Multi-Impossible, Mōvi_M5/MK Build and Review

[Darson Hall]

Watched the first video of the unboxing. The suspense was killing me... Had to find out. Was late for work. Will be watching. Best of luck.

-Darson

 

[SMP]

SOOOOOOooooooo tired of farking around with the Alex firmware, floating gyros and typical do the same thing expect different results tuning... Like many others am a half second and twitch from this review and an M5...

 

[Bartman]

SOOOOOOooooooo tired of farking around with the Alex firmware, floating gyros and typical do the same thing expect different results tuning... Like many others am a half second and twitch from this review and an M5...

What I've been told so far by two new owners is that it's very good and that it just works, out of the box and thereafter. That's why I"m taking the drastic action of building a brand new heli for it rather than adapting it to an existing heli just for the purpose of completing the review.

It'll be up and running soon enough and I"ll be honest about the review. So far I"ve been impressed with what I've seen. Freefly's website is very stylish but navigation is a little disjointed....if that's the worst I have to say then it's all good!

 

[Bartman]

Made a lot of progress today getting the frame parts ready and planning the installation of the eight Mikrokopter BL's. I was taken aback at how big they are compared to the old V2.0 BL's. The specs on the new v3.x BL's are pretty impressive, these were a MK user's wet dream when a lot of flying moved away from 4S packs but the people at MK just didn't seem interested in making a new, higher capacity motor controller.....now they have, here's the webpage

http://www.mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/en/Single-BL-Ctrl_3

and the list of features from the webpage
power

• voltage : 10 to 30V -> 3 -7S Lipo
• 6 -layer PCB for optimal heat dissipation . 70u copper layers make the entire circuit board to the heat sink .
• current: up to 60A (per BL-Unit)
• current limiting and temperature limiting
• Active freewheeling -> less power loss

Fast response with speed control

• rapid acceleration and braking of the propeller. Active and seamless braking gives the speed precisely and quickly on the new setpoint .
• return energy to the lipo when braking. Seamless transition from acceleration to braking
• significantly faster control with speed control

Other Features

• Adjustable motor timing in several steps of 13-28° - compatible with the most common BL motors
• Adjustable switching frequency ( 10kHz - 20kHz )
• PPM to 500 Hz with simultaneous I2C - bus operation for telemetry and data logging
• Software adjustable direction of rotation
• Adjustable current and temperature limits
• Adjustable start-PWM
• Silent Start: test tone at startup can be disabled

Interface

• 
  I2C-Bus with integrated opocoupler allows you to put the BL-Ctrl to the end of the rigger
• various interfaces for setpoint input ( I2C, PPM ( 500Hz ) , serial)
• Integrated current measurement measurement of the actual current and the used capacity on the Mikrokopter control
• voltage and temperature measurement with data transmission to the ground station and data logging
• 11-bit resolution (2048 steps )
• various feedback to the MikroKopter-FlightCtrl ( blocked motor , power limiting , etc. )
• extented configuration options (eg current limit , temperature limit , ...)
• two LEDs per BL-Ctrl (OK and Error )
• all BLCs are already adressed (address 1-8)
• I2C bus access possible in PPM mode - for data logging and telemetry in PPM mode
• status messages are transmitted to the FC ( engine blocks , Current, Self-test error ...)
• current measurement up to 75A per controller
• Convenient configuration of the BL controller via FC

Here's a photo of the top frame plate showing the layout for the flight control stack and the posts where the BL's will mount in pairs of two.
View attachment 18168

i bought nine of them so i'd have a spare and, of course, i dropped one today onto the concrete floor of my shop! doh! Bart!

 

[Bartman]

I'm going to try to get the frame assembled and the BL's wired to the main harness tonight. There isn't enough 18AWG wire in my shop to extend the motor wires so I was only able to finish four of them this morning and there should be more arriving in the mail tomorrow. If the wire arrives tomorrow then the heli should fly on Friday if it isn't pouring rain all day. If that happens then the Movi M5 will be airborne before the end of the weekend. Multi-Impossible? I'm not going to say just yet!

 

[Motopreserve]

Are you stacking the BLs on top of each other? Special German heat sink between? Also, how do you program the ESCs? From within the MKTool? Do you have an advance timing in mind you'll start with for testing?

looks like you coming along quite nicely. I'm putting my money on Friday...Saturday rain date.

 

[Benjamin Rowland]

We used our Movi M5 for 5 days straight last week on a project we produced. It worked great. We used it mostly in handheld mode. But we've already got a fair amount of experience with it in the air as well. It has opened us up to some really cool shots and we're having a lot of fun with it. We hung out the side of a van with it, shot from a golf cart, and even ran at a full sprint with it.

