So, I removed the stock landing skids and zip-tied on the heli skid set from my old tricopter.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Turnigy Talon V2 Build: Part 4, New Landing Gear
The Talon V2 kit for the most part is great. However, it suffers from one annoying design flaw. The landing skids are attached to the motor mounts, so every time you make a less-than-perfect landing, the motor mounts twist on the carbon rods. Once the mounts twist, the motors are no longer aligned and the quad stops flying straight.
So, I removed the stock landing skids and zip-tied on the heli skid set from my old tricopter.
So, I removed the stock landing skids and zip-tied on the heli skid set from my old tricopter.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Big Dumb Pug - Big Dummy x 10!
I love my Surly Big Dummy, but I often think about how cool it would be to have a fat tire snowbike also. Banjo Cycles in Madison built a bike that hits both needs with one bike!
http://www.bikecommuters.com/2009/06/11/chriss-big-dumb-pug/
If you are going to go, go big!
http://www.bikecommuters.com/2009/06/11/chriss-big-dumb-pug/
If you are going to go, go big!
Monday, June 11, 2012
Turnigy Talon V2 Build: Part 3 - First Flights!
Final Hardware Setup
Late last week the APC 10 x 4.7 SF pusher props showed up at the local hobby store, so I was able to finish up the quadcopter and try some first flights. I used a pair of velcro cable tie straps to hold the battery in place.
I marked the "forward" legs of the quad using white electrical tape. Hopefully this will give enough visual definition- if not I'll have to find some colored props.
Hobbyking Multi-Rotor control Board v2.1 Firmware Update
I was able to take off, but flight was a bit sketchy, and the platform did not seem very stable at all. I've read quite a bit on RCgroups about kapteinkuk's updated kk board firmware and decided to make the upgrade.
The instructions that hobbyking includes in their instruction manual isn't the easiest in the world to follow. Luckily Flitetest has a great video to walk you through the process.
Following their instructions, I was easily able to download and install the driver for the Hobbyking KK board programmer. The next step is to download and install the actual software for updating the board's firmware. This is where I ran into a bit of trouble. I tried downloading it several times, and even following Flitetest's instructions to the letter, I could not get the KKmulticopter flash tool software to run. After digging through the flash tool software website's help, I found an explanation about the Java version required to run the software. It turns out if you have a 64 bit flavor of windows (which most is these days), you might need to have both 32 bit AND 64 bit Java installed. By default the 32 bit is installed, but it won't run the flash tool if you have a 64 bit system. So, I downloaded and installed Java 64, and sure enough it worked. After that upgrading the firmware was a snap.
I chose to install Kapteinkuk's 4.7 x-copter software. This also required rewiring each of the motors because the rotation direction changed for each prop. A quick tip I learned is to leave the ESC leads a bit long to allow easy reversal of motor direction.
Before doing anything else, I ran out and tried to fly... I found out immediately that the yaw gyro was reversed- as soon as the landing skids left the ground the entire aircraft started spinning like a top. No good there. So I located the instructions online on gyro reversal, fixed the yaw axis, and also followed the instructions to recalibrate each ESC. After all of that, the update seems to have really helped.
Another note is that zero on the pots seems to be full CCW not CW as discussed on some locations online. Even without spending much time yet tweaking the P and I terms for pitch and roll, and the P term for yaw it is already much, much more stable than the stock firmware and enormously better than my old tricopter.
I'll be posting the terms once I figure out what works best for my setup.
I've copied some basic setup information from KapteinKuk's and other's posts on RCgroup's for easy reference:
Roll pot now controls P-term gain on roll/pitch axis.
Pitch pot now controls I-term gain on roll/pitch axis.
Yaw pot controls P-term on yaw axis as before. Yaw axis I-term is fixed at 0.2
X-mode setup:
Motor 1: front left, CW
Motor 2: back left, CCW
Motor 3: Front right, CCW
Motor 4: Back right, CW
Suggested initial setup:
P pot at 50%
I pot at 0% (it can be left at 0% since it does not have a secondary function.
Yaw P pot at 50%
Trim it level.
Adjust P (roll/pitch) to your liking.
Add I until it flies straight forward without pitching up.
;---- Gyro direction reversing ----
;---- 1: Set roll gain pot to zero.
;---- 2: Turn on flight controller.
;---- 3: LED flashes 3 times.
