Bringing it together!

At long long last I finally got to kick on towards the final assembly after laying out the ESC wiring and so so many dry-fits to make sure my build was going to live up to my expectations.

                     

The first thing to do is the mounting screws for the control stack.  The Racerstar ESC came with a great mounting set, with long nylon screws and spacers.  The standard "standoffs" don't work with the component layout so it was critical to use the spacers.  This also suited having the ESC at the bottom of the stack.  I've used the blue "painters tape" to hold things in position.

               

I'm not going to bore you all with every solder joint so in these two pictures you can see the PDB and FC taking their place above the ESC.  I used the regular nylon standoffs to hold down the PDB and continue the stack for the FC.  Already the wiring is tucking away very neatly, it's still a little chaotic between the layers but thats almost impossible to address unless using one of the stackable type FCs and PDBs.



Looking pretty sharp from above I think.  Now the routing of the rear motor wiring starts to make sense and fit with the overall theme.

The Video System
Before the FC gets mounted for what should hopefully be the last time I need to link the FPV Camera, VTX and the PDB.  

                           

The first thing to do was mount the FPV Camera.  The 210mm frame has a mounting plate thats set up to take this particular camera and position it fairly well back in the frame to provide protection to the lens but hopefully not have part of the frame visible in the shot.

         

I'll freely admit the camera and VTX wiring isn't the greatest.  I certainly wasn't happy with the quality of the wire included with the Eachine components - the PVC jacket is way to hard and reeks of "low quality".  I have the feeling that in time I'm going to remake this in Silicone jacket wire.

The Receiver

         

Lastly you can see the wiring for the Flysky receiver solder onto the FC.  The Black/White pair is the battery voltage for the receivers telemetry feed and the other is the power for the RX and PPM signal.  It's not yet mounted in place as the mounting holes aren't set on 30.5mm spacing (they're 30mm) and are a little small for M3 hardware.  

I'll get out to the garage and drill them out (there's plenty of room) tomorrow and really get things wrapped up.

That looks fantastic Aaron!  
You know...people are going to start asking you to build one for them...
(First dibs...)

Very nice build Aaron, you have a truly obsessive attention to detail.

Flysky X6B Receiver
I couldn't remember if I really mentioned this beyond the last couple of posts.  This is a relatively new receiver for those of us using the Flysky AFHDS 2A protocol and is probably the most full featured sold under the Flysky brand.

The main attraction is the form-factor which promises to be able to mounted atop of a flight stack in a very neat manner.  It's also very well featured with PWM, PPM, iBus (but not SBUS).  Like the Turing iA6C  receiver it also has voltage telemetry for the flight battery 



For this build I'm using PPM and the Voltage telemetry.  

The silicone wires that come with the receiver are really nice to work with, the insulation is tougher than some of the other silicone coatings Ive dealt with before and twists nicely as shown in the pic. 

Unfortunately the mounting holes aren't quite 30.5mm spacing.  Nothing a drill and file can't fix though.

So none of you noticed!
Way back when I was linking the power between the PDB and the FC I made a booboo.  You see on the Tricopter build I had linked the FC and Receiver to different port on the FC and conveniently there was also a voltage input for the board (UART3) right next to it.  This time around without thinking I connected the Input 5v from the PDB to the 5v OUTPUT of the FCs internal regulator.  Not exactly smart.

I found this when doing a final comparison revue this morning before connecting up power to the completed stacks (I'd tested each component as they arrived before assembly).

Anyway fixed now 

Final Assembly!
The most exciting bit of the build!  I went out to the garage (only -2 degrees C this morning) grabbed the drill and quickly enlarged the mounting holes in the receiver to 3.5mm grabbed a set of needle files and headed back inside to my workroom where its warm and finished the job!

                      

The holes were enlarged enough for the smooth fit and no more.  The Open-cell foam will be clamped between the FC and the RX to isolate the Barometer - I re-purpose the tyre foams from Mini-Z Monster Truck tyres that I have laying about.  The whole thing is secured down with nylon nuts.  All in all I'm pretty happy with the stack, there's enough space to add some isolating rubbers to the FC but I don't think they're be necessary.

                 

I'm really happy with how the stack sits and the very limited visible wiring - basically it's just the FC to ESC bundle that is on one side.

   

Last step was to plug the stack into the PC and power up with just USB and make sure everything would communicate OK.  You know the fun stuff like making sure the magic smoke doesn't escape on a really basic level.

