Multirotor, multicopter and quadcopter discussion - The Drone thread

RomanNose · 6 Feb 2012 at 20:34

arknor said:
all my heli stuff arrived and its quite daunting! maybe i should have done a quadcopter lol they look so much simpler, no pulleys , drive trains , no need for four servos etc

Well at least you probably don't have stock sourcing problems. Nearly everything related to multirotors is sold out, copter control and a lot of the other flight controllers are impossible to source. I am looking forward for its maiden, I am getting a heli guy to fly it first

.

arknor · 6 Feb 2012 at 21:17

dont quadcopters hover themself? and you dont have the risk of blades flying off at 4000+ rpm and hitting you like a bullet

RomanNose · 12 Feb 2012 at 11:32

Maiden might be today, everything is done

. I might need to get a heli pilot to maiden it though.

daelo · 12 Feb 2012 at 12:05

RomanNose said:
They are incredibly stable, but they have low range and the acceleration is poor. I think they use low rpm motors so that they don't cut your hands off. You can build a much better quad for a lower price, that is unbelievably fast such as this

That .. is.. awesome!!

Done the nixie clock now for a step up into these badboys! Thing that interests me the most is seeing where you live and your surroundings from above, always been fascinated when going on a plane and staring out the window! Gonna start reading up on these and see what sort of budget you need to fit a decent enough quality 720p or 1080p mini camera with enough range so that it can fly a fair distance!

RomanNose · 12 Feb 2012 at 16:47

daelo said:
That .. is.. awesome!!

Done the nixie clock now for a step up into these badboys! Thing that interests me the most is seeing where you live and your surroundings from above, always been fascinated when going on a plane and staring out the window! Gonna start reading up on these and see what sort of budget you need to fit a decent enough quality 720p or 1080p mini camera with enough range so that it can fly a fair distance!

You need a massive budget for fpv, we are talking £1k +. Also iirc you can only transmit in 480p due to bandwidth constraints.

Dogbreath · 12 Feb 2012 at 17:05

arknor said:
http://www.antex.co.uk/product.asp?strParents=181&CAT_ID=223&P_ID=832

if anyone needs a good cheap soldering iron

For plumbing perhaps. An 80watt iron without temperature control has no place in soldering small electronic components.

jas72 · 12 Feb 2012 at 17:19

Bah I thought this thread was about how to till the garden ready for spuds....

quickshot89 · 12 Feb 2012 at 17:20

RomanNose said:
Maiden might be today, everything is done . I might need to get a heli pilot to maiden it though.

I know ive already asked, but have you got a build guide on a cheap multirotor? im tempted to build a few of these over the summer, but i want to try some cheap (£15 or so) ones but i need a decent build guide

arknor · 12 Feb 2012 at 17:26

Dogbreath said:
For plumbing perhaps. An 80watt iron without temperature control has no place in soldering small electronic components.

all you need to solder with a multicopter is connectors for the sc/battery and motor bullets?

where heat is king

RomanNose · 12 Feb 2012 at 17:30

quickshot89 said:
I know ive already asked, but have you got a build guide on a cheap multirotor? im tempted to build a few of these over the summer, but i want to try some cheap (£15 or so) ones but i need a decent build guide

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1335765
In all honesty, I have no idea about this stuff though. The larger the quad is, generally the more stable it is. I don't think you can do it for £15 but maybe £50. I don't know though as small speed controllers might be more expensive than large ones.
Also for small builds you have to use these weird flight controllers, which I have no clue about.

For the sort of size I built, you are talking around £120. Quadcopters are really quite hard to damage due to their design. The worst you can do is break a prop and maybe a wooden arm. Anyway if you are prepared to do what I did then this picture

and this thread
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1543356
is all you need to know. You then just select appropriate speed controllers and motors, then just get any arduino board + a wii motion plus and nunchuck. That's pretty much it, the multiwii connecting elements guide is quite handy. Otherwise just follow the picture shown and it should be fine.

arknor said:
all you need to solder with a multicopter is connectors for the sc/battery and motor bullets?

where heat is king

You need to do some small scale soldering for the sensors. A lot of people get put off this though. You can buy it all in one for like £50 with no soldering. But for the sake of a few quid you can do the soldering yourself.

RomanNose · 12 Feb 2012 at 19:24

Another lovely juz70 video

arctine · 12 Feb 2012 at 19:34

That's actually pretty impressive. Those things have got some decent range.

