Multirotor, multicopter and quadcopter discussion - The Drone thread

For power? If you're running 3S and the cameras is 12V then take power from any of the pads. If it's 5V or you're using 4S then you'll need a UBEC.
 
Now and again I've been having orientation issues when flying further out. Tried a few things like LED bike lights etc but they weren't directional enough. Found these online by pure chance - Strobon 'Standalone' LED navigation strobes. These things are utterly visible in the daylight and will burn your Retina's out if you look at them directly. £9 a pop. Awesome. Fitted to my P3:-

Where did you get these from please
 
What's the best battery charger? That can fit my 4S 1300mAh's, ideally charging 3 at a time.

Best? There isn't a best really

I use a Eachine d800, others use an iMax b6. You'll then need a parallel charging board.

Not sure on chargers that allow you to add 3/4 batts onto them without a parallel board...
 
Best? There isn't a best really

I'd argue that Revolectrix make the best RC chargers in the world. Anything they make charger wise is always excellent. GT500, Powerlab 6/8, and the new GT1200. If you can't be bothered pressing buttons, there's the "Bump" system where you put NFC tags on your batteries and it puts all the settings in and logs cycles etcetera as you scan them into the bump controller.

I've had my Powerlab 8 for 4 years now. Well worth the £190ish that it cost me all those years ago.
 
I'd argue that Revolectrix make the best RC chargers in the world. Anything they make charger wise is always excellent. GT500, Powerlab 6/8, and the new GT1200. If you can't be bothered pressing buttons, there's the "Bump" system where you put NFC tags on your batteries and it puts all the settings in and logs cycles etcetera as you scan them into the bump controller.

I've had my Powerlab 8 for 4 years now. Well worth the £190ish that it cost me all those years ago.

I guess it depends on ones budget :)
 
Finally took the plunge on my first drone today and ordered the Mavic Pro with the Fly More pack or whatever it is called. I really like that there are now some drones that are this portable and still pretty feature rich and good camera quality. I plan to spend the winter getting used to and learning to fly it, and then packing it up for a motorbike trip to the Alps next year.
 
Finally took the plunge on my first drone today and ordered the Mavic Pro with the Fly More pack or whatever it is called. I really like that there are now some drones that are this portable and still pretty feature rich and good camera quality. I plan to spend the winter getting used to and learning to fly it, and then packing it up for a motorbike trip to the Alps next year.

Same as me. The idea of taking a drone away on my bike that is portable enough to go in my Kriega rucksack has massive appeal. Can't wait to get some trip footage using it. Roll on next year's biking season :)
 
Finally took the plunge on my first drone today and ordered the Mavic Pro with the Fly More pack or whatever it is called. I really like that there are now some drones that are this portable and still pretty feature rich and good camera quality. I plan to spend the winter getting used to and learning to fly it, and then packing it up for a motorbike trip to the Alps next year.

Just bear in mind unless they've significantly change the battery you may not be able to fly in the winter unless you can pre-warm your batteries...DJI is picky with battery temperature :p
 
Is it worth having MinimOSD on the 250 racing quad? I'll be using telemetry back to the Taranis for battery level.
 
Depends on you really. I used them early on for the novelty factor, but they aren't the most reliable things and are quite vulnerable to RF interference from all sorts of sources. They can also be a pain to flash as well as needing at least 500ma of clean 5v power.

If you're passing telemetry back to the tx then the only real benefit is having the data on screen if you're wearing goggles. I always used a screen, so it was again not really beneficial to me.

Finally, unless you have a flight controller that will measure both current draw and mah used, then for me, just having the battery voltage displayed is a great deal of use.
 
Really weird issue...

Motors 3 & 4 (left 2) are twitching when the battery is plugged in...

Any idea, all that's connected is the Naze, no receiver, nothing else at all.
 
Do they twitch when the ESCs are beeping? If so, that's normal. The sounds are made by oscillating the motors at a set frequency. If they are twitching with no beeps then something else is up.
 
Do they twitch when the ESCs are beeping? If so, that's normal. The sounds are made by oscillating the motors at a set frequency. If they are twitching with no beeps then something else is up.

Start up beeps happen, then a few seconds after, they twitch. And I mean they spin up for a split second, so several full very quick rotations.

My cycle time on Clean Flight is hovering around 1000, isn't that a bit too low? I've tried changing it in CLI command (set looptime = 1500), but it's not sticking.

Thanks

EDIT: I've tried reflashing, the works, all is at default right now. As soon as I dc motor 4's signal cable from the Naze, no problems. So motor 3 and 4 are getting some form of signal making them twitch.

Maybe it's just unhappy as there is no receiver?
 
Last edited:
I've had ESCs that 'chirp' when they should be seeing zero throttle. The ESCs in question were ZTW spiders, and it would only happen with oneshot enabled.

It's solved (on cleanflight/betaflight) by raising throttle min command by about 50uS (so 1050 from default) re-calibrating the ESCs (so they expect 1050uS as zero throttle), then lowering min command back to 1000.

If it's a constant regular beep, then it's probably the "beacon" setting on BLheli. It can be programmed to make the motor beep after there's been no increase from zero throttle for a set period. The default is 10 minutes, but that can be lowered.
 
Nope, still nothing. Reflashed, only changed the reversed status. Still motors 3 and 4 'twitching', no matter what the min throttle level is. Even stranger is that they won't spin if I connect the USB, but the moment I DC the USB with the battery in, they start twitching.

They all spin up perfectly fine, so wondering if I could just live with it?
 
Just checking, but you are doing all this with the props off, aren't you?

Good.

Have you calibrated the esc's? If not, do that first. Plenty of videos on how to do it via cleanflight on YouTube.

Set your minthrottle - again have a look on YouTube.

Set your mincommand to something like 990.

It sounds like two of the four esc's have their low set point too close to where your mincommand is set.

Three values:

Mincommand is the value the fc sends to the esc when it's armed but the throttle value is below mincheck. Mincheck is the value you set for the bottom of the throttle range. The throttle needs to be below this to arm the quad. This is to protect you from arming a quad with the throttle up. Minthrottle is the value the fc sends to the esc when the quad is armed and the throttle position is above mincheck. Ideally this needs to be calibrated so all motors spin up together.

All of these need to be set correctly and the esc's calibrated.
 
Back
Top Bottom