Next Test:  Flight Battery
As mentioned this time last week I grabbed a couple of cheap Zippy Compact 1300mah 4S batteries specifically for this build.  They're not mega-high C rating but will be enough for basic flying and hacking around.

Anyway time to strap on on and plug it in!



Now this is why I like my chosen PDB and orientation.  The battery wiring defaults to being clear of the props, and although it looks clumsy to access it's actually pretty good - in either orientation you're not going to be reaching in for the XT60 with the motors turning.  



It's possible to see the VTX display AND activate the button for setup with the battery in place - although my big clumsy fingers probably mean using a screwdriver and a proxy button presser.

 

Pretty sure there's enough LEDs in that stack to light a modest Christmas tree!

Not Finished Yet!
As expected the ESC setup requires some fiddling.  The Motor layout is almost correct, I need to swap motor 3 & 4 which can be done easily enough at the connector in line from the FC to the ESC.

Annoyingly I seem to have 3 motors spinning counter to their prescribed direction.  so it's either undo the stack and swap ESC wires or I look into the motor reversing options via software.  

Other little jobs to do include:  

• Updating the ESCs version of BLHeli - I didn't bother with this as I knew that out-of-the-baggie these have been working fine for most people (unlike some of the other junk I buy cheap)
  
• Radio setup - including setting up the new "model" on my transmitter and setting up modes etc.
  
• ESC Calibration
  
• Test hover!
  
• Test Flight!
  
• Buy some FPV goggles and a new transmitter without self-centering (my other flying things work best with self-centering for their purpose) 
  

Good catch on the wiring mistake there!

Just fire up the Chrome based BLHeli configurator and use that to reverse the motor directions. I never bother with swapping the wires any more.

As to updating the ESC firmware, I always use the real BLHeliSuite software for that as I've seen various reports of the Chrome app bricking ESCs during a firmware update. Thankfully, BLHeliSuite runs just fine on Linux with Wine.

(04-Jun-2017, 02:57 AM)Aaron Wrote: Not Finished Yet!
The Motor layout is almost correct, I need to swap motor 3 & 4 which can be done easily enough at the connector in line from the FC to the ESC.

Annoyingly I seem to have 3 motors spinning counter to their prescribed direction.  so it's either undo the stack and swap ESC wires or I look into the motor reversing options via software.  

These are the 2 key things that following the uavfutures build seem to be doing so far as I watch others who have been working from that as a starting point. I wired mine up with the swap of 3&4 based on the video... but really I could have just as easily did what you're talking about and made my build a little cleaner. 

The other one is the reversed motors. Mine did the same exact thing. In fact I'd guess that the one that isn't backwards is likely going to be motor 3 or 4?
It's super simple to swap out in BLHeli configurator as Unseen says above. It's litterally just a drop down box for each motor that needs to be reversed and you're good. 

I think if I were to run into someone who was going to start with this framework I would probably warn them of both of these possible issues up front because I think Kaitylynn had the motor swap issue and I am pretty sure I saw somewhere else that someone had reversed motors.

I'm pretty sure in my case I simply transposed the colours and ESC position because the esc counts one way and Cleanflight/BetaFlight count another.

Motor direction is always "random" when all the wires are black! If anything it's a good excuse to go back through and check all the wiring and software again before flying

(04-Jun-2017, 10:03 PM)Aaron Wrote: ... If anything it's a good excuse to go back through and check all the wiring and software again before flying

works for me! I'll have to remember that one.

If you think about it, another run through the build wiggling wire and all that may break away bad joints or reveal oversights (like my difference between Vin and 5v marked pads) cannot hurt.

That said I do enjoy the building far far more than others do.

If I thought I could get a small (token really) $$ return building for others I would happily do it -

With as clean as this thing looks... I'd consider getting a custom build from you.   As you say though, part of it would depend on how much it cost to make it worth my while and if you were making enough money to make it worth your while.

Well took a few minutes to fire up BLHeli and flash 16.6 to the Racerstar (had 16.5) and sort out the motor direction and transposed 3 & 4 motors.

In the end decided to just do the direction swap in software and as it's my first time tinkering with BLHeli and ESCs on a FC that supports pass thru (I had the Tricopter all flashed etc before build and subsequently have only sync'd them) and have to say it's so much nicer than all the other claptrap I e endured previously.

The tranposition of 3& 4 was a matter swapping the yellow and purple wires

Might try for a maiden flight on the weekend.