The XCopter Quad build - Week three

Maxx's Stuff

Hi and welcome to Maxx's Stuff, I'm Maxx and this is my stuff!

In today's world, I manage to have some time to learn, play, discover and tinker with new things and I get to share all that with you.

XCopter Micro Quad Build - Week three

 

This week is about the HD 720p Hobby King Wing Camera that came in at $42.31 delivered to my door. As you could tell, this has upped the average now to $27.09.
Awesome little camera and the quality is not to bad for a sensor so small. I like that the frontal surface area is pretty small, at about 450 mm² (4.5cm²) where most of the other camera's are about 900mm² with some up to about 1400mm², so it is not going to add to much drag. Weighs in at 32gm (listed at 29.4gm), which is a bit weighty for the Micro Quad, but we will see how we go. Battery is reported to give around 3 hours of recording, which I have to try as yet, but I've gotten in around 30 minutes all up with no problems so far with the battery.

It comes shipped with a USB cable with a mini USB end for data transfer and charging. Also has a AV lead for an external video monitor and audio. I have a small LCD monitor I use with my video camera that can be bought for around $25 on ebay. As I get into FPV I am planning on putting one of these onto my radio (heaps cheaper than goggles). They can run on between 5V to 12V (running on 12V in these pictures). I have had it running on 9V battery for around an hour in the past. I have as yet to run it on 9V until flat, so running on a small 2S LiPo will probably be no issue and time may not be a problem either, and knowing it will run on 9V means I have a very cheap back up if needed.

It has a fairly easy menu to navigate. A manual can be downloaded from the Hobby King product page, just click on files at the bottom of the product page and select the file that says "manual (link)" and follow the link in the file. One thing that is interesting is that the buttons are up, and naturally I want to put the flat surface down. Also, a tip I got from the Hobby King site for this product is how to set this to output video via the AV cable and record at the same time if it is going to be used for FPV. The modes don't have this, it is either in video mode, or picture mode. If you are in video mode and plug in the AV lead, it wants to play any recordings on the card, and in picture mode has some OSD stuff that will get in the way if trying FPV, so below are the steps, and I demonstrate it in the video.

1. Turn the unit on
2. Press the power button until you have a red and yellow light, three presses, this is the take picture with movement detection.
3. Plug in the AV cable.
4. Then as quickly as possible, pull out the cable, press the power button once to return to the Video recording setting (one blue LED), then put the cable back in. Now you can monitor and record at the same time as you can see in the video clip below.
Note, if you are too slow, the unit will just power down in about a second as shown in the video.

As for the white balance, it is good to see it can do it, but the transition is really slow. Not sure if this is the unit, or if the card, I did record this on a class 2 card, which is really slow, but managed o.k. I am planning on getting a couple of class 6's or better as recommended and see how that looks. Bruce of Xjet and RCModelReviews did a comparison between this camera and the 720p key chain, this will show a better idea of what the camera can do with faster cards. As can be seen by the comparison, the white balance does darken the ground when there is a lot of sky in the shot.

Although I am showing you how to set this to record and output for FPV, I will most likely not use this camera for FPV, this will be used as a secondary recording device for larger models providing complimentary shots in flight and be used on wings etc where frontal area will be more important.

Next week I will be showing the USB AVR programming device and showing how to program the controller board on Linux with the latest XCopter program.

More notes on week two and The List

I have been reviewing more on building multi rotor copters and many have been saying that vibrations can cause some issues with the controller, so I have had to add an additional item to the list. It comes under "Other stuff that is needed, but also used for other planes in the fleet". And that is a "Prop Balancer". In a couple of weeks I will be talking about the props and balancing, and I have had a little change in design ... but you will have to wait and see what that is.

Ĝis Revido Amikojn!

The XCopter Quad build - Week two

Maxx's Stuff

Hi and welcome to Maxx's Stuff, I'm Maxx and this is my stuff!

In today's world, I manage to have some time to learn, play, discover and tinker with new things and I get to share all that with you.

XCopter Micro Quad Build - Week two

The List.

As promised, the list of items that I will need to purchase to complete this project. All components are available from Hobby King.
Micro Quad PCB frame
HobbyKing Multi-Rotor Board
Four 2900kv Outrunner motors
Four 6A ESC's
5030 props, CW and CCW
Two 800Mah 2s LiPo batteries
Four Male to Male server leads.
2mm screws
2mm nuts
Nylon spacers
Battery Velcro

Other stuff that is needed but is also used for other planes in the fleet.
LiPo battery charger/balancer
BESC progamming card
USB programming lead for HobbKing radios
USBasp AVR programmer
720p video camera

Tools
Turnigy hex driver set
Turnigy hex socket set

Other tools and gear needed that I already have
four channel transmitter and reciever (I am going to use my HobbyKing 6 channel set)
Soldering iron
Solder
Solder Flux (Even if you use cored solder, I still recomend using addition flux)
Hot glue gun and glue.
Screw drivers

Quite a list eh ...

