Hi and welcome to Maxx's Stuff, I'm Maxx and this is my stuff!
XCopter Micro Quad Build - Week seven
This week was a really exciting week, I got the last ESC, Hex drivers, 2M screws and lock nuts, along with the three bladed black props all from Hobby King. Came to the door for $24.00 with an average now of $28.15 .... Except. I failed to check the hex drivers size. The smallest is 1.5mm, and I already had 1.5mm drivers and needed something smaller for the motor. You may remember from week four I needed to rotate the mount of the first motor so its wires would enter the micro frame more comfortably. So I had to go to the local hardware store and buy an entire set of Allan keys for $20 so I could get a 1.3mm, 0.9mm and 0.7mm. I think it was the 1.3 that was small enough. That has now brought the average to $30.61 ... dang, budget is now blown and will have to work hard to bring it down, and get it done in ten weeks. The hex drivers are great, that feel really comfortable and allow good force but good control as well, superbly made, just pity they do not come smaller.
I love the props, I think they look fantastic along with the spinner, so next week I will have the green props to help with orientation while flying. Along with the screws I received means the motors are now mounted as can be seen on the picture.
I was amazed with myself, having been born with ten thumbs I did not lose one single screw or nut!
So now all the ESC's are soldered in and hot glued to the frame, the motors are mounted and also soldered. Until I get a battery, I will not be able to tell if the motors are running in the correct direction, but a quick de-solder, a swap of two leads will fix that. Next week I will also be getting the BESC programming card, servo leads and 14mm nylon spacers for the receiver.
For the video, I thought I would show something a bit different. These little guys come from the University of Pennsylvania. They are robotic and programmed to fly like this. Enjoy the tune, James Bond Theme.
P.S. Since I received the USB AVR programmer, I have been experimenting more with kkMulticoperflashtool and have found how to use it in Linux and all the features that come with the program. Slowly producing a Video on that so keep an eye out, hope to get it up soon.
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 six
This week I got the last outrunner and two more ESC's at $30.57 from Hobby King. Brings the average to $28.71. I thought I would use the week to prep up the solder joints and the three ESC's (fourth in the next week). I measured out roughly the length of wire needed on the ESC three phase side. Because the outrunners need to go in a certain direction, I plan to do any direction change with the motor connections so the ESC connections can remain fairly neat. For those who may not know, to change the direction of brushless motors, you just nee to swap two of the three phases, I will most likely get into more detail when I start running up the Quad.
I have "tinned" the connections on the frame, the ESC and motor wires. I had to use cored solder as my flux has dried right out, and it is a trip to either Morwell or Warragul to get more, and I could not be bothered driving to Morwell, or waiting until Monday to get some from Warragul (I work in Warragul). But the cored stuff came out good as can be seen in the picture.
I use an old scope iron with 2mm tip. It managed to tin everything o.k. and I think it will be quite adequate when I put it all together. Flite test have put a review up of the Micro Quad. This is the one from Hobby King for $99.99, a bit cheaper than what I am spending, but I am enjoying the weekly products and doing little bits of research, but next week I will be showing some real building.
The latest "The list" update.
I Now need to get the USB programming lead for the Hobby King 6ch radio. This will get included in the price, but come under the "For other aircraft in the fleet", I think I can still remain on target, but I am really pushing the $30 for ten weeks. Hopefully I will get a video out about how to program the HobbyKing radio on Linux, or find a good one online.
Anyhow, hope you enjoyed the video, do a search on Youtube for the Micro Quad, there are some great videos, including this one with a crash.
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 five
Sorry about the lateness of posting again, but I had a very busy weekend. I had both my son's fifth birthday along with his mothers (Carmel of Solomon Sewing) on Sunday, but more about that later.
In week five I received two more outrunners from Hobby King and the first lot of props, coming in at $32.49 to my door, bringing the average up to $28.33. As can be seen by the picture, the prop adapter is too big for these props. The prop hubs are about the same size as the shaft, so when I show the three bladed props I am getting in week seven, you will agree that they will look good.
Thought I'd share a video from Flite Test on setting up a multi rotor including balancing. In week three I mentioned a prop balancer that I needed to order as many have said vibrations are bad for the controller board. In this clip, they discuss that even balancing the motors is important, and since I am using prop adapters, this may become important. I will be showing more on balancing when the balancer turns up in week nine.
Maxx's Cooking Stuff
Now for something completely different. I mentioned that I was busy this week end, well Sunday was made up of a lot of cooking. I cooked lunch which was home made hamburgers, followed by a Banana chocolate cake (with over 300gm of dark chocolate). Dinner included one of my special dinners of Spinach Lasagne followed with bread and butter custard pudding.
While preparing the meal, Carmel asked me if there is any other copy of the Spinach recipe, i.e. If the house burnt down, would there be a copy somewhere? The answer is no. I have it sourced from a book called "Pasta Cooking". Since there is a lot of Pasta cook books, it would be difficult to narrow down, so here is the recipe for prosperity, and the future internet archaeologists to find hundreds of years from now.
