Xcopter Quad Build - Weeks eight to ten and eleven - Lessons Learnt

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

Micro Quad fully loaded

Xcopter Quad Build - Weeks eight to ten and eleven and some Lessons Learnt

I have missed a few weeks, mainly because not a lot has been happening in the stuff area, just getting batteries and the balancer and other parts. The story begins with week eight and receiving the the green props and the BESC programming card and male to male servo leads, (there are ten in a pack, so enough for two multi's with some spare) nothing much spectacular and came to the door for $44.00, knocking the average over to $30.65.
I wanted the card because, well, one, it is easier to program the ESC's and two, I wanted to try out the music option on the ESC's. Programming is really easy with one of these, no trying to flick the throttle and counting etc. The music available is ... well ... interesting. It did not come with "Flight of the Valkeries" but a part of Beethovens "Fur Elise", which I selected. I also programmed the ESC to reduce power with low voltage and to have a normal start.

Week nine and I got the charger, nylon screws and nuts all for $31.84 making the average now $30.78. again nothing much here except I had to do some research on how to use the charger and have posted a good Youtube link below from Bruce of RC Model Reviews. I also mounted the controller board. I am planning on putting the receiver on top of the controller, but having it firmly mounted may be a bit tricky.

XT-60

Week ten brought in the battery and prop balancer, all for $42.12 with a final average of, $31.91. Except ... The battery (from the Australian warehouse) came with the XT-60 connector, not the JST which is on the Micro Quad. This was the first time I had seen the XT-60 and it is a really great connector. Good surface area connection and nice and firm with out having a lock (the 60 is for the 60Amps it can carry without melting). I also like that if it is hard to get apart, you can use a screwdriver without risking shorting the connectors like what can happen with the Deans connectors, which is what I use, until now.

So, for week eleven, I order a battery from the International warehouse with the JST connection and a packet of male and female XT-60, so I can convert all my other gear to XT-60. I also ordered some wire as well, along with the USB programmer for my Hobbyking radio. This cost an additional $20.89 now bringing the average down to $30.91, but adding a week to the build.

So total all up is $340.02 having spent $81.88 of that on postage. I will do a proper break down for the Quad in the next blog with the gear that was actually used on the Quad.

This does include a pretty good camera and other gear that will be used for other planes as well including a battery that will go over to the Cessna 180 as it has the XT-60, and I have already started a plan of attack on the next planes. Finish the cessna 180, start on the cessna 310, convert the 0.25 glow to electric, and get the Mini Stick done when it arrives.

Preparing up the gear for the test flights and lessons learnt.

Little IC broke it's bag of smoke

So the first thing I needed to do was charge the battery. I need to do this to check the balancing and vibration. I have balanced the props, but the motors need checking. I also have to check the motor directions and make sure they are correct. I have the battery in the garage and it is a bit dark, but I would like it charged for checking and flying first thing tomorow, being the Saturday. I plug the charger onto the car battery and plug in the battery ... in the darkish light. I set the unit to charge, and ... no battery connected!. What the???. So I turn the light on to see what I have done wrong, and that is when I see the smoke! I check the unit and battery. What I had done was two things.

1. Put the source connections on incorrect polarity. Yep, the positive gator was on the negative terminal on the car battery, and vice versa.

2. The other thing was the gator clips on the charge leads from the balanced charger where touching, causing a short circuit, hence no battery connected error.

Well, I corrected the source connections, and took care of the gator clips on the charge end and connected the LiPo ... and ... No battery connected :(. I killed the charger. As can be seen by the picture, one little IC is popped and now the device is not functional.

So, what are the lessons learnt.

1. Don't try and connect electronic equipment up in the dark!

2. Check that nothing is shorting out.

3. If a charger shows any signs of being damaged, don't use it. Throw it away as LiPo's can be volatile if not charged correctly, and a damaged charger will most likely not charge but actually damage your batteries.

How to charge your LiPo battery with the Hobbyking balanced chargers.

Well that is it for the last four weeks. Next week will be real flights, I hope. I have some test flights planned before the proper first recorded flight and a brand new and bigger charger on it's way. Along with that I bought a spare motor as well, as one of the motors do not appear to turn freely, and I am not sure if this will have an impact on performance as it does seem to run o.k.
Unfortunately I have not been well, so the work has slowed for the last two weeks (also why this is late as well), it has been a bit to cold and wet to hang out in the garage and I really need to get better for work, so I can pay for all this stuff!
So ... Ĝis Revido.

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!