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Just posting to say that I try to stay the hell away from this thread, because I have enough expensive hobbies, but I absolutely love my Blade MQX and Blade Nano QX. Both are so much fun.
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Jul 16, 2013 00:37
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I am shocked and amazed that I was just able to get 95% of my order from the hobbyking US warehouse.
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Jul 17, 2013 23:17
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Noticed your quad vid vj. Welcome to the fpv from your stoop club.
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Jul 19, 2013 01:48
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Well, getting better with the MQX, I'm starting to get my head around flying it in a manner that is different from a plane. Props are getting pretty beat up, but I havent broken anything serious yet. Pretty fun little quad.
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Jul 19, 2013 18:18
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Checked the last couple of pages and I didn't see this posted. Very cool video of a guy flying a FPV quad over Niagra Falls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfoLYTKObiU
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Jul 20, 2013 03:35
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I hate the phantom. I hate DJI. I guess I hate them because god dammit, everyone is flying quads, everyone is into FPV now. Everyone is creating this loving amazing footage. That video is great. Nicely edited, great tune. Seriously though, the phantom is ugly as hell. gently caress DJI!
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Jul 22, 2013 01:56
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Over the weekend the Colorado FPV group did a long range hand-off mission between our camp and a reservoir 8.5 miles away. We used multimaster mode on two Rangelink TXs two essentially bind both LRS TXs to the same aircraft. About halfway through the flight the launch pilot simply switched off his TX and the landing pilot switched on his TX and took control of the plane. Video recording from landing position using 5-turn VAS helical, 8.5 miles LOS from take off. Overlayed sound from the speakerphone at the landing location: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYIKOzIlpec The aircraft used was a Deep Reaper set up on 4S power, 1.3ghz 600mw, Rangelink UHF, Cyclops Breeze Pro OSD, and FY-30 stabilizer. We had 2 ground stations on each side tracking the plane, 3 using crosshair antennas and one using a 5-turn helical. We even did a long range TX set-up. Thanks to the ER9x firmware, a 9XR and my 9X were very easy to program over the phone to match eachother identically. Amazingly, my Rangelink had control while the plane was on the ground at the launch point!
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Jul 23, 2013 05:29
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Vitamin J posted:Over the weekend the Colorado FPV group did a long range hand-off mission between our camp and a reservoir 8.5 miles away. We used multimaster mode on two Rangelink TXs two essentially bind both LRS TXs to the same aircraft. About halfway through the flight the launch pilot simply switched off his TX and the landing pilot switched on his TX and took control of the plane. Thats pretty awesome. I've thought about doing something similar using an auto mission on my apm to fly a one way waypoint mission into the vicinity of a landing pilot to bring the quad in. I'd have to get some new radio gear though. There is always something else to spend money on in this hobby.
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Jul 23, 2013 20:47
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Yeah this opens up a huge number of possibilities. Our group wants to try binding 3 TXs together for a super long range flight maybe or a flight over a mountain that breaks LOS from launch. Eventually we have a goal of flying over the Rocky Mountains from Durango to east of Denver with 3 ground stations, one at each end and one on the top of Mt. Evans. It is a lofty goal but what's the point otherwise? Here is a better video of the mission with the onboard HD footage and better audio. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPgvnUV8-A
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Jul 23, 2013 23:48
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Has anyone tried using baloons or loitering planes as repeater stations. Make your own flying relay network.
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Jul 24, 2013 02:30
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That's a pretty cool idea. I've always wondered about making repeating stations, but never thought about the idea of making them airborne. I think you are going to hit a wall at a certain point because of accumlated latency at each hop, where as what VJ is doing is just handing off, no hops. So I've bought my 1.3ghz gear, and I know I'm going to run into trouble with my 2.4ghz control. I'm leaning towards dragonlink at the moment. Any anecdotes? I'm not concerned about going miles away, I just want object penetration. I want to be able to do this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrVLh6r8hd8
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Jul 24, 2013 23:48
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ease posted:Any anecdotes? Sure, I'm using a 800mW 1258kHz system with my Dragonlink. 5 turn helical on the VRx and a 3 lobe clover leaf on the VTx. I'm using a fixed wing aircraft, but I've been able to fly 2000 ft away from my base station on the other side of a 200 ft high hill with only a slight reduction in the video signal and losing ~15% RSSI from the DL. There's an issue apparently with DL harmonics loving up video on 1280, I don't fully understand the details of why it does this nor do I use 1280, but it's something you might want to be aware of.
