Sunday, August 12, 2012

Quadcopter - DJC1000-X4 beta build 2

It seems like every time I finally get on here to write a blog post I forget what I have already said and repeat some things and forget some things. Sorry for that.

I finished the DJC1000-X4 beta build with plexiglass (known from now onward as "DJC1000-X4 beta build 1").


Through that build I found a few minor issues with the frame design from the plexiglass build.


This video is of the DJC1000-X4 beta build 1 trying to fly. After the video we took it back in the garage and found that one motor mount was still loose. After straitening that up and tightening the screw, we found a lot of vibration. The vibration was due to a motor mount (one of the 'cross mount' type) was broken. This is from me trying to bend it strait in the vice after a small crash on the X450 carbon fiber frame. Sorry for the poor lighting, but we just wanted to get it flying (my friends wanted to see it fly).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOqYDnDdl04

I have fixed them fairly well.. at least as good as I can with the space that I have on the frame.

Next I created a 1/8th inch plywood version of the frame. Here is the design used for that:


Here are some pictures of the process of building the plywood frame:

The weight savings on the plywood frame versus the plexiglass is actually quite significant.

While working on the wooden frame I also modded my Turnigy 9X radio to run the open source ER9X firmware. The main reason I did this was to be able to correctly use the 3 position switch. The ER9X software is very easy to use compared to the stock software. Here are some picture of my hardware mode to install the programming cable:



Pictures of the wooden frame installed:


Here is the first real flight of the DJC1000-X4 beta build 2. In this one I used ArduCopter v2.6 firmware. There was one before this but I just went up quick and found an issue, fixed it and then recorded this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwOH2UPDPqM
Sorry for the poor camera work. The next video is better, I swear.

Here is flight 2 of the DJC1000-X4 beta build 2. In this one I used ArduCopter v2.7.1. This fixed my previous Yaw issues. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RkOY4Q7ksE

Next I wanted to get the camera gimbal to work. I beleive there was a bug in either ArduCopter v2.7.1 of the Mission Planner that caused the camera to tilt the wrong direction on me. I had just use a pot on the transmitter to control the camera on this flight. I has an issue with the front left motor that I still need to figure out (likely need to redo ESC calibration after resetting the ArduCopter settings). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMsxzQz5XEo


I have been working with someone who is going to help me cut the frame parts out of carbon fiber. As a result of talking to him, I am going to need to make additional changes to make it easier to cut on a CNC machine.

I also had my uncle (a former Aerospace Engineer) take a look at the frame with me and he had a couple suggestions. I will be making those changes to the design soon as well. I may need to cut out another plywood version of the frame to test the changes for strength before doing the final carbon fiber version.


In the next Blog post I will outline the quadcopter build that I helped my friend, Matt, with. It was a very well planned one night build to flight. Sometime I even impress myself :)