Wookong-M on a Y6

[RTRyder]

I've got the platform built and currently flying with MK electronics temporarily stolen out of my standard Hexa and running the Avroto motors through an I2C converter and PWM ESCs. USPS tracking says the DJI unit will be here Monday, fingers crossed that hurricane Irene doesn't mess things up to the point that mail delivery gets delayed. Only other thing I need is a custom mixer table for the Y6 and that's currently in works through DJI-US.

So I'm ready to go as soon as the last couple pieces fall into place, watch this space for further updates next week, for now here's some pics of the Y6 although this may change a bit with the Wookong, might have to add another deck on top to fit some of the electronics...

Late yesterday I managed to get a test flight out front with the video recording, the DJI has to beat this for smoothness and stability. Not that this is the peak of MK performance since it isn't using BL controllers, but its close enough I think. Completely raw video direct out of the GoPro and uploaded to Youtube, the only processing that has been done is whatever Youtube does when something is uploaded...

The Photohigher AV130 I have attached is my original which is a quasi prototype built last year and has seen a lot of flight time since, the Hyperion servos have developed some slop in the gear train and consequently the mount is a bit twitchy. I mainly use it for doing stills these days so it will be interesting to see if the Wookong can improve on the performance you see here with a bit more stability and tighter control over the camera mount. If I don't see a lot of difference I can always swap to the new AV130 and get rid of the twitches then compare to the same mount flying on the Droidworx AD6 H/L.

Ken

 

[UAVproducts]

That is some nice footage out of the go pro.
It will be great to have that for comparison to the WK-M.

I'm waiting to get you the Y6 mixer info. Sept. 6th or sooner there will be default settings for the Y6 and Octo in a new firmware (online, free).

 

[BMS]

Thanks for documenting this comparison! Watching with great interest...

Did you use any vibration dampeners to attach the AV130 to (Rusty's?) frame?

Was that R3 mode on the GoPro?

 

[RTRyder]

The DJI arrived early this morning while I was out picking up a generator, here's the box it came in with my TX for size comparison...

The contents of the box...

The accessory box contains the GPS stand, a USB cable, and set of Futaba style leads to connect the TX to the control box. Problem here is I have a JR radio so the leads are worthless to me, it would make more sense to put JR style connectors on them so they work with everything and not just Futaba as currently delivered. Fortunately I have connectors and crimpers so I can make what I need in cases like this, not everyone does though...

The components as I've seen them on the web seemed big, they really aren't though. Here's the various bits with a JR RX for size comparison...

So first thing to do after removing the Mk stack was to mount the IMU. After a quick read of the manual it appeared the closer to dead center the better so I mounted up my universal mounting plate that I've used for testing every flight controller I've ever flown. I would have put it directly on center plate of the frame if it weren't for the sizeable hole in the center of the plate. With this setup I have it mounted on a set of Mk rubber standoffs for isolation from motor vibration...

Next is to find a place for the control box and the RX. Rather than add another level and more weight to the frame I simply velcro'd both to the underside of the top plate on each side of the IMU...

With the main components installed and cabled up I put the top plate of the frame on and used a bit of doublesided tape to mount the GPS pod, it appears the closer to center of the IMU the better and what better place than a few cm directly above it...

So the actual install took very little time and was pretty straight forward. Now it was time for logging into it with the Assistant software which meant a download and at the time power hadn't come back on yet after going out during the hurricane Sunday and I was limited to my wifi hotspot on a roaming connection, the download speed was roughly equal to a dialup line, SLOW! Eventually I got it all and was able to load and run it on my Netbook which is a must for me as the Netbook is dedicated to use with the multis in the field. So a quick run through the setup and I was able to spin the motors using the TX afterward. Not setup correctly at the moment, I set the mixer table for an X Hexa as there isn't a table for a Y6 yet and DJI apparently hasn't done the instructions for creating a custom mixer so I'm kind of dead in the water at this point until they come up with how to set it up for a Y6. Worst case they are supposed to have a firmware release in a week that will have a Y6 built in, I'd really rather not wait that long to be able to test fly. So as it sits the only thing keeping me from flying it tomorrow is the lack of the mixer setup. I know how to do one for Mk and if I knew what they wanted to see for values in the table I'd have a go at creating one, but there's nothing in the manual about it yet so things are on hold for now...

Thanks for documenting this comparison! Watching with great interest...

Did you use any vibration dampeners to attach the AV130 to (Rusty's?) frame?

Was that R3 mode on the GoPro?

No special vibration dampening other than a piece of sorbothane between the center plate and the Droidworx mounting bracket, mainly because this set of landing gear was built up from leftover pieces when I upgraded the AD6 and I had no stock rubber pads to use there.