;---- 4: Move the stick for the gyro you want to reverse.
;---- 5: LED will blink continually.
;---- 6: Turn off flight controller.
;---- 7: If there is more gyros to be reversed, goto step 2, else set roll gain pot back.
If you move the throttle in the step 4 above, you will reverse the pot direction.
;---- ESC Throttle range calibration. This outputs collective input to all motor outputs ---
;---- This mode is entered by turning yaw gain pot to zero and turning on the flight controller. ---
Late last week the APC 10 x 4.7 SF pusher props showed up at the local hobby store, so I was able to finish up the quadcopter and try some first flights. I used a pair of velcro cable tie straps to hold the battery in place.
I marked the "forward" legs of the quad using white electrical tape. Hopefully this will give enough visual definition- if not I'll have to find some colored props.
 |
| ESC's zip-tied in place |
 |
| Velco Cable ties on the bottom for the battery |
Hobbyking Multi-Rotor control Board v2.1 Firmware Update
I was able to take off, but flight was a bit sketchy, and the platform did not seem very stable at all. I've read quite a bit on RCgroups about kapteinkuk's updated kk board firmware and decided to make the upgrade.
The instructions that hobbyking includes in their instruction manual isn't the easiest in the world to follow. Luckily Flitetest has a great video to walk you through the process.
Following their instructions, I was easily able to download and install the driver for the Hobbyking KK board programmer. The next step is to download and install the actual software for updating the board's firmware. This is where I ran into a bit of trouble. I tried downloading it several times, and even following Flitetest's instructions to the letter, I could not get the KKmulticopter flash tool software to run. After digging through the flash tool software website's help, I found an explanation about the Java version required to run the software. It turns out if you have a 64 bit flavor of windows (which most is these days), you might need to have both 32 bit AND 64 bit Java installed. By default the 32 bit is installed, but it won't run the flash tool if you have a 64 bit system. So, I downloaded and installed Java 64, and sure enough it worked. After that upgrading the firmware was a snap.
I chose to install Kapteinkuk's 4.7 x-copter software. This also required rewiring each of the motors because the rotation direction changed for each prop. A quick tip I learned is to leave the ESC leads a bit long to allow easy reversal of motor direction.
Before doing anything else, I ran out and tried to fly... I found out immediately that the yaw gyro was reversed- as soon as the landing skids left the ground the entire aircraft started spinning like a top. No good there. So I located the instructions online on gyro reversal, fixed the yaw axis, and also followed the instructions to recalibrate each ESC. After all of that, the update seems to have really helped.
Another note is that zero on the pots seems to be full CCW not CW as discussed on some locations online. Even without spending much time yet tweaking the P and I terms for pitch and roll, and the P term for yaw it is already much, much more stable than the stock firmware and enormously better than my old tricopter.
I'll be posting the terms once I figure out what works best for my setup.
I've copied some basic setup information from KapteinKuk's and other's posts on RCgroup's for easy reference:
Roll pot now controls P-term gain on roll/pitch axis.
Pitch pot now controls I-term gain on roll/pitch axis.
Yaw pot controls P-term on yaw axis as before. Yaw axis I-term is fixed at 0.2
X-mode setup:
Motor 1: front left, CW
Motor 2: back left, CCW
Motor 3: Front right, CCW
Motor 4: Back right, CW
Suggested initial setup:
P pot at 50%
I pot at 0% (it can be left at 0% since it does not have a secondary function.
Yaw P pot at 50%
Trim it level.
Adjust P (roll/pitch) to your liking.
Add I until it flies straight forward without pitching up.
;---- Gyro direction reversing ----
;---- 1: Set roll gain pot to zero.
;---- 2: Turn on flight controller.
;---- 3: LED flashes 3 times.
;---- 4: Move the stick for the gyro you want to reverse.
;---- 5: LED will blink continually.
;---- 6: Turn off flight controller.
;---- 7: If there is more gyros to be reversed, goto step 2, else set roll gain pot back.
If you move the throttle in the step 4 above, you will reverse the pot direction.
;---- ESC Throttle range calibration. This outputs collective input to all motor outputs ---
;---- This mode is entered by turning yaw gain pot to zero and turning on the flight controller. ---
Monday, May 14, 2012
Turnigy Talon V2 Build: Part 2
After the frame was bolted together, motors and ESCs wired up, the next step was to connect the receiver to the Hobbyking multirotor control board. For this, you need male to male servo cables. I didn't have any of these handy, but I did have some male servo connector ends and some servo cables I could cut up.