Balancing a camera is easy on the Movi. Tuning a camera is easy. The engineering is well thought out. Software is easy. Can't recommend it enough. Please note that I paid full price, so this is an unbiased endorsement.

I will stop gushing about the M5 and let Ferris finish this post for me...

 

[Bartman]

Are you stacking the BLs on top of each other? Special German heat sink between? Also, how do you program the ESCs? From within the MKTool? Do you have an advance timing in mind you'll start with for testing?

looks like you coming along quite nicely. I'm putting my money on Friday...Saturday rain date.

I'm putting two at each position with a 10mm spacer separating them in two positions. That's another thing about the old BL 2.0's (which still work great and are preferred for up to 4S heli's of which I've got one and plan to build another as a back-up), they couldn't be mounted with standoffs because they only had one hole in them. The V3.0 BL's have four holes so there's a lot more flexibility in how they can be mounted.

I'll start at mid-timing and go from there. maybe a little up, maybe a little down. THe V2.0 BL's didn't have a timing adjustment and weren't really compatible with high pole-count motors.

Hold the Ctrl key and hit the settings button in MKtool (mid right of screen) to get to the BL config screens. Each BL is configured individually from that one screen by choosing the number of the BL that you want to adjust.

 

[Bartman]

Watched the first video of the unboxing. The suspense was killing me... Had to find out. Was late for work. Will be watching. Best of luck.

-Darson

I missed your post this morning Darson. Glad you liked the video and thanks for chiming in.

Bart

 

[Bartman]

Here's another video from earlier tonight (10:00 is earlier technically, right?)....in it I give a quick demonstration on how to solder the capacitors to the Mikrokopter BL3.X speed controllers. The video will be finished uploading in about thirty minutes.

As for the build, the wire harness is done and strapped into place and I'm going to try to get the frame assembled as I consume my first beer for the evening. Those Warsteiner beers are very good! The motor controllers are ready to be installed as well after having their I2c wires soldered into place. More about I2c later.

 

[Bartman]

I'm about to head up to bed but just wanted to drop a few photos into place to mark the end of today's work.

The wiring harness is in place in the first pic and tied down so as to not interfere with the motor wires

View attachment 18172
and in the second picture the two frame plates have been joined and the inner boom tubes have been placed so the sandwich could be tightened up and made permanent. there are two aux taps from the harness, one for the flight controller and the other for a regulator to power lights, video transmitter, etc. this is what's nice about doing a 6S heli with the new Mikrokopter FC2.5, the FC can take full 6S power and for other low-voltage stuff a buck regulator can just be stuck under the frame. in the past, to do a 6S heli with Mikrokopter meant powering the flight control system with either a separate battery or a regulator because the boards could only do up to 4S but it's so much simpler when the motors and the electronics are on the same voltage. i don't mind running the auxiliary stuff with a converter since it won't likely down the helicopter if the converter fails but for the FC I was using a separate 3S pack and so needed a secondary harness for it as well.
View attachment 18173

the servo wires coming from the ends of the BL's are for the I2c circuit. the motor controllers get their instructions via this circuit as opposed to a more conventional flight controller like a NAZA that sends the motor control commands out individual wires to the ESC's. with Mikrokopter and the I2c circuit, all of the motor commands travel along two wires and the controllers listen for the commands that are specifically addressed to them. if a motor controller knows it's #4 then it only responds to the commands addressed to motor controller #4 and it ignores everything else.

I'm using what is called an I2c Isolator which was sold by AGL Hobbies but has since been discontinued. it's a single circuit board that fits into the electronics stack and it breaks up the one stream into individual streams so the BL's I2c wires can be plugged in individually. It also helps to keep the I2c circuit from crashing if one BL happens to fail. this is a matter of debate across the internet but it's better to be safe than sorry, right?

tomorrow i'll attach the power wires to the BL's, attach the four motors that have adequate wiring to reach the BL's, wait for the mail person to deliver more wire, and work on getting familiar with the Movi M5 which is the reason (along with the commitment I have to be on site Monday) I'm still up at 0146 in the morning typing on my computer.

 

[ChrisViperM]

SOOOOOOooooooo tired of farking around with the Alex firmware, floating gyros and typical do the same thing expect different results tuning... Like many others am a half second and twitch from this review and an M5...

We hear you.....loud and clear :livid:

AlexMos is great if you really understand it completely (I don't....) and set it up for a specific camera with specific lens, but quickly changing between different cams is a no-go. Don't know what magic the guys from Freefly did to the software of the M5, but it is exactly what we all want....how many hours did I waste balancing gimbals with those tiny allen keys and some more hours with the software....in the meantime the weather turned bad....we all know the game.