Video was done in R3, its the only mode I use on the GoPros.

Ken

 

[Bartman]

Hi KEn,
have fun with it. Interesting wires, JR colors, Futaba connectors.
Can't wait to see how it flies and controls a camera mount. Still too few options in the way of good camera controllers.
Bart

 

[Emowillcox]

Is that gps on a stand or just mounted to the frame?

 

[RTRyder]

Is that gps on a stand or just mounted to the frame?

Its just stuck to the top plate with some servo tape, I wanted to get it as close to center as possible and with a large opening on the center of the plate there was no way to attach the stand without adding a "patch" to cover the hole. If I decide to keep it on this setup I may ask for a custom top plate without the hole along with some other interesting bits I've discussed with the frame maker, or I could just as easily cut my own top plate from some G10 I have hanging around and drill it to suit.

Ken

 

[UAVproducts]

Nice install.

I know all about the JR connectors. I just end up dremeling the tabs off. I have told DJI so many times to make them JR coneetors to start with. Will see what the future holds.

 

[Flying Tivo]

With the Ace one from DJI, it came with JR type connectors. Most probably they changed it to futaba in the M version so you could not plug the Bec backwards, since you can plug all bec`s/throttles together and possibly shorting something. I might be wrong, but better to watch out!!!

Felipe

 

[RTRyder]

There is a post over on RCG that the Y6 and X8 firmware update for the WKM will be released tomorrow. Thinking this through I'm now leaning towards pulling the WKM off the Y6 for the time being and putting it on the MK quad frame I use as a test bed until I'm a lot more familiar with the setup and tuning. Maybe I'm just gun shy after being bitten by Hoverfly firmware update bugs one too many times but I'm not comfortable risking $1000 worth of Droidworx landing gear and Photohigher camera mount hanging under the Y6 until I know the setup well enough and the firmware has been proven to work correctly. At least that way I can probably have the WKM flying later today and see how well the basic setup works, the Y6 needed major tweaking in the MK settings before it flew well so I'd like to see what parameter changes do to the WKM first before risking expensive gear.

Ken

 

[RTRyder]

First video from Y6 with WKM controller

I managed to get the gains dialed in pretty close this afternoon with the WKM controller back on the Y6, could probably tweak it some more and I will over the long weekend. Late afternoon I decided to hook up the servos for the camera mount and turn on the GoPro to see how stable it is compared to when this frame had an MK flight controller running the show via I2C converter to the PWM ESC's. Same well worn camera mount as noted at the top of this thread.

I took a SWAG at the settings for the gimbal in the DJI Assistant software and leveled the mount by eye, looks like I got it pretty close, makes me think it can get a lot better if I spend some time to do it right. Since I already had a video done with the Mk in front of the house I did the WKM video in the same place though not exactly the same flight path.

I think it's much steadier with the WKM and the ONLY difference is the flight controller hardware, everything else is exactly the same, compare this one to the video in the first post. Neither video has been edited or stabilized, the only processing that has been done is whatever Youtube does when the video is uploaded, otherwise 720P MP4 straight from the GoPro...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNBB-AdHu9Y

Over the weekend my goal is to do a video flight with the AD6 and new AV130 then swap the lower assembly with the Y6 and do the same flight with the new 130 under the WKM to see which is more stable, the MK or Wookong flying the same mount and camera.

Ken

 

[Gunter]

Ken, I have to congratulate you on your piloting skills. Very smooth and flying nose in was very well done...I've got a bit more practising to do!

 

[RTRyder]

Ken, I have to congratulate you on your piloting skills. Very smooth and flying nose in was very well done...I've got a bit more practising to do!

I do practice a lot, not always with the big machines either, actually I don't fly the big ones nearly as much as I do the little 12 inch aerobatic quads. In good weather I try to get a minimum of at least 3 full battery packs a day on one or more of the quads I have ready to go.

Tomorrow will be a day out at the flying field with the Y6 and the quads. Since I already have a video I did there with the new AV130 on the Droidworx AD6, I swapped the new mount over to the Y6 tonight so tomorrow I get to play with all new gear doing video flights, results should be interesting.

Ken

 

[DennyR]

It all looks very professional Ken. I'd love to know what gyros are in that IMU.

So thats Brown St. !