I would rate this as "Dishes high". It does have a high level of dishes and the lasagne dish will most likely require some scrubbing, so rinse as early as you can.
Prep time is around 20minutes
Cooking time, 30 minutes with oven at 200 ̊C.
Serves four.
Ingredients;
Lasagne sheets
Spinach sauce
90gm Butter
90gm Plain flour
140ml Milk
450gm (or more) Spinach
Nutmeg
Salt and Pepper.
Method Spinach Sauce
Melt butter in sauce pan and stir in flour.
Remove from heat and slowly add milk.
Heat until thick then add Spinach.
Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper. Method Mornay Sauce
Similar to the spinach sauce, but add only 60gm parmesan cheese at the end.
Line lasagne dish with lasagne sheets. Add half the Spinach Sauce. Add another layer of lasagne sheets followed with the rest of the spinach sauce. Top with lasagne sheets and the mornay sauce with the remaining parmesan cheese sprinkled on top. Bake in oven at 200 ̊C for 30 minutes or until browned on top.
Serve with a warm bean mix in winter, and a salad in summer. This dish goes well with almost any wine, but I would watch the sweeter ones. The cheesy taste means that even a good ale (Such as a Coopers DIY English Bitter) goes well with this.
So, what other hobbies do you have that does not include RC aero modelling?
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 four
Sorry about this being late. I was hoping to get a video out for every one on programming the controller board in Linux, but have had trouble getting the script done and obtaining some graphics in time, so maybe in a few weeks when we get closer to actually putting the Micro Quad in the air.
The fourth week in I finally get the AVR programmer, one motor and one ESC. I have to watch it, because every time I see ESC, I want to call it an escape, as in the escape key on the keyboard. Of cause, delivered to my door for $27.91, bringing the average to $27.30. I am going to have to be careful because the next few orders are a bit over $30. Need to do this if I am going to keep this to ten weeks, and as stated last week and additional cost has emerged in the prop balancer and as I will explain later, more tools as well.
First before all the technobabble, I am gong to talk about the motor and ESC. The motor packaging and items really impressed me. I like that for around $10 you get the motor, prop adapters (two of) bullet connectors and heat shrink. The other bit that amazes me is that this tiny little thing is a three phase motor. I was an electrician some years ago, and the three phase motors I worked on where just a tad bigger. Looking at the ESC and sizing it on the frame will mean possibly some trimming to the leads, I also noticed that the three leads coming out of the motor are over the bolt as in the picture. This means I will need to rotate the mount with the armature so the leads will go through the hole with less stress. My allen key set does not have small enough key, so I will need to order some additional tools from Hobby King. So the next order (this will be the order for week seven) will include the Turnigy hex driver set.
The other thing is the prop adapter, I actually really like the little alloy spinner, and the props I ordered will not fit them. So, I will need to order different props, luckily (and I actually think will look heaps better) Hobby King have some three bladed 5030's in black and green, so I will also be ordering those for week seven and week eight.
Programming The AVR in Linux
I will still do a video on programming the controller in Linux, but for now I will just give a basic run down of how it is done.
The programs really needed are both AVRdude and a Java Runtime Engine, I used OpenJDK 6. Get those from your Distro Repo (Linux distribution software repository).
The JRE is used to run kkMulticopterflashtool. Grab the Windows/Linux stable version. I did not actually use this to flash the controller as there are some incompatibilities with the Linux AVRdude binary that comes with kkMulti, and the conf file is also incorrect. What I did use kkMulti for was getting the desired HEX files. It is well designed to be able to pick the desired configuration and firmware with maximum ease.
I then flashed the controller with the hex file I downloaded, being XCopter 4.7 by kapteinkuk using AVRdude that came from my Distro Repo, Kubuntu 12.04 in my case in the console .... yes the console, just makes life easier... really.
It will be some time before I get to properly test, but the flash showed no errors, and appeared to do as expected.
Anyway, please enjoy the video from Flite Test on how to flash the Hobby King Multi Rotor Controller Board in Windows using kkMulticopterflashtool, as some of you might actually be interested in how to do that, and it is easier.
The other cool thing about the AVR programmer is Hobby King have a great cheap Arduino clone and breakout shield (sensor shield) that this AVR can program if your interested in doing your own hacking.
I will be getting one with the shield when the project is over. I am planning on trying it with my old Real Robots robot from years ago, see if I can get it going and doing stuff.
Any how, thanks for reading, and keep an eye out for the video, and a question. With this Atmel programming, do you think it would be cool if Hobby King maybe started supplying some robot gear? Wheels, coasters, sensors, micro switches etc. I bet Hobby King could really bring it to market at a price that would get people in cheaply, or is it to far removed for the modern RC pilot .... your thoughts?
The hex drivers are great, that feel really comfortable and allow good force but good control as well, superbly made, just pity they do not come smaller.