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Jul 25, 2013 00:08
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ease posted:That's a pretty cool idea. I've always wondered about making repeating stations, but never thought about the idea of making them airborne. I think you are going to hit a wall at a certain point because of accumlated latency at each hop, where as what VJ is doing is just handing off, no hops. Probably. I've thought it could be an interesting way to have an urban fpv quad (all legality aside with buzzing streets etc). If you had a long endurance plane circling a few hundred meters up you could get quite a good transmission down between tall buildings etc.
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Jul 25, 2013 04:20
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Internet Explorer posted:Just posting to say that I try to stay the hell away from this thread, because I have enough expensive hobbies, but I absolutely love my Blade MQX and Blade Nano QX. Both are so much fun. Ha, I feel you on that one. Since I bought my MQX less than two weeks ago, I have put at least 5 packs through it a day, before work and over lunch. I have owned a ton of R/C planes, but never a quad, and I dont think Ive had this much fun with any of the planes. I think its mostly because I can fly easily in my back yard, and the MQX can handle a surprising amount of wind. I regularly fly that little beast in wind that would ground some of the biggest planes I've owned. I also learned from ground zero how to fly a quad with it, with no prior experience, and only broke one thing, a thruster boom, and that was just yesterday. I really love my MQX as well 
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Jul 25, 2013 14:37
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Here's the video I was waiting on. This is the Blade 350 QX, coming out in fall or early winter. The posted it as unedited and it seems with minimal editing, you could make it pretty good. The price point is great and my lazy rear end can finally get into playing with aerial video. Hooray for lazy bastards! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6tyn598dy0
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Jul 25, 2013 18:38
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ease posted:That's a pretty cool idea. I've always wondered about making repeating stations, but never thought about the idea of making them airborne. I think you are going to hit a wall at a certain point because of accumlated latency at each hop, where as what VJ is doing is just handing off, no hops.  Widdershins posted:Sure, I'm using a 800mW 1258kHz system with my Dragonlink. 5 turn helical on the VRx and a 3 lobe clover leaf on the VTx.  The issues with DL are varied. Some interfere with 1.280, some with 1.258, some don't at all.
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Jul 25, 2013 18:53
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Also, can't you guys just build your own quads? They are so drat simple. Screw frame together, connect wires, program, fly.
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Jul 25, 2013 18:54
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Vitamin J posted:Also, can't you guys just build your own quads? They are so drat simple. Screw frame together, connect wires, program, fly. Pretty much yes. Heck, I built my tri-copter from scratch. Building mini quads is hard though. CrazyLittle fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Jul 25, 2013 |
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Jul 25, 2013 20:19
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Vitamin J posted:Also, can't you guys just build your own quads? They are so drat simple. Screw frame together, connect wires, program, fly. Sure. But can I build a quad that does as much as that one for less than the selling price of that one? I have no problem building, but it isn't going to do half of what this one does.
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Jul 25, 2013 20:29
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Eeek posted:Sure. But can I build a quad that does as much as that one for less than the selling price of that one? I have no problem building, but it isn't going to do half of what this one does. You can definitely build a frame with motors, props, ESCs for less than $100. It's the flight controller that'll kill your wallet. Then again, there's copycat Ardupilot Mega's that are pretty cheap on eBay.