How to attach Servo Cable Ends
The last time I tried to put on my own connectors I didn't have a proper crimping tool, I just tried crimping the electrical connectors on the wires with a needle nose pliers- to disastrous results. So, I picked up a crimp tool at RadioShack. It isn't quite right, even the smallest notch is slightly too big, but it's really close.
Once the connectors are soldered onto the ends of the cable, they simply snap into the molded plastic connector body. Take care to snap each wire into the correct slot in the plastic connector so the ground, VCC, and signal wires correctly map from end to end of the cable.
Initial Setup of the Hobbyking Multi-Rotor control board with a Spektrum DX8 (or DX6i, DX7)
Now that the system is wired up, it was time to fire up the motors and set the rotation direction before the props are attached.
After doing some web research one surprising thing I learned was the radio needs to be in ACRO mode rather than HELI- totally different than a Tri-copter setup.
I connected the receiver, (an AR6110) bound it to the DX8, and attempted to spin up the motors. Nothing. I couldn't get the LED on the multi-rotor control board to light. I followed the instructions off the Hobbyking website, dropped the throttle trim all the way down, moved the throttle stick to the bottom and full right. Still nothing. I tried re-binding the receiver, testing to make sure the receiver was properly bound, etc- still nothing. Finally, I realized that the rudder channel might need reversing. Reversed it, and the control board armed right away. It still needs the throttle trim to be completely bottomed, but now it easily arms by going to minimum throttle and holding the rudder in full right position for a few seconds.
Once the control board would arm, it was easy to check the motor rotation directions and switching two of the motor lead wires for the motors that needed to be reversed.
The pusher props are still on order- as soon as they arrive I'll be able to install all props and finish the setup and try the first flight!
How to attach Servo Cable Ends
The last time I tried to put on my own connectors I didn't have a proper crimping tool, I just tried crimping the electrical connectors on the wires with a needle nose pliers- to disastrous results. So, I picked up a crimp tool at RadioShack. It isn't quite right, even the smallest notch is slightly too big, but it's really close.
 | ||||
| D-Sub Crimping Tool |
 |
| Servo Cable Cut, Ends stripped ~3mm |
 |
| Connectors Crimped, Applying flux |
 |
| Holding Connectors In 3rd Hand Tool, Prior to soldering |
Once the connectors are soldered onto the ends of the cable, they simply snap into the molded plastic connector body. Take care to snap each wire into the correct slot in the plastic connector so the ground, VCC, and signal wires correctly map from end to end of the cable.
 | |||
| Finished Cable, 1st one- a little ugly but it works |
Initial Setup of the Hobbyking Multi-Rotor control board with a Spektrum DX8 (or DX6i, DX7)
Now that the system is wired up, it was time to fire up the motors and set the rotation direction before the props are attached.
After doing some web research one surprising thing I learned was the radio needs to be in ACRO mode rather than HELI- totally different than a Tri-copter setup.
I connected the receiver, (an AR6110) bound it to the DX8, and attempted to spin up the motors. Nothing. I couldn't get the LED on the multi-rotor control board to light. I followed the instructions off the Hobbyking website, dropped the throttle trim all the way down, moved the throttle stick to the bottom and full right. Still nothing. I tried re-binding the receiver, testing to make sure the receiver was properly bound, etc- still nothing. Finally, I realized that the rudder channel might need reversing. Reversed it, and the control board armed right away. It still needs the throttle trim to be completely bottomed, but now it easily arms by going to minimum throttle and holding the rudder in full right position for a few seconds.
Once the control board would arm, it was easy to check the motor rotation directions and switching two of the motor lead wires for the motors that needed to be reversed.
The pusher props are still on order- as soon as they arrive I'll be able to install all props and finish the setup and try the first flight!
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Turnigy Talon V2 Build: Part 1
The tricopter I built last year has been sitting gathering dust- it never flew well enough for me to have any fun with it. I've been watching the prices on the KK board clones drop in price, and when I noticed that Hobbyking released a new carbon fiber quadcopter frame I had to pull the trigger and give it a try again.
I'm re-using the 18A ESC's, receiver, and some other bits from the Tricopter. Otherwise it's a fresh build.
