DIY brushless motor kit - I give up, for now...

Latest update on the topic of DIY motor kit from Banggood (DIY Assemble 2204 2-3S Brushless Motor 0.42*2.8 Copper Wire with Motor Cap Banana Plug): I give up. For now, at least.

In total, I tried to wind this motor 6 times. In every single case it ended in the same way: one of the phases burned. So, it's either me, or this kit. I've verified winding directions and termination schema for at least few times, and if I didn't missed something extremely obvious, I did it in a right way. I even verified winding directions during "unwinding". So I start to suspect, that this motor is either no 12N14P DLRK (not very probable), or it should not be winded with 0.42mm wire. Next week I will order 0.20mm wire and try one more time...

This is a winding schema I used:

Poles goes as follows: AabBCcaABbcC where capital letter is clockwise, while small letter is counter-clockwise.

Phases were connected like this:

1. A1-C2
2. B1-C1
3. A2-B2

Sure, I could have done something wrong. But not 6 times in a row...

GPS Racer: worklog #4

Yesterday I finally maidened my GPS Racer in full FPV configuration. RunCam Owl Plus and VTX finally arrived, it was not raining, so I took recording gear after sunset and went flying.

To be precise, it was not "night". But it was pretty dark. Too dark for my RunCam Swift. Owl Plus was sensitive enough to fly. It was not perfect, but doable. Next step: not IR blocked lens and IR emitter for real night flying. Both have been ordered.

Plus, thanks to GPS and OSD I finally saw the speed this thing can do. 92km/h recorded, but that was not the limit on those 6030 props. I do not think I've opened throttle to max...

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...