Monday February 21, 2011 at 11:29 pm | Filed under Hobbies, Projects, Quadcopter
The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be? – it is the same the angels breathe. ~Mark Twain
Okay that may be a bit heavy, but I gotta say… it was quite a thrill to push forward on that throttle stick and have the quad lift off for the first time. Don’t confuse that with the quad being successful on its first attempt. But it was close. A couple of settings tweaks later and it was flying pretty well, even with my lack of experience at the controls. We got some late afternoon flying in and Monique, Brenna, Vork and Michael were there for moral support, successful flight ro not. Actually Vork might have been there to mock me if it didn’t work. Not sure.
So no pictures today, as the whole build was really completed yesterday. But what I do have for you today is a incredibly quickly thrown together video of some of the highlights. **Spoiler Alert** there’s a big crash at the end!
The crash was from about 35-ish feet and it snapped off two of the “landing gear” which were temporarily attached with servo tape and a couple of tie-wraps. OR you can say that they were engineered to break away in the case of a rough landing. Yeah, let’s say that. At any rate, damage was cosmetic and had we heeded the incessant beeping of the “low battery warning alarm” (whatever) that had been going off for around 30 seconds, then we probably could have avoided this. I was just getting started though! Somehow batteries seemed optional when I was lost in flight. Wrong.
The quad has been dubbed the “VorkMike Mark 1″ after the three guys that donated most, in money, time, and interest. Also, much thanks to Monique for putting up with me taking on a new hobby somewhat out of the blue and putting in some nights of work in the garage. I’m leaving for Florida tomorrow morning and I’ll be back Sunday, so no flying my quad until I get back, I guess. Glad we got it off the ground today!
Monday February 21, 2011 at 1:11 am | Filed under Hobbies, Projects, Quadcopter
Today I understand how Dr. Frankenstein felt as his creation awoke for the first time — Tomorrow I get to find out if it breaks loose and destroys the town. You see, I was able to get to a point in this whole building thing where I have control over the sucker. Haven’t actually flown yet as the sun had gone down by the time I had the chance for a maiden flight. I didn’t want to chance taking this 35″ beast inside with my meager flight skills and untrimmed settings as that could make for some broken stuff.
So let me explain… first of all, Friday night I completed the real-life version of my wiring diagram. I stopped short of adding AUX ports as that’s for future expansion anyway, so I pushed them off too.. well… the future.
Quad Wiring in Real Life
The next step was attaching this to the quad’s frame. My brother Michael came over and helped me out with the setup and we got a lot done. It started with making sure the motors were all rotating the right way. You see, two of them have to rotate one way, and the other two have to rotate the other way, and there are two types of propellers too, one for each direction (but you knew all that, right?).
This One Goes Counter-Clockwise
So we hooked one motor up, tested it out. It came to life. What an awesome moment! It was the first time the thing took instructions from the radio transmitter. We might have screamed like girls when it started spinning. Then again, maybe we didn’t. You weren’t there, you don’t know! From there it was a matter of routing all of the wires and mounting the controller and receiver, programming the ESCs and making sure the controller was getting as little vibration as possible.
Whew! Now it was starting look like something that might actually fly. Once we had it all plugged in it was time to see if all of the motors were synced and spinning like they should. Success! I know we screamed like girls that time.
Now, at that point it was really tempting to take it outside in the dark and try to see if it’d fly. But we stopped short of that and instead Michael held it above his head while I gave it some throttle and we played with the controls a bit.
Flight Test! Look at Those Props spin!
Everything seems to be in working order so far. Although I know once I try to take to the skies I’ll have to do some trimming and tweaking to help with stabilization. Oh, and there’s a bit more frame to make as the landing gear isn’t attached yet, and the bottom battery carrier isn’t made. But all of that is for another day. For now, my monster is ALIVE!!!
Friday February 18, 2011 at 2:17 am | Filed under Hobbies, Projects, Quadcopter
Tonight I put the motor mounts on the arms, then mounted the motors. I used more of the G10 to make little platforms to give the motors a better base. I’ve made straighter cuts before in my life, but they don’t need to be perfectly square, so they’ll do the job. I’m trying to skip great detail to get to the whole “let’s see if this thing flies” part so that if it doesn’t I won’t look back and wonder why I spend 3 hours on something that didn’t matter.
Motor Platform
Once that was done I turned my focus to the wiring. I had been sketching out the wire routing and I finally landed on a plan.
Quad Wiring Diagram
It actually makes sense to me now. Getting it on paper helps. So with that plan and all of the parts in front of me, I started soldering wire connectors and stuff. I did all of the ESCs, one battery, and the battery switch (which I got to work!). After that I felt a sense of accomplishment, so that was enough. More tomorrow night!
Wired Switch (it even lights up!)