THe L2215 900kv motors are a bit of an unknown- Hobbyking was out of stock of pretty much everything else. The L2215's fit, but the bolt pattern only allows two screws instead of the normal four to attach them to the arms. Also, it would be better to have a motor that has mounting holes on the side of the motor that shaft protrudes from to allow the motor to be below the mounting arm. You could push the shaft through on these motors, but to do so you need to loosen some tiny allen screws- which when I tried, seemed like they really wanted to strip the heads. So I left well enough alone and mounted them without moving the shafts.
Quick review- the frame seems very nicely done. The aluminum bits are nicely machined and anodized, and the quality of the carbon fiber seems good. I did have to drill out a few of the holes on the flat carbon plates which form the center hub of the 'copter.
One of the sweet things about this copter design, is that you can run the motor wires through the inside of the carbon arms. To do so, the motor leads need to be long enough- I found that they should be about 10 inches total from the tip of the wire connector to the side of the ESC body. This provides enough length to allow the wires to be loaded through the tube during assembly and plugged into the motor connectors.
In order to add length to the ESC motor leads, you need to join wire extensions to the ESC. I used an overlapping butt joint. I also used 14 gage wire, overkill for this application, but it's what I had available. Going with some 16 or 18 gage wire would save some weight.
Once the ESC lead is inserted into the wire, I applied head with a soldering iron and wicked solder into the joint. I finished it off with some heat shrink. Again, it's best to slide the heat shrink over the wire before you add the connectors- it makes assembly much easier.
I re-used the ESCs from my old tricopter, which is why there is multiple wire joints shown in the photo above.
If you are using new ESC's, you'll want to hold off on adding the battery connector to the ESC.
The pre-cut holes in the bottom carbon fiber plate are just the right size to allow feeding the ESC and wire harness through. This will allow mounting the ESC's to the edge of the 'copter hub later.
After I inserted the screws from the bottom, I fixed them in place with two nuts per screw tightened against themselves. I then used some aluminum spacers to give enough room between the carbon plate and the power board. I think these spacers were landing gear wheel spacers from my defunct Parkzone T-28. Always part out those crashed planes and keep the misc. hardware!
After the power distribution board is in place, the rubber servo grommets can be placed on the screws. The grommets will provide some vibration damping for the control board. Less vibration = more accurate control and less error from the piezo gyros.
The 1" 4/40 screws are just long enough to put another set of grommets on top of the control board and fasten everything down with a single 4/40 nut. I might try re-doing the stack with a shorter spacer on the bottom, to allow a double-nut or locknut to be used on top. I'm worried the nuts might loosen or fall off in flight, causing a big problem.
Now the trick- how to wrangle all of the ESC's, power cables, and ESC control cables into something resembling order. It looks like the ESCs could be zip-tied to the corners of the hub. Two possible orientations present themselves- horizontal:
Vertical made more sense to me- it seemed to allow for better fit of the various wires.
Since my ESC's already had EC3 battery connectors soldered on, I had to make some short adapter harnesses. The Hobbyking power distribution board had 3.5mm female sockets soldered on. If I was using brand new ESC's I would have simply soldered 3.5mm male connectors onto the ESC's and directly plugged them into the board. That would have made for a neater and lighter installation. Also, fewer connectors = less possible failed joints. If I really like how this flies I might clean things up a bit. I'd also replace all of the 14 gage wire with lighter 16 or 18 gage.
Next steps:
I'm re-using the 18A ESC's, receiver, and some other bits from the Tricopter. Otherwise it's a fresh build.
THe L2215 900kv motors are a bit of an unknown- Hobbyking was out of stock of pretty much everything else. The L2215's fit, but the bolt pattern only allows two screws instead of the normal four to attach them to the arms. Also, it would be better to have a motor that has mounting holes on the side of the motor that shaft protrudes from to allow the motor to be below the mounting arm. You could push the shaft through on these motors, but to do so you need to loosen some tiny allen screws- which when I tried, seemed like they really wanted to strip the heads. So I left well enough alone and mounted them without moving the shafts.
 |
| Nice packaging. |
 |
| Assembled frame without electronics |
Quick review- the frame seems very nicely done. The aluminum bits are nicely machined and anodized, and the quality of the carbon fiber seems good. I did have to drill out a few of the holes on the flat carbon plates which form the center hub of the 'copter.