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Jul 25, 2013 20:42
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Vitamin J posted:Also, can't you guys just build your own quads? They are so drat simple. Screw frame together, connect wires, program, fly. Yes, but at least for me, the MQX is a hell of a package for $99, it would be tough to build an equivalent quad for that money Just got an 808 keychain cam for it today so I'll be filming and flying tomorrow
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Jul 26, 2013 05:12
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I'm noticing the lacking documentation issue. I have the orange Rx 6 ch with stabilizer receiver, but have three issues. 1. Servos have a 3 wire plug, and two ways to plug in. Is this trial and error or is the yellow or brown wire supposed to be near the middle. 2. There is 3 pins labeled batt/bind. Which pin is + and -. 3. The little documentation says it's a 4.8v to 6.0v. That seems like an issue since the battery is a 3s. So will I have to add a voltage rectifier to give myself 5-6 volts for the receiver? Next the turnigy dlux 30 amp ESC has 3 white wires for the motor. Is this trial and error too? The leads from the motor are colored red, yellow, and black.
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Jul 26, 2013 05:24
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Yes, but at least for me, the MQX is a hell of a package for $99, it would be tough to build an equivalent quad for that money Yeah. You can't really pull together a micro-quad from parts for less than a retail option. It makes a lot more sense when you're talking about ones big enough to carry a gopro. Golluk posted:I'm noticing the lacking documentation issue. I have the orange Rx 6 ch with stabilizer receiver, but have three issues. Black/brown is ground or negative (-), white/yellow is the PPM signal wire. If you're using an ESC with built-in BEC then you'll be getting 5V out from there. The ESC you mentioned outputs 5.5V. However if the ESC has no BEC then you need to get a separate UBEC and wire that in. Most cheap ESCs come with a BEC. Never plug a 3S battery directly into your receiver unless the receiver says it can take that kind of voltage. CrazyLittle fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 05:25
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OK. So the batt/bind would be used to supply per to the receiver if the esc had no bec itself. I think I found the answer. Supposedly there is a little "s" to mark the signal pin. And ground is furthest from the label and near the edge. Golluk fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 13:42
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Golluk posted:So are the 3 wires on the servo essentially a neg-pos-neg so it can't be plugged in wrong? Signal is not neg. It's possible to do bad things if you plug it in backwards. Most likely you would burn the receiver.
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Jul 26, 2013 14:13
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Of course now after reading the manual of the spektrum unit this is modeled after, I'm not entirely sure the servos I bought will work well. The spectrum unit receiver says to only use digital servos. I'm fairly certain the bixler has analog, and the extra ones for flaps I got are analog since supposedly it's less noise that can interfere with a video system.
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Jul 26, 2013 16:33
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ease posted:Any anecdotes? I'm not concerned about going miles away, I just want object penetration. I want to be able to do this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrVLh6r8hd8 Eeek posted:Here's the video I was waiting on. This is the Blade 350 QX, coming out in fall or early winter. The posted it as unedited and it seems with minimal editing, you could make it pretty good. The price point is great and my lazy rear end can finally get into playing with aerial video. Hooray for lazy bastards!
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Jul 26, 2013 17:10
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Golluk posted:Of course now after reading the manual of the spektrum unit this is modeled after, I'm not entirely sure the servos I bought will work well. The spectrum unit receiver says to only use digital servos. I'm fairly certain the bixler has analog, and the extra ones for flaps I got are analog since supposedly it's less noise that can interfere with a video system. Try it out on the ground first, plug everything in and do a bunch of pre-flight testing. If the servos don't vomit magic smoke or get hot after 5-minutes of furious stick wiggling then you should be fine. R/C is a magical microcosm of people doing things they shouldn't.
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Jul 26, 2013 18:04
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After not doing radio-control stuff for quite a while, I started reading through this thread and found out about ER9x. Got out my old Turnigy 9x, opened it up, soldered in the ISP points, flashed the new firmware with one of my Arduinos. This is SO MUCH BETTER! Goddamn, open-source software efforts can really do some amazing stuff. I don't even understand what half the new functions are for, but just the main screen and calibration system is such a gigantic improvement.