While the MöVI 10 was out of reach for most of us, the M5 with it's competitive price could be the golden egg.

Looks like the Freefly software is working, the features to quickly balance are absolutely great, and the price is unbeatable for what you get....I scored one 2 days ago from Kopterworx....just a few left there

Here is anothe review from AbelCine:

Chris

 

[Bartman]

Chris.....why so impatient!!??!! a professional, fancy review?? really?? where's the fun in that??

I was going to get to that today once I had my wires all settled into place and the flight control configured. The mail won't be here until later this afternoon so there's only so much left to do this morning and then it's time to unbox the gimbal and give it a good looking over.

I'm most impressed that they thought to include a very nicely produced stand for it! It would have been very easy for them to leave it to the users to devise a way to store it when it's not being used.

More later...

 

[ChrisViperM]

The trouble is....it's just a review from a guy I don't know. Whatever review you come up with will be the TRUTH....and yours might be more fun to watch.....can't wait.

BTW: Is your lady on vacation, or how did you manage to free up so much "quality time" for your build.....???

Great work so far in an impossible taime frame....


Chris

 

[Bartman]

The trouble is....it's just a review from a guy I don't know. Whatever review you come up with will be the TRUTH....and yours might be more fun to watch.....can't wait.

BTW: Is your lady on vacation, or how did you manage to free up so much "quality time" for your build.....???

Great work so far in an impossible taime frame....


Chris

Thanks for the vote of confidence Chris! Today was a mix of errands for the aforementioned "lady" and our family as well as recovery from going to bed at 2:30 last night. Some stuff got done but I"m back in the shop trying to make the push to get the helicopter part of this process done and ready to fly tomorrow.

This is what a finished arm looks like, the tube clamp midway on the arm allows the outboard tube to telescope into the inboard tube so its size can be reduced somewhat for shipping.
View attachment 18191

What had started out as a build to span everything from the GH3/Movi_M5 combo all the way up to the Red/Movi_M10 combo has been slightly scaled down to be able to accommodate up to the 5DIII/Movi_M5 combo as a maximum. To that end I scaled back the arm lengths to be able to handle up to 15" props and with that it should make it into a shipping container more easily. It's not likely that it will ever be shipped anywhere but it's nice to know it's an option in the future.

The next couple of hours will be spent attaching the motor wires to the BL's and then there will be a few wires that need attaching to the flight control board. At that point we should be just about ready for a test flight. Tomorrow? Rain, all day. PLenty of time for Movi_M5 unpacking day.

Back to the soldering iron and the dogs have to be brought in.

 

[Bartman]

still remaining to be resolved, where to put some LED's and which wireless video frequency to use? I've been using 5.8ghz but I also have a complete 1.3 mhz system here complete with a IBcrazy Tx antenna.

any opinions on the two options?

 

[Mojave]

Use what you have on hand for the build; but make it so you can easily go to the 5.8 later.

. . . exciting build thanks for opening this to the forum . . .

still remaining to be resolved, where to put some LED's and which wireless video frequency to use? I've been using 5.8ghz but I also have a complete 1.3 mhz system here complete with a IBcrazy Tx antenna.

any opinions on the two options?

 

[ChrisViperM]

Great....really keen to see how those tele-arms are going to function in flight conditions.....

BTW: Checked this thread first thing in the morning....even before coffee



Chris

 

[Motopreserve]

still remaining to be resolved, where to put some LED's and which wireless video frequency to use? I've been using 5.8ghz but I also have a complete 1.3 mhz system here complete with a IBcrazy Tx antenna.

any opinions on the two options?

I've done a bunch of research on the 5.8 vs 1.3 options, and was convinced by many (some on this forum and elsewhere) to stick with 5.8 if using 2.4 flight frequency. Some have luck with 1.3 but it seems random and requires a fair amount of moving the antennas around to find the right combo of distance and luck to get 1.3 to work with 2.4. Also, it seems that any success requires using notch filtering to scoop out a healthy band.

Might be easiest to stick with 5.8 for this rapid schedule - and then mess with 1.3 later. Also, if you still have the taranis, there is the option to go ezuhf module plugged into the back, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms

 

[Bartman]

I have to run some errands this morning but the heli will be ready for flight this afternoon if the weather will pause long enough. Expectations are for the Movi_M5 to work OOTB+15 (out of the box plus 15 minutes, per Tabb's demo ) so more on that later this evening!

Tomorrow morning or Sunday afternoon will be the likely times for a first flight with the Movi so this may work out after all.

@Ben,what kind of run times are you getting with the stock M5 battery??

Bart