A difficult day

Today we have tried to fly the new @Nio's hexacopter.

We have find a good place to serve as our main test airfield, a lot of space, no near obstacles. Perfect conditions: sunny, no wind.

But there is something wrong!. It is impossible to take off with the hexa equilbrated. Radio trim is not enough to compensate the deviation. We try to modify the gyros offsets but with no luck.

It could be:

• Hardware
  
  • Front Motor/ESC?
  • APM/IMU Fail?
  • Power distribution not providing enough amp for an ESC peak?
  
  
• Software
  
  • Any bug in the latest revision of ardupirates hexa code?
  • Incorrect PID settings?
  
  

Some pictures:

From spcopter

From spcopter

From spcopter

Maybe tomorrow will be a better day!

Big Hexacopter ready

@Nio has almost finished his big hexacopter to carry on the GoPro camera.




Specs:
Frame:
- Arms: Aluminium square tubes
- Center: One plate Aluminium/One plate Polycarbonate
- MotorToMotor distance: 60cm
Motors: Turnigy 2217 860kv
ESC: Turnigy Plush 25A
Lipo: 3S5000
Sonar: Maxbotix LV-EZ0
Camera: GoPro
Weight RTF: 1650gr (with GoPro camera 1850gr)
Core: ArduPilotMega and IMU (Oilpan)
Code: Ardupirates Rev 572

We are impatient to see a video of the flight and our first onboard video.

TinyQuad redesigned

After having some big crashes due to motors coming off the mounts, we decide to modify the design and use square carbon tubes (we also try with aluminium) that allow us to screw the motors to the arms. We have also redesigned the central plates using carbon sheets. And finally but not less important we have added the sonar to allow "altitude hold".

This is the result:


Specs:
Frame:
- Arms: Square Carbon fiber tubes
- Center: Carbon fiber
- MotorToMotor distance: 28cm
Motors: Turnigy 1811-2000kv
ESC: Turnigy Plush 6A
Lipo: 3S610
Sonar: Maxbotix LV-EZ0
Props: 3-blade 5x3
Weight RTF: 250gr
Core: ArduPilotMega and IMU (Oilpan)
Code: Ardupirates Rev 527

Tiny Hexacopter

New challenge for the team. Can we build and fly a tiny hexacopter with the ardupirates code?

Yes, we can!

Tiny hexa by@Juanki

Specs:

Frame:

- Arms: Carbon fiber tubes

- Center: Carbon fiber

- MotorToMotor distance: 28cm

Motors: Turnigy 1811-2000kv

ESC: Turnigy Plush 6A

Lipo: 3S1000

Props: 3-blade 5x3

Weight RTF: 330gr

Core: ArduPilotMega and IMU (Oilpan)

Code: ArduPirates Hexa.

At the beginning

We are a group of people interested in unmanned vehicles/systems specially aerial platforms. Our members are:
@Juanki, the frame builder
@Nio, the official pilot
@Nacho, the wii guy
@JA, the only-with-sonar-pilot!

We get our inspiration from Arduino, Aeroquad and lately Arducopter. We are now following all the activity in rcgroups specially the ardupirates group.

Our first approach to the rc world has been a clone of the great @JoseJulio's tiny quadcopter. You can find all the information in the following links:
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/indoor-fun-with-a-tiny
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fIZL-Ca2fx2RPhBQLzoOdqdCuikXRKePwKbxDlJWiss/edit?hl=es&pli=1#

These are some videos of our clones:

3-blade tiny quad by @Juanki


@Nio piloting @JA tiny quad


@JA learning to land (hard way)


Specs:
Frame:
- Arms: Carbon fiber tubes 4mm
- Center: Carbon fiber or balsa/plywood.
- MotorToMotor distance: 28cm
Motors: Turnigy 1811-2000kv
ESC: Turnigy Plush 6A
Lipo: 3S610
Props: 3-blade 5x3
Weight RTF: 246gr
Core: ArduPilotMega and IMU (Oilpan)
Code: JoseJulio's indoor branch of arducopter.