DIY brushless motor kit - first failure

Just like it was expected, my first attempt to wind a brushless motor (12N14P) was a failure. Probable cause: short circuit between phases and my creation released magic smoke.

Then I tried for a second time, and failed again. This time less, no smoke, but motor overheats and does not want to start most of the time. I suspect this can be an ESC problem (Emax 30A) that is configured for DampedLight. Perhaps motor is rotation too fast (no load after all) and ESC tries to slow it down. Hard to tell. Tomorrow I will add a propeller and disable DampedLight. Maybe it will help. I will also try WYE configuration. Right now phases are connected in Delta setup.

DIY brushless motor kit...

China is such a magical place... among all those affordable things you can buy there, there are those not so useful, but still affordable things that, for sure, you do not need. Just like DIY Assemble 2204 2-3S Brushless Motor 0.42*2.8 Copper Wire with Motor Cap Banana Plug.

As you can see on a picture above, it is a motor that you have to assemble by yourself. Wind the coils, install bearings, learn the difference between Delta and Star configuration, and so on and so on... Oh, and there is absolutely no manual. So even number of wire turns is a mystery. I suspect something around 10, but who knows.

Tomorrow will be the first attempt to assemble it. I hope magic smoke will not appear...

3D Printed Paddle Wheel Boat

It's not a secret, that me, and QuadMeUp, are not only about quadcopters. From time to time I like to do something completely different.

When I was a child (10-12 or something like that) I loved to build boats. Simple crude design: styrofoam or bark, simple sail or DC motor and tinwire propeller. No RC link. Just let it sail in "somewhere there".

When I got a 3D printer and learned that servos can be converted to continuous rotation simply by replacing potentiometer with a pair of resistors, the idea to build paddle wheel boat powered by servos was almost obvious.

So, here it is!

• Hull can be 3D printed, STL files are available on Thingiverse
• Wheels are powered by 2 TowerPro 9g servos converted to continuous rotation
• RC link by cheapest FrSky compatible D8 receiver
• 2S LiPo gives enough "juice" and with power usage of about 300mA it can sail for hours

Hands on: Scarab Knife 200

This pile of parts you see below will turn into an FPV mini quad next week. To be precise, it will turn into Scarab Knife 200 by CarbonBird.com.

It's late and I'm overwhelmed with the number of parts in the package, so I did not even attempted to unpack everything...

Bottom line is: this looks awesome! I'm really looking forward to this build!

Talking Taranis - teach FrSky Taranis to talk to you

One of the most important features of modern, computerized, radios is that you can make them talk to you. After all, with setup telemetry link from UAV, radio should "know" things. Things like battery voltage for example. Why not make FrSky Taranis (or Horus or Taranis X Q7) talk to you and report LiPo voltage in a smart way?

Before we proceed, you have to setup SmartPort telemetry or "legacy" FrSky telemetry. This post does not covers this topic. You might want to take a look here and here.

Let's go

In OpenTX menu navigate to last page called Telemetry and check if VFAS is reporting proper value.

Read more...

Soldering for beginners: ESC, PDB and all those cables...

As some of you might have noticed, I've started to publish videos on YouTube from time to time. I was rather not advertising them here. This will change and you might expect a series of overdued posts with some of my videos.

Today something hardware related: soldering for beginners using ESC, PDB and power cables on a mini-quad as an example.

GPS Racer: worklog #3

GPS Racer project is almost done. Last week I've assembled al the electronics I had and maidened it over the weekend with partial success.

Build is still missing FPV gear: RunCam Owl and VTX did not yet arrived so. Without them, final specification is: Read more...

3D Printed Faceplate for SkyZone SKY-01 FPV goggles

While SkyZone SKY-01 are pretty good FPV goggles, they are not very comfortable. Instead big faceplate, they only have rubber eyecups. This approach works, but well...

Like always, there is a solution: 3D printed faceplate for SkyZone SKY-01. Thingieverse has at least few different designs, but I've chose the one from the link above. They fit right and do not have fan adapter which I do not use.

Foam pads for faceplate are a second problem. In first iteration I just uses gray sponge I had at home and white, dense, closed foam from Emax motors and glued everything together with Uhu Por. Read more...

The best GPS module for INAV

This is my personal best GPS module for INAV: Beitian BN-880 based on Ublox Neo-M8N. Currently I have 3 pieces of BN-880, all works just great, and if I will have a need to have another one, I would also choose it.

Why? It really works well. On the outside it gets a solid 3D fix in less than a minute. It even can get a fix with 9-10 sats in a center of a city when only a small piece of sky is visible simply by lying on a windowsill. It take time, but works.

Read more...

Tutorial: replace battery in RunCam HD

My RunCam HD died after 5 months in a drawer. Reason: battery destroyed. It had enough energy for approx. 2 seconds of operation. So I had a choice: buy original battery from RunCam for $9.99 plus shipment, or fix it DIY style. I've choces the second option.

Luckily for us, RunCam used generic 803035 LiPo 1S, 3,7V battery that can be purchased in specialized stores. I've paid around $6 for mine, but if you look hard enough, you should find something even cheaper. Also, luckily (or not) there is a battery plug: 2 pin JST 1.25mm.

Read more...