 

[RTRyder]

Sunday I got over to the field with the Y6 for its first outing in a large enough area to really let it fly and see what it can do. Unfortunately it was to be a short day for the Y6 and WKM controller. First flight went well enough, still had some gain adjustments to make and I was flying the new AV130 as well to see if the faster servos would make a difference. After the first flight I hooked up the netbook and made a couple tweaks to the settings and went out for another test flight. Things were going well until about 3 minutes into the flight I accidentally hit the throttle hold switch rendering the Y6 into a large brick with camera attached, an excellent reason to implement throttle arm/disarm rather than rely on a TX switch for pre and post flight safety with an aircraft that can neither glide or autorotate.

Damage didn't look too bad when I got over to where it went down, broken prop, bent roll cradle on the AV130, a lot of dirt and grass stuffed into places it shouldn't be. Disconnected all power and put it in the car, continued flying the small quads I had brought along decideing that now was not a good time to look at the Y6. When I got home I put it up on the bench and it really didn't look all that bad, took the roll cradle off the AV130, straightened the GPS antenna mast, put a new prop on, and went out back for a test flight. Flew just as well as it has since I put the WKM controller on but hovering it at eye level revealed some serious misalignments between the motors even though it flew as though nothing was wrong, a testment to the autoleveling ability of the WKM more than any pilot skill on my part!

Final tally, three arm mounting blocks broken, several bent screws, one broken prop, and all three 1/2 inch square alloy arms bent to some degree. One of the arms the bend is so subtle you can't actually see it until you put a straight edge against it then it's glaringly obvious. The rear arm was bent right where it exited the mounting block in the center plate so it wasn't visible until the arm was removed from the frame. The arm that had the broken prop was clearly bent once the ESCs and wiring were out of the way, not so much when everything was tied to the arm. Fortunately I have a decent stock of 1/2 inch square aluminum tubing so 15 minutes in the garage and I had a new set of arms ready to go, swapping them out took a bit longer but not too bad. While I was at it I finally made the standoff spacers to go between the upper and lower motor mounting plates, something I've been wanting to do since I built the frame about a month ago. Next test flight the motor alignment was noticeably improved though it didn't fly any different than it ever has with the WKM installed.

The AV130 looked pretty grim at first glance, the roll cradle having a couple of hard kinks in the framework. I had a few options here, use the roll cradle off the older 130 that is the spare I use for stills, order new parts from Photohigher, or see what I could do with what I had. Since I had little to lose at that point I laid out a work towel on the bench and set about disassembling the roll cradle one piece at a time. What I found was most of it is made of very soft aluminum alloy that bends easily. What is bent can for the most part always be straightened if you know what you're doing and I spent enough time in the auto body trade years ago that I know a bit about straightening and forming metal, (if you want to see the ultimate in fixing bent alloy go browse through the diary here... http://www.bluebirdproject.com/bbp/ )

With plenty of patience and a couple of hours time I managed to put all the bent pieces of the AV130 right so that when reassembled you wouldn't know anything had ever happened were it not for the few marks in the anodizing where the worst of the bending occurred. Putting it all back together it works just as well as it did the day it came out of the box so it appears I got it straight again. Once that was done I remounted it under the Droidworx AD6 again, I'm not going to push my luck with it having dodged the bullet this time and as it turns out the older AV130 actually works better on the Y6, apparently the WKM doesn't need really fast servos to do the job.

Did a couple test flights late yesterday afternoon after I got everything fixed and back together and before it started raining. Forecast is for another day or two of rain before it clears up so no more testing until the weekend it looks like.

Ken

 

[Droider]

Blimey Ken.. sorry matey.. can you have stick motor starts like on the MK?
I learnt to scrap the motor off switch on my 330x when I stuffed that doing exactly the same thing but rather than take the picture I stuffed a TZ7!

Got to agree with the AV130 quality. At first when I crashed mine it looked irreparable but when I pulled it apart I straightened the cage really easily with lead dressers and some 3/4" ply!. Think PH make the cage out of really high grade soft alloy just for this reason.

Are you saying the camera control on the DJI controller is better than the MK?
No need to fit BEC to increase voltage to servos?
What is the voltage supplied by the DJI FC to the servos?

Still reading this thread with great interest as my new ADX3HL has just arrived and is sat at Quadcopters.co.uk waiting for me to go bring my baby home!

Two weeks ago it was always going to be MK FC/BL's but now I aint so sure..

You once helped me enormously in the early days by steering me away from one FC to MK which I am eternally grateful for.. SO.. Is it time for you to advise me again?

Dave

 

[RTRyder]

Blimey Ken.. sorry matey.. can you have stick motor starts like on the MK?
I learnt to scrap the motor off switch on my 330x when I stuffed that doing exactly the same thing but rather than take the picture I stuffed a TZ7!

Got to agree with the AV130 quality. At first when I crashed mine it looked irreparable but when I pulled it apart I straightened the cage really easily with lead dressers and some 3/4" ply!. Think PH make the cage out of really high grade soft alloy just for this reason.

