Multirotor, multicopter and quadcopter discussion - The Drone thread

d_brennen · 16 Jul 2015 at 15:40

Rilot said:
Ooooh, I see the Chinese place has 1104 4000kv motors in stock now. Might have to bag some of those for the Diatone 150. Pity they don't have props and the only place that does, wants $40 to ship a 10g package from the US to the UK.........

Yeah, that is a problem for now. Apparently there are appropriate t motor props coming from China etc.

I'm all for supporting an innovator and all that, but over the last few days they have been trash talking RCTimer and Banggood, saying they could never get a motor of the same quality/performance/price as theirs and that any copy will be inferior in every way etc... Then they drop their motor prices to within $2 of China's lol and this is US stock, its travelled half way round the world.

I feel for all the international buyers who paid $20 each + $40 shipping + whatever local tax for a hex build

Rilot · 16 Jul 2015 at 15:46

It's not really RotorX that are the problem, it's LiftRC who are pumping up the shipping costs. They seem to be a right shambles of a company. Sending RotorX 120s to the wrong people, with bits missing, or with bits broken.

I'm in no hurry to build the 150. It's sat on my desk at the moment. I'll wait for the right components to come available. I might transfer over the bits from my Armatten Morphite 180 but every time I look at it I think it's such a shame to tear apart a good build.......

d_brennen · 16 Jul 2015 at 16:08

SuperX 75mm propellers will work too, though are likely to pop off in a crash or hard manoeuvre on 3s. It's what RotorX were using prior to getting their own props made

Rilot · 16 Jul 2015 at 17:11

Yeah, not happy with a friction fit on 3S.

gandhi · 17 Jul 2015 at 11:36

d_brennen said:
I tend to over think things too. Helps to throw it out there on a forum

Float your boat?

Honestly, this sort of thing would have cost hundreds a year or two ago, and wouldn't have nearly the performance. I've ordered a bunch of the BG1104 motors to test, they are a bit of an unknown at the moment. **** HobbyKing and their shipping and non existent CS/warranty, I'm only using them for lipos for now, until someone better steps up

Probably gonna go hex I think. I'm still tempted to get the Raiju. They have the bare frame in stock now and at the moment, it's the only 155 hex available. I'm on a purchase hiatus until the end of the month though. I have my 180 build to finish, a 250 to fly and tune and 2 hexa's to rebuild so I can flog them on.

I solved the ESC problem by soldering two header pins onto the esc board so when I want to reflash, I can just connect a servo lead in place of the other ones.

Would be nice if you could flash blheli/simonk through the naze board directly. Not sure if that's possible, I know very little about the code/architecture.

I really wish someone would make a very light/small ccd camera too, or a better quality cmos one. Everything else has become nicely slimmed down (motors, frames, esc's, fc board, vtx)

Genoma · 17 Jul 2015 at 14:21

Must admit flashing BLHeli on my ESCs was pretty easy, just unplugged ESC from the Naze and flashed via the controller leads.

Brutal biff · 17 Jul 2015 at 18:01

I'm getting a gimbal soon and I've got a feeling the weight of this is going to cost me about 2 to 3 mind flight time so I'm thinking of ways to improve it

Anyone use 2 batteries connected in parallel ? Any noticeable improvement or worse with the extra weight of the battery

Or switching to a 4s which will be expensive buying 4 new batteries

Currently using 3s 5500mah

DJMK4 · 18 Jul 2015 at 20:45

Me flying the 250 quad today, and the bixler2, which is now in need of repairs

Cosimo · 22 Jul 2015 at 10:49

CAA introduces 'Dronecode'...

http://www.caa.co.uk/application.aspx?catid=14&pagetype=65&appid=7&newstype=n&mode=detail&nid=2468

Terminal_Boy · 22 Jul 2015 at 10:54

Seems entirely sensible.

gandhi · 22 Jul 2015 at 11:06

Loving the public information film too. I thought they had died out in the '70's?

In other news, I fried my first ESC ever last night. Got frustrated trying to flash BLheli 14 and forgot to unplug the battery when I connected the USBasp - let the magic smoke out

gandhi · 22 Jul 2015 at 11:07

DJMK4 said:
Me flying the 250 quad today, and the bixler2, which is now in need of repairs

You definitely need to look at the tuning on that. Those wobbles will be sucking up a lot of potential power and making the quad a lot harder to fly than it needs to be. Can you post a dump of your CLI settings?

Brutal biff · 22 Jul 2015 at 15:18

Been asked to put together and setup a full fpv f550 by a friends brother as he's not very technical

I've got price it all up for him later just thinking about whether add some on for myself

think hel be put off by the full price

Flying my f550 1 of the motors went down whilst in the air surprisingly it stayed stable enough bring it back down in 1 piece

I'm also now eyeing up a tarrot 680pro build or a racing quad

Rilot · 22 Jul 2015 at 15:25

If he's not technical, wouldn't he be better off buying a Phantom 3 Advanced or Pro? Will cost about the same as a decent F550 build once you add in the cost of the gimbal, radio gear, FPV gear, screen and GoPro but comes as a ready to fly package.

Brutal biff · 22 Jul 2015 at 15:31

Rilot said:
If he's not technical, wouldn't he be better off buying a Phantom 3 Advanced or Pro? Will cost about the same as a decent F550 build once you add in the cost of the gimbal, radio gear, FPV gear, screen and GoPro but comes as a ready to fly package.

true I never thought of a phantom he came and watched me fly the other day and is now thinking of having 1

spookywillow · 22 Jul 2015 at 18:41

I priced a basic hex and a basic quad for photography for someone last year and after everything was added you really are better off getting a phantom as Rilot said, For ease of use for those that just want to fly it's a far better choice for similar money.

DJMK4 · 22 Jul 2015 at 20:51

gandhi said:
You definitely need to look at the tuning on that. Those wobbles will be sucking up a lot of potential power and making the quad a lot harder to fly than it needs to be. Can you post a dump of your CLI settings?

Its not fully tuned yet im still reducing p, don't have much spare time so iv been doing it in sessions.

I will try and post a CLI dump at some point this weekend

Brutal biff · 23 Jul 2015 at 00:52

spookywillow said:
I priced a basic hex and a basic quad for photography for someone last year and after everything was added you really are better off getting a phantom as Rilot said, For ease of use for those that just want to fly it's a far better choice for similar money.

Not including any import charges I've priced it up at around the 600 mark that's using a devo 10 transmitter and an sj5000 camera instead of a gopro to keep prices down and using apm 2.6 and that's not including any batterys or charger just got think about what to charge to build it

d_brennen · 23 Jul 2015 at 00:59

Lets face it, most people who want a "drone" for amateur aerial photography will probably use it a handful of times and consign it to the shed. A Phantom for them makes much more sense, as it has decent resale value, where you can barely give away used generic RC parts/builds

Rilot · 23 Jul 2015 at 09:24

d_brennen said:
Lets face it, most people who want a "drone" for amateur aerial photography will probably use it a handful of times and consign it to the shed. A Phantom for them makes much more sense, as it has decent resale value, where you can barely give away used generic RC parts/builds

This.
A P3 Advanced costs £900 and comes with everything (apart from the tablet for FPV but who doesn't have one of those?). If he flies it twice and then sticks it up for resale he'll get £700 back for it straight away.

Pretty sure that an F550 that costs similar money to build won't make £700 back.