goes along with it. This is my second attempt at video. My first attempt was ruined by vibration and then I got a bit timid about putting my good camera on my quad because I had some mis-haps that really exercised it's durability. This really looks like crap but mostly it's because I'm using a dirt cheap chinacam. It doesn't even have a stable framerate  . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVCWy5kO53s Anyway, I'm now shopping around for some better video and FPV equipment. This has been such a fun hobby and I can't recommend it enough to nerds. The one thing people underestimate is how difficult it is to deal with learning how to fly at arbitrary orientations. I've watched a lot of people burn through $$$ because they didn't put the sim time in. If any of you use Phoenix RC sim, look for me there by name or in the group: The Crew. They're all goons but they don't know it. I hope this thread takes off a bit more.
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Feb 15, 2013 04:25
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So I've been having to drill out my props to fit the collet on my motors for my quad and I've gotten tired/scared of doing it by hand with a drill and a pair of vice grips. Does anyone know of any prop holding jigs in existance? Google isn't being too helpful in this respect.
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Feb 15, 2013 04:57
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