Are you saying the camera control on the DJI controller is better than the MK?
No need to fit BEC to increase voltage to servos?
What is the voltage supplied by the DJI FC to the servos?

Still reading this thread with great interest as my new ADX3HL has just arrived and is sat at Quadcopters.co.uk waiting for me to go bring my baby home!

Two weeks ago it was always going to be MK FC/BL's but now I aint so sure..

You once helped me enormously in the early days by steering me away from one FC to MK which I am eternally grateful for.. SO.. Is it time for you to advise me again?

Dave

Dave, motor arming by TX stick movement is not yet a feature in the WKM controller, hopefully it will get added in upcoming firmware upgrades. I setup the throttle hold as a workaround for the lack of arm/disarm feature after I found out you can do it for acro mode on the JR 11X, many TX don't offer it for anything other than heli mode. I always used a throttle hold when flying helis, problem is I haven't been flying a heli on any regular basis for over a year now and I've somewhat forgotten about the whole concept of having an active throttle hold. Of course on an airplane or heli if you kill the motor you can either deadstick or autorotate it to the ground in one piece, do it on a multi and you've got a brick, period.

What I've found so far is the DJI Wookong controller has much better control over the camera gimbal than MK does along with the WKM having a better autoleveling ability so there's less need for the gimbal to move. Less movement means less wobble and weave in the video and less correction needed on the backend so the overall result is much better looking raw video. In my case I unbolted the old AV130 with D/W landing gear from my standard MK Hexa and bolted it on to the Y6 along with all the wiring including the CC BEC supplying 6 volts to the servos. Due to the way I did the connections for the 6 volt setup it would require modifying the current wiring harness to use power from the WKM controller so I left it all as it was on the MK should I decide to put it back there. I believe the voltage from the WKM controller to the servos is 5 volts since the power to the entire WKM system is supplied by the ESC BEC circuits.

IMO the WKM is the best controller to use if you want to do APV work, its much easier to use than MK and it actually delivers on things that have been promised by other flight controller manufacturers but not yet made to work. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Mk but how much of that do you really need for normal APV work? Things like carefree mode, waypoints, and POI are interesting features but have limited usefulness in the real world. Also consider than the WKM has just been released for use on multirotor craft and there are a lot of things that can and likely will be added in future releases. Interesting thing about this manufacturer is they have doing this same thing for RC helis for several years now so they have all the necessary capabilities and experience to make it work, just a matter of porting it over to the -M platform from the heli world. To me its not a question of can they do it, but more when and will they do it, I guess a lot of it depends on how big the demand is and two weeks into the initial release its way too early to tell.

In terms of cost, well its really a wash when compared to MK. If you add up all the bits and pieces needed to get an MK flying with GPS capability on a hex the cost works out to be about the same give or take about $100 depending on the motor and ESC hardware you select and where you buy it from. The big plus is the WKM is a sealed black box requireing nothing in the way of component assembly or soldering, and it uses off the shelf ESCs so in the event that one lets out the magic smoke you can source a replacement fairly easily for short $ and change it out in a matter of minutes, try that with an MK!

So as much as I like my MKs and will continue to fly them for a while longer, there's a new player on the scene that really does compete with Mk at the same level. Although it doesn't have all the features yet it can go head to head with MK for APV work without all the upfront work it takes to get an MK in the air and to me that's worth a lot.

Here's the post repair first flight video for the Y6, if you compare to the first video I did with it you can see it's gotten smoother with the same hardware, getting really close on the gain settings which are quite different than what it needs to fly a small quad. Raw video, no post other than trimming it a bit to cut out some boring bits of it sitting on the ground waiting for GPS lock before takeoff...

Ken

 

[DucktileMedia]

As i am very close to ordering the DJI, does anyone know if you can buy replacement components individually? What if that thing tumbles and you break the gps for example? Unlikely to break more than the mount, but just a realistic question.

 

[RTRyder]

As i am very close to ordering the DJI, does anyone know if you can buy replacement components individually? What if that thing tumbles and you break the gps for example? Unlikely to break more than the mount, but just a realistic question.

That would be a question for Robert at DJI-US although I can't see any reason why they wouldn't. Probably won't see them listed on the website but I would think that if something broke and you needed a replacement they would be able to provide it, just makes good business sense to do that. Right now spares might require a bit of a wait as they're selling them faster than they can supply them at the moment, once supply catches up to demand there shouldn't be a probelm with spares.

Ken

 

[Gunter]

Ken, I'd be very interested how that RTB failsafe works...have you tested it yet?