Latest video of testing autonomous flight (and other flightmodes)
Cause I liked the way a hexacopter looks (and everyone already has a quad) I wanted to build me an autonomous flying hexa. I started thinking about it and researching beginning of 2010 and about end of march I decided to go ahead with the project and order some stuff.
I decided to use the ardupilot brain from DIYdrones, an open source project. At the time Mikrocopter and arducopter were about the only ones offering autonomous flight with waypoints. Mikrocopter was very expensive and limited in its autonomy by software and licensing restrictions. Arducopter was much cheaper and open source. Since I'm no millionair and I do know a bit about programming, the choise for ardupilot was made.
BTW ardupilot is the name of the hardware. In that hardware you can put arducopter software, arduplane software, ardurover (cars) software and even boats are in the works.
You can buy it ready soldered, but I wanted to solder the pins on myself :
Motors, esc's and battery are from hobbyking :
motors : http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idproduct=4700
esc's : http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idproduct=6458
battery : http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idproduct=9184
I decided to design and build the frame myself since existing frames were not all to cheap and I have access to machines at work.
The arms are made from 15x15x1.5 aluminium square tube with holes drilled in them to save weight :
From work I could get some leftovers from the composites department. A little bit special as it is a natural fiber composite. Lighter then carbonfiber or glassfiber, but not so strong. But also non conductive (no blocking of 2.4Ghz signals).
I designed the parts in autocad and had them cut out on a waterjet.
Composite parts are 2mm thick and together they weigh 170g. A complete aluminium arm, with motor, esc and prop attached weighs 140g. So I estimate that with a 5000mAh 3S lipo of 410g I'll end up with a total flying weight of about 1600-1700g.
Thrust of the motors with 10x4.5 prop is about 900g. So I should get about 900x6x0.8 = 4.3kg of total lift force. Leaves me enough room to carry around a camera. This was my initial calculation.
Now, after adding 5.8Ghz video downlink, 433Mhz telemetry downlink, a led lightshow and a kodak ZX-1 camera I end up at 1960g ready for take-off.
I made the frame foldable for easy transport. But in reality I have never used this possibility yet.
Vibration dampening is extremely important with multicopters. That's why I mounted a piece of rubber between arms and centerplate.
Powerdistribution was a serious challenge to my soldering skills.
Here's the frame build togehter with motors and esc's :
And here he is flying
:
Cause I liked the way a hexacopter looks (and everyone already has a quad) I wanted to build me an autonomous flying hexa. I started thinking about it and researching beginning of 2010 and about end of march I decided to go ahead with the project and order some stuff.
I decided to use the ardupilot brain from DIYdrones, an open source project. At the time Mikrocopter and arducopter were about the only ones offering autonomous flight with waypoints. Mikrocopter was very expensive and limited in its autonomy by software and licensing restrictions. Arducopter was much cheaper and open source. Since I'm no millionair and I do know a bit about programming, the choise for ardupilot was made.
BTW ardupilot is the name of the hardware. In that hardware you can put arducopter software, arduplane software, ardurover (cars) software and even boats are in the works.
You can buy it ready soldered, but I wanted to solder the pins on myself :
Motors, esc's and battery are from hobbyking :
motors : http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idproduct=4700
esc's : http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idproduct=6458
battery : http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idproduct=9184
I decided to design and build the frame myself since existing frames were not all to cheap and I have access to machines at work.
The arms are made from 15x15x1.5 aluminium square tube with holes drilled in them to save weight :
From work I could get some leftovers from the composites department. A little bit special as it is a natural fiber composite. Lighter then carbonfiber or glassfiber, but not so strong. But also non conductive (no blocking of 2.4Ghz signals).
I designed the parts in autocad and had them cut out on a waterjet.
Composite parts are 2mm thick and together they weigh 170g. A complete aluminium arm, with motor, esc and prop attached weighs 140g. So I estimate that with a 5000mAh 3S lipo of 410g I'll end up with a total flying weight of about 1600-1700g.
Thrust of the motors with 10x4.5 prop is about 900g. So I should get about 900x6x0.8 = 4.3kg of total lift force. Leaves me enough room to carry around a camera. This was my initial calculation.
Now, after adding 5.8Ghz video downlink, 433Mhz telemetry downlink, a led lightshow and a kodak ZX-1 camera I end up at 1960g ready for take-off.
I made the frame foldable for easy transport. But in reality I have never used this possibility yet.
Vibration dampening is extremely important with multicopters. That's why I mounted a piece of rubber between arms and centerplate.
Powerdistribution was a serious challenge to my soldering skills.
Here's the frame build togehter with motors and esc's :
And here he is flying
:
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