Quad

[Tom]

I've read that most chinese import (turnigy, hobbyking SS, ...) work fine. I didn't do any tests with Western-made ESCs. In case you prefer more professional ESCs: there's also an I2C port available

When I have some spare time (will I ever?), I'll do a flight tests with the ESCs running at 50Hz.

Analog servos will probably have a lot of difficulties. I guess the digital servos might be able to decode the signal.

[Tom]

The quadrocopter frames:
You need 2 of those to "sandwich" the 4 aluminium tubes:

Microcopter frame3d.pdf

(9.88 KiB) Downloaded 2294 times

And you need one of this to mount the gluonpilot module:

Microcopter subframe1.pdf

(13.11 KiB) Downloaded 1854 times

I used standard epoxy as the base material.

[pizza]

what happens when the battery voltage drops below operating voltage, will the ESC ensure that the motors slow down gradually, or could it fall from the sky?
This is what I read from wikipedia, not sure of its meaning

A BEC-equipped ESC meant for airplane use often incorporates a low-voltage-cutoff (LVC) circuit which can sense the voltage drop caused when the battery has little charge left in it. It then cuts the power to the 'drive' motor in order to provide the 'steering' servo(s) with enough power to be able to bring the model safely back to the operator. The power to the propeller would be cut but the operation of the control surfaces would be maintained in order to perform a dead-stick landing. Without this feature, all control would be lost when the battery expired, probably resulting in the destruction of the model. In some cases, the BEC is part of the radio control receiver, instead of being part of the ESC.

[Tom]

Yes that's true. There is no mechanism yet to prevent this from happening. However, in reality you notice that the battery is almost empty. Even if the ESC would half the output power to the motor, you can re-enable full power by quickly shutting of power and going back to full power.

The current version is still more of a "technology demonstrator", to do some fun flying at home or your local flying field. In the future extra functionality to overcome this will be added.

[pizza]

tom, did you use deans ultra/ec3/xt60 connector for your lipo batteries? deans are pretty hard to disconnect and connect. the lipos i ordered now come with xt60, so im wondering if i should convert to xt60,haven't used them before

[Tom]

I'm not so familiar with all those kinds of connectors, but I used 4mm gold plugs for the battery, and 3mm gold plugs per ESC.

[Mitch]

I've had the xt60 type connectors melt down even at 30 amps on a 450 sized heli. I've switched to exclusively deans (though they are sometimes difficult to connect they seem to be the most reliable up to about 50 amps) and for higher currents I use HXT which is a pair of 4mm round connectors in a housing.

I see a lot of failures due to poor solder joints to the connectors. Good flux, solder, and technique are probably as important as the type of connector.

[Mitch]

Here is a link to an alternate source for the counter rotating pairs of quad props. This is the manufacturer in the states. http://www.maxxprod.com/mpi/mpi-29a.html

[Maximus]

Hi,
Any developement for Quad use ?
Cheers
Maximus

[Tom]

Quad development has been on a low level. I have been focussing on UAV navigation in the meantime. Now this is as good as finished, I can start focussing on quadrocopters again