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Jul 26, 2013 18:41
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CrazyLittle posted:Try it out on the ground first, plug everything in and do a bunch of pre-flight testing. If the servos don't vomit magic smoke or get hot after 5-minutes of furious stick wiggling then you should be fine. I'd believe it. I'm just glad I know enough about electronics and components to know when I need to be careful and double check things.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:11
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Sagebrush posted:After not doing radio-control stuff for quite a while, I started reading through this thread and found out about ER9x. Got out my old Turnigy 9x, opened it up, soldered in the ISP points, flashed the new firmware with one of my Arduinos. This is SO MUCH BETTER! Goddamn, open-source software efforts can really do some amazing stuff. I don't even understand what half the new functions are for, but just the main screen and calibration system is such a gigantic improvement. It's even more awesome when you get the smartieparts board and FrSky transmitter so you get telemetry data coming back down from your model.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:12
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CrazyLittle posted:Signal is not neg. It's possible to do bad things if you plug it in backwards. Most likely you would burn the receiver. Pretty sure I did this the other day and killed my orangerx 7 channel. Luckily I already have some frsky gear on the way to replace it with. Either I burnt it out or it just died vOv.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:28
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mashed_penguin posted:Pretty sure I did this the other day and killed my orangerx 7 channel. Luckily I already have some frsky gear on the way to replace it with. Either I burnt it out or it just died vOv. Yeah I burnt a FrSky D8R-II... pretty loving mad at myself for that one.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:33
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Don't most RXs have reverse polarity protection? I've never burned one out or damaged one and I plug servos and BECs in backwards all the drat time. Also you can get a Naze32 that will run CC3D for $25.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:57
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Vitamin J posted:Don't most RXs have reverse polarity protection? I've never burned one out or damaged one and I plug servos and BECs in backwards all the drat time. I've been tempted to try flashing CC3D on one of my naze boards but at the time they released the OPCC port it was clunky as hell. Did they clean it up since then or is it still just as hack-ish?
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Jul 26, 2013 20:19
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I think it's supposed to be pretty good now. A friend just flashed his last night and hopefully will have it flying tomorrow.
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Jul 26, 2013 20:37
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Vitamin J posted:I think it's supposed to be pretty good now. A friend just flashed his last night and hopefully will have it flying tomorrow. Yeah, I know among other things you can't just use OPCC GCS with the Naze32 board because of some serial port incompatibility.
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Jul 26, 2013 20:46
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I'd like to dip my toe into quadcoptering after developing an interest in Arduino-based microcontroller projects. Over the last few days I've been reading a lot of forums getting to know the entry-level hardware, software, and vocabulary and I'd like some feedback on my rationale and things I may not have considered. Syma X1 - This is the cheapest thing I can find and it seems to be commonly recommended as a beginner quad copter. +cheap +Tx/Rx uses an open protocol +availability of spare parts Possible future upgrades:
The gist of it is that I think buying the Syma X1 is a cheap way to start while allowing for lots of incremental upgrades due to it working with open standards. Is this the case?
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Jul 27, 2013 07:36
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Mantle posted:
9X comes with a JR-style transmitter module by default, but has crappy stock firmware. You can flash it with ER9x if you solder your own ISP header or get a solderless piggy-back board. 9XR has no tx module so you'll have to buy one. It's a little clunkier, but it comes with a ISP programming header and is pre-loaded with ER9x knock-off firmware. Mantle posted:
Not that I've seen, but anything is possible. Micro-quads use brushed motors, so it's going to be impractical at best.
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Jul 27, 2013 07:55
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CrazyLittle posted:9X comes with a JR-style transmitter module by default, but has crappy stock firmware. You can flash it with ER9x if you solder your own ISP header or get a solderless piggy-back board. Thanks for the direction. It looks like there might be another contender for transmitters in the FrSky Taranis. I should probably not worry about this until 6 months down the road when I'm actually deciding how far I want to go with this.
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Jul 28, 2013 07:33
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