How do those glasses work?

Would be a bitch if it broke down over the sea or something.

Addicted · 12 Feb 2012 at 19:42

Ok that FPV - Golden video is awesome!

I fly helicopters as it is, got a DX6 etc, are there any guides as to setting/building one of these? I'd love to get one and use the glasses!

RomanNose · 12 Feb 2012 at 19:50

Addicted said:
Ok that FPV - Golden video is awesome!

I fly helicopters as it is, got a DX6 etc, are there any guides as to setting/building one of these? I'd love to get one and use the glasses!

The fpv setup is pretty much the same as RC, so just watch this
http://vimeo.com/29642960
http://vimeo.com/29644244
http://vimeo.com/29646978
http://vimeo.com/29751213

d_brennen · 12 Feb 2012 at 21:12

Pretty awesome. Some great guides out there I've read, but most are US/Aus based, so suppliers/prices are different. Any UK/EU project logs you know of RomanNose? I'd love to build a nice big quadcopter but the misses would hit the roof if I blew a grand on it

RomanNose · 13 Feb 2012 at 10:46

d_brennen said:
Pretty awesome. Some great guides out there I've read, but most are US/Aus based, so suppliers/prices are different. Any UK/EU project logs you know of RomanNose? I'd love to build a nice big quadcopter but the misses would hit the roof if I blew a grand on it

Well it's not going to cost £1k unless you want to do fpv. Anyway, you can get most stuff from giantcod. I will list where I got my stuff from, you are guaranteed to have to get some stuff from hong kong at least
Arduino board- £10 from hong kong or £15 from the UK ( ebay uk)
Frame ( hobby craft wood)
Wii motion plus - Amazon
Nunchuck ( I already had one, make sure you get from somewhere like amazon as you want it to be genuine and not a clone)
Counter rotating and rotating props-Giant cod
Prop adapter - Ebay
Motors - Giant cod
The only thing I had to get from a far away land was some servo lead as they were male to male, it was about £3 for 8 male to male leads from Australia

So you might have to get some stuff from a far away land but giant cod has the stuff that you would normally have to, all in all mine totalled about £120 so it's not very hard hitting on the wallet

.
This guy http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1505766#post19312519 is a uk chappy and has some more details. Also I found out that dunelm sell circular tubbaware boxes for 69p! I just put one over the sensors to protect them and bobs your uncle.

RomanNose · 13 Feb 2012 at 20:03

Tried flying it today, was just taking off on about 60% and very very loud. So I bottled it and I am now checking if it's all setup right. Seems to be that it's loud when taking off because the air bounces off the floor. Might give it another flight tomorrow.

arknor · 13 Feb 2012 at 20:20

RomanNose said:
Tried flying it today, was just taking off on about 60% and very very loud. So I bottled it and I am now checking if it's all setup right. Seems to be that it's loud when taking off because the air bounces off the floor. Might give it another flight tomorrow.

its going to be loud anyway

have you ever heard an rc heli spool up to 4000-4400 RPM now thats scary

RomanNose · 13 Feb 2012 at 20:26

arknor said:
its going to be loud anyway

have you ever heard an rc heli spool up to 4000-4400 RPM now thats scary

Nope. I think it's fine, it was just a brown trouser moment because of how loud it is.

d_brennen · 13 Feb 2012 at 23:26

RomanNose said:
Well it's not going to cost £1k unless you want to do fpv. Anyway, you can get most stuff from giantcod. I will list where I got my stuff from, you are guaranteed to have to get some stuff from hong kong at least
Arduino board- £10 from hong kong or £15 from the UK ( ebay uk)
Frame ( hobby craft wood)
Wii motion plus - Amazon
Nunchuck ( I already had one, make sure you get from somewhere like amazon as you want it to be genuine and not a clone)
Counter rotating and rotating props-Giant cod
Prop adapter - Ebay
Motors - Giant cod
The only thing I had to get from a far away land was some servo lead as they were male to male, it was about £3 for 8 male to male leads from Australia

So you might have to get some stuff from a far away land but giant cod has the stuff that you would normally have to, all in all mine totalled about £120 so it's not very hard hitting on the wallet .
This guy http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1505766#post19312519 is a uk chappy and has some more details. Also I found out that dunelm sell circular tubbaware boxes for 69p! I just put one over the sensors to protect them and bobs your uncle.

Heh, I would have to go the whole hog with video live feed

What sort of flight time do you expect from your kit?