One of the sweet things about this copter design, is that you can run the motor wires through the inside of the carbon arms. To do so, the motor leads need to be long enough- I found that they should be about 10 inches total from the tip of the wire connector to the side of the ESC body. This provides enough length to allow the wires to be loaded through the tube during assembly and plugged into the motor connectors.
In order to add length to the ESC motor leads, you need to join wire extensions to the ESC. I used an overlapping butt joint. I also used 14 gage wire, overkill for this application, but it's what I had available. Going with some 16 or 18 gage wire would save some weight.
 |
| Applying flux to end of wire |
 |
| ESC lead inserted into center of wire |
 |
| ESC with added cable length |
If you are using new ESC's, you'll want to hold off on adding the battery connector to the ESC.
 |
| Wires threaded through carbon rod |
 |
| Motor mount, wires ready to go |
 |
| All four arms with wires. |
The pre-cut holes in the bottom carbon fiber plate are just the right size to allow feeding the ESC and wire harness through. This will allow mounting the ESC's to the edge of the 'copter hub later.
 |
| Mess 'o wires |
The Turnigy Talon V2 kit came with some nylon posts, nuts, and screws to mount the control board on top of the hub. However, I couldn't figure out how to use that hardware to also mount the Hobbyking power distribution board. The power power is exactly the same size and has the same mounting holes as the control board. The option I'm going to try first is just to use some 4/40 x 1" long screws and appropriate nuts, spacers, and servo grommets.
 |
| 4/40 x 1" screws inserted from the bottom of the carbon plate |
After I inserted the screws from the bottom, I fixed them in place with two nuts per screw tightened against themselves. I then used some aluminum spacers to give enough room between the carbon plate and the power board. I think these spacers were landing gear wheel spacers from my defunct Parkzone T-28. Always part out those crashed planes and keep the misc. hardware!
 |
| Power distribution board installed |
 |
| Control board stacked |
 |
| Stacked boards- side view |
 |
| Test Assembly |
 |
| Zoom view of the stack |
 |
| Horizontal |
 |
| Vertical |
Since my ESC's already had EC3 battery connectors soldered on, I had to make some short adapter harnesses. The Hobbyking power distribution board had 3.5mm female sockets soldered on. If I was using brand new ESC's I would have simply soldered 3.5mm male connectors onto the ESC's and directly plugged them into the board. That would have made for a neater and lighter installation. Also, fewer connectors = less possible failed joints. If I really like how this flies I might clean things up a bit. I'd also replace all of the 14 gage wire with lighter 16 or 18 gage.
 |
| ESC's all plugged in. |
Next steps:
- building battery mount
- hooking up control board
- prop & motor setup
- Fly!
- airborne photography
- FPV?
- stringing Christmas lights in tall trees?
Parkzone Icon A5 tail fix
A week ago I had a very hard crash with my Parkzone Icon A5 after a radio glitch (or elevator servo problem?) caused the airplane to dive at high speed into the lake.
The fuselage glue together nicely with white Gorilla glue. The tail, on the other hand, was a problem. The foam was crushed in one area making it really difficult to glue it back together straight. I decided to insert a small carbon fiber reinforcement to keep it straight.
I chose to insert the carbon in the natural joint between the vertical stabilizer and the fuselage foam pieces. I had to use an X-acto knife to lengthen and deepen the slot to make room for the carbon strip.
I manually held the tail as straight as possible, inserted the carbon strip, then wicked in some foam-safe thin CA. Once the strip was tacked into place, I filled the slot with some thick foam-safe CA and used some accelerator to cure it.
I haven't yet flown it.... I'm crossing my fingers that everything is straight and true!
The fuselage glue together nicely with white Gorilla glue. The tail, on the other hand, was a problem. The foam was crushed in one area making it really difficult to glue it back together straight. I decided to insert a small carbon fiber reinforcement to keep it straight.
 |
| Carbon strip recycled from a RIP aircraft |
 |
| Sizing it up |
I chose to insert the carbon in the natural joint between the vertical stabilizer and the fuselage foam pieces. I had to use an X-acto knife to lengthen and deepen the slot to make room for the carbon strip.
I manually held the tail as straight as possible, inserted the carbon strip, then wicked in some foam-safe thin CA. Once the strip was tacked into place, I filled the slot with some thick foam-safe CA and used some accelerator to cure it.
 |
| Finished product |
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