The XCopter Quad build - Week two.

Week two is the programming board and got it to my door for $17.98 (average so far of $19.48). It comes well packed as shown in the pictures, and many hobbiests recommend that the packaging can be used to reduced vibration when mounted into your multi rotor. It is good soft, rigid material and this would be a good use, but it will not fit under the arcs of the micro quad, so I may use a small part of the packing material only as washers, and on if needed, I plan to mount the board on nylon spacers and hope this will suffice, we shall see.


The board is powered by the Atmega 168, making it an 8 bit CPU with 16Kbytes of Flash RAM. It runs at 20MHz and is an industrial grade RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) based CPU, great for our application of stabilising Multi Rotor Copters. With the USBasp programmer in can be flashed with any program. I am planning on loading an XCopter  configuration, where this controller comes with the +Copter configuration pre loaded. The best way to describe an XCopter is you have two rotors at the front, and two rotors at the rear. A Plus configuration has one rotor to the front, one rotor to the rear, with a rotor to the starboard (Right) and another to the port (left).

I was quite excited how well the board fitted into the Micro Quad frame as pictured. You will see it is mounted for a X configuration (the two small arrows at the corner point to the front), but the board also fits perfectly for a + configuration as well. I am hoping the nylon spacers will be high enough for the receiver to fit underneath. The receiver is 12mm high, but the connections are on top, so there might be some creative work required. Hobby King have some 21mm spacers and the receiver is 21mm wide, so that might be a possible solution. The radio I will be using is the Hobby King six channel 2.4GHz (mode 2).

Once I get the programming lead, which will be included in the costs of this build, I will be flashing the card to the XCopter configuration. I will be doing this through Linux, so if your a Linux user and would like know how to do this, hopefully the up coming blog will help.

So at this point, I have the Micro Quad frame and the controller board. But I did do some research and Flite Test have a great video on setting up the controller board on a Quad copter that I suggest you check out if you are just starting in multi rotors like myself.

Next week I get the camera, a pocket sized 720p hi definition video camera that will be going on the Quad as well.

 Ĝis revido amikojn! (Until then friends!)

P.S.
after writing this blog, before publication, Hobby King now provide the Micro Quad with everything except the battery and radio for $99.99

The XCopter Quad build

Maxx's Stuff

Hi and welcome to Maxx's Stuff, I'm Maxx and this is my stuff!

In today's world, I manage to have some time to learn, play, discover and tinker with new things and get to share that with you.

Allow me to introduce myself in my first Blog post. I do RC model's (planes mainly, but that is changing), computers (I am a 100% Linux user at home) and a user of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) along with CC (Creative Commons) music and videos. I am also learning Esperanto, have been for some years, but still to sit my first exam.

Top down look. 220mm across.

The XCopter Quad build

Lately I have not been getting much flying in due to the park flyer being permanently grounded, and just not getting good weather on the rare days I have time to fly, So I am going to build a Micro Quad in the hope I can get some RC flying done in the back yard when time and good weather briefly coincide.

The plan is to purchase the parts over a number of weeks. This will increase the cost due to postage, but will give me time to research how things go together and what to expect when I go for that first flight. A bit like those build magazines you see advertised on TV.

Close up of the PCB tracks for power distribution.

The average spend per week, including postage, must be under $30.00. I say average as some items will go above this, so some purchases will be a lot less to keep the average. I should be able to do this in around ten weeks ... Yep, $300.00 all up and that does not include the radio. The rough list includes the Micro Quad and gear to make it fly, two batteries, charger, and basic tools. Full list next week.

This quad will also include a camera for filming in flight. Once I get proficient in flying this Micro, I plan to get a 400mm+ quad and trying FPV with telemetry, etc.

So the pictures show week one. The Micro Quad frame . Purchased from Hobby King for $20.98 including freight. You will notice in the pics that the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) is up. This is used to distribute power to the eventual four out-runner brush-less motors. The instructions are in black and white and did not indicate which was up. I thought Turnigy would like to be up, so I put it together this way. Since these pics, I have watched some Micros on You tube and noticed that everyone put the PCB down (Duh!, not to mention the pics at Hobby King that I took completely no notice of!), so now my Micro Quad looks like the rest with the PCB down.

Next to the keyboard for better idea on size.

Next week I will show the controller board.  I am planning on making it into an X configuration and since the board comes as a + by default, I will be learning how to program the board through Linux, so I might have some helpful tips in coming posts.

Soooo, what have you built, only to discover that you did it upside down and how did you find out you did it wrong?

 Ĝis revido amikojn! (Until then friends!)