Going to pop over the road from work and pick up more heatshrink and stuff today. May pick up some proper power diodes too.

Aiming to finish the build this weekend, and aiming to do some flying general - haven't taken anything out since moving house a couple of months ago so should really do some time with the Quad on Saturday and then finish the build so I can test fly this new truck Sunday.

(19-Apr-2017, 11:23 PM)Aaron Wrote: ...should really do some time with the Quad on Saturday and then finish the build so I can test fly this new truck Sunday...

"...and so I can take some photos of the finished build to post on intoFPV..."  I know you meant to say that, but just hit "Post Reply" accidentally...

(20-Apr-2017, 12:58 AM)sloscotty Wrote: "...and so I can take some photos of the finished build to post on intoFPV..."  I know you meant to say that, but just hit "Post Reply" accidentally...

Well my weekend has taken a hit - have to spend the last half of Saturday doing some work on the Birkin build - which then makes Saturday morning flying time, if I'm organized.  The Sunday I can do some build work while doing "chores" (otherwise known as load the dishwasher and washing machine then skulk off to the study before my wife realises the machines are doing the work) around the house.

However just for you Scotty I'll try

Well this build has sort of ground to a halt while I work out motor spacers (aka organise my garage enough so that I can fabricate them.  I think I'm going to lift the motors about 6mm - then need only 2mm but it will give some better prop clearance at the rear.

   

GPS Antenna is on.  Uses a bolted on front mount and zip-ties on the rear. 

                

Front on so you can see how I've used the braid to the arms.  Despite some reasonable care I slipped up with some of the lengths for the LED wiring and now will ave to mount them over the ESCs - however in reality further up the arms and they would have fouled on the folding legs anyway!

   

The FC bay has worked out quite neatly.  There's adequate space, and I'll be able to have my little red JST 5v supply connector available for my tiny little CMOS DVR/camera module (the one I've used on my Cheap250 build).   I'm intending to use it like a black box for all flying so that if I ever get involved in some flying incident there's a modicum of evidence about what I was doing.

Urgh. Motor spacers suck to make from Carbon Fiber sheet, lucky a local off another (car) forum designed and 3D printed some for me last weekend. Work had me smashed so will only pick up this week.

Definitely owe the dude a beer

Spent a bit of time today setting up the LEDs and doing some basic systems run-time testing. All good and even get GPS reception indoors!

So it's taken me over a week to pick up the spacers..  Here's the design based on my description which was 10mm hole in the middle, 5mm thick, 16/19mm mount holes.

   

As we got rained out on Friday a bit early I trekked over to pick them up and finally screwed the motors down this morning.

         

The sit perfectly with 12mm screws holding everything together.

I broke out the braid and the hot-knife again to shroud the motor to ESC wiring on the upper side of the arms.  I'm hoping it gives it a bit of an industrial look without being too "try hard".  There's recesses in the underside of the arms that will protect the ESC and wiring.

               

Then I went on a 4 hour wild-goose-chase which I would have avoided had I simply done the ESC calibration at the start.

Everything is connected, tested and working, motors spin in the correct directions (I'm bucking the Tricopter trend and counter-rotating the from pair) and even a single 8" prop is giving enough lift for the weight of the entire craft!

I'll get some better pics tomorrow and maybe even do a maiden flight!

Nice work with the braid.

Took it out back.

Calibrated the Accelerometer.

Armed it.

At "idle" it makes almost enough thrust to lift off

Had a couple of small hovers. Then bumped it a bit hard.

Hedge then concrete.

2 props later....

Will try in a more open (and grassy) park tomorrow.

(21-May-2017, 08:43 AM)Aaron Wrote: At "idle" it makes almost enough thrust to lift off

...

Will try in a more open (and grassy) park tomorrow.

Hehe...that's going to be a fun one!  Congratulations on the maiden!

Finally took it out to the park...

Massive issues with stability and flight.

Ended badly when a screw retaining the tail mechanism and motor came out. It pretty much fell in half and dropped ~10m out of the sky. Smashed the cage above the FC, smashed the RX to FC connector and possibly damaged the RX.

Motors are beaten up.

May be repairable, or may need a new frame kit to scavenge parts.

I can only suspect the GPS, or compass alignment was "wrong", although it was correct last test hover.

Sorry man - that sucks!

               

Well you get the idea!

I have to do some more checking before trying to power up the FC and seeing if it's functional.

Ouch! Hopefully it looks worse than it is and you can salvage some parts.

That's bad news Aaron.

I hope you manage to get it back together. I was looking forward to seeing your tricopter in the air.

From all the pieces I found on the ground I have managed to reconstruct most of the broken parts. I'll pick up some epoxy and reinforce the damage and go from there.

The tail mechanism attaching screw that fell out was still loose in the tail which of course will take a massive amount of disassembly to get back in place.

At least on the surface I think part of my issues relate to the relative immaturity of iNav when it comes to Tricopter so I'll switch to Clean or Beta flight (maybe even Triflight) in the hopes that I can leverage some of the support forums.