Camera Drone Build

sirch

sirch

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The other Chris
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I've decided to build a drone rather than buying one so I thought i'd start a thread to give details of the build, I'm not sure how diligent I'll be at keeping this up to date but we can just see how it goes. I've got a lot of the bits on order and the frame arrived last Friday so I got that built as far as is sensible over the weekend.

IMG_9981.jpg
 
I have to ask ... why the two odd red bits?
 
What he said ^^^ :)

I'll be putting up more details of the design, etc. as I go along but I thought I'd put the photos up when I take them otherwise I'm likely to forget to shoot each stage of the build.
 
So all the bits for the drone are here (apart from props) and I've hit the first snag, I opened up the Transmitter and there is no battery holder. That'll teach me to go for the cheapest option :facepalm: The transmitter I went for is a FrSky Taranis X7 and it's supposed to have a battery holder for AA rechargeables. I opened it up and no battery holder, just a connector. It can run off a 2S LiPo so that is now on order. That's a bit of a punt though because even google isn't too clear on what exactly is needed or what will fit. Given that the Taranis X7 seems to be a pretty common option for this kind of thing, it's all feeling a bit raw, still I'm sure we I get there.
 
Bit of a wet day here so I put some time into this project. After quite a lot of experimentation about how to mount things I came up with a rough layout that I was happy with so I started with mounting a motor.
IMG_0543.jpg


These are Gartt 4112, 480kv motors. It turns out that for a big-ish drone you need larger, lower kv rated motors to swing large propellers and then use more battery cells (i.e. higher voltage) to run the lower kv rated motors.

Having got the motor mounted I fitted the ESC underneath, there is some debate about the maximum length of the leads between the ESC and motor so I thought i'd keep them short and that meant there was a bit of wire cutting and soldering to get it connected to the power board. Given that I wasn't entirely sure I had got this right and again there isn't much info on t'web I wanted to test out the one motor before mounting the others, cutting leads etc.

Testing the one motor meant I have to get pretty everything mounted and running because the software tends to complain if it can't find all the essential peripherals.
IMG_0545.jpg

So that's a fairly temporary set up for the time being. After going though quite a lot of set-up and config for both the flight controller and the radio tx/rx and several false-starts with getting it to arm, I got the motor running, so fa, so good :)
 
Well I got it all built, calibrated and got the RC transmitter set up so it was time to give it a try. Initially it was rolling heavily to one side on take off so back to the calibration and looking carefully at QGroundControl I could see that the level horizon was off. Another few goes at calibrating and general fiddling around got the horizon levelled up so back into the garden for another attempt. This time it got of the ground and hovered but felt very sensitive. Anyway I got a bit more ambitious and ended up trashing a prop on a tree. OK, time to take it to a bigger space on the assumption that it was my poor flying skills rather than an issue with the drone however it was still very difficult to control and just did not feel like it was handling well but I kept practising until I broke the landing gear with a very heavy landing. :(

I really don't think I've got it set up correctly, it is so sensitive to the sticks that it is next to impossible to control and from what I have seen on youtube and in the documentation it just shouldn't be that hard to fly with the default settings.

I'll post more when I know more!
 
I've been using a DJI Phantom 3 SE model for a while.

No way should things be that sensitive. Recheck all your calibration settings and do some googling on whatever hardware your using.

Does it hover when no input to the controls ?

Dougie.
 
So today was the first time I have had to have another go with the drone. I have reinstalled the firmware and gone through all the calibrations, etc. again but perhaps the biggest change (or most likely to have had an effect) is to set some curves for the sticks on the transmitter, often referred to as "expo", it basically makes the outputs from the sticks finer in the middle of the range. As mentioned above it all just felt to sensitive and setting curves reduces that sensitivity.

So after charging the batteries, and doing final checks it was into the garden to give it a go

View: https://youtu.be/Igd5PeCPrPg


That is just a basic up and down but the fact that I could hold the phone to video it in one hand and just run the throttle with the other shows you that it is a lot more stable and now seems to be functioning fine.
 
The next thing was to check out its load carrying ability. It was designed to carry about 800g more than it's self-weight, so around 3.2kg all-up-weight with the intention of using the Olympus EM5 II on it. Rather than going straight in with the camera, I lashed a bottle of water of the right sort of weight to it and took it out, it flew fine.

The EM5 can be controlled from a smart phone over WiFi and the plan was to use this to take stills but another concern was would the WiFi work because the RC Transmitter also runs on 2.4GHz, i.e. the same frequency. I haven't got a proper camera gimbal for it because the one I was going to get has been out of stock for ages and looks like it might have been discontinued. Anyway I thought I'd just lash the camera to the drone to see if it worked. The WiFi connection appeared to be a bit hit and miss so I thought I see how it got on in flight. I launched the drone, put it in loiter, which isn't quite as stable as I had hoped but it stayed within a metre or so of the loiter position and then tried to get the phone to connect because there was nothing on screen. After a bit of waving things around I found that having the phone arms-length from the RC Transmitter allowed it to connect to the camera.

So you lucky people get a selfie :D :eek:

PB090003.jpg
 
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Looks brilliant Chris,

very envious! I love 'making' things especially models and you have found the perfect combination with a RC model to carry a camera! Curves on the sticks is a massive help TBH.
 
Fraser Euan White said:
Looks brilliant Chris,

very envious! I love 'making' things especially models and you have found the perfect combination with a RC model to carry a camera! Curves on the sticks is a massive help TBH.
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Thanks Fraser, I'm just glad it is in the right ball-park power wise. It was quite a lot of dosh to commit without knowing it would work and there is surprisingly little info on this sort of thing on t'web
 
Hi Chris - I may have this 'arse about face' but from memory I had the central positions of the sticks 'de-sensitised' and only the extremes sensitive; this way I found the controls smoother - this was on an RC helicopter though with no GPS/Giro so they were notoriously hard to fly!
 
Fraser Euan White said:
Hi Chris - I may have this 'arse about face' but from memory I had the central positions of the sticks 'de-sensitised' and only the extremes sensitive; this way I found the controls smoother - this was on an RC helicopter though with no GPS/Giro so they were notoriously hard to fly!
Click to expand...

It is called Expo and is available on the X7, about 30% will give a linear servo response, just check whether its - or + I am not sure on the X7.
 
Fraser Euan White said:
Hi Chris - I may have this 'arse about face' but from memory I had the central positions of the sticks 'de-sensitised' and only the extremes sensitive; this way I found the controls smoother - this was on an RC helicopter though with no GPS/Giro so they were notoriously hard to fly!
Click to expand...
Yep, that's what I've got.

Bearair said:
It is called Expo and is available on the X7, about 30% will give a linear servo response, just check whether its - or + I am not sure on the X7.
Click to expand...
(y)
 
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