Saturday, July 7, 2012

I was at the Tx/Rx Labs in Houston today to finish my quad today during the open house. I did more then finish working on it..... I maidened  it in front of  about 10 people I am glad it didn't tip over the side crashing.

Here is more details on the quad. 

Bill of materials


The booms are from Home Depot. They are towel racks.

The nuts and bolts are also from Home Depot.

The frame is a custom design that I cut on the laser cutter ( if any one wants me to cut them one just leave a message in the comments)

During the maiden I was surprised at the KK2s stability right out of the box. It did have some oscillation but that can be easily tuned out. I am glad I didn't have to bother with pots like I had to when using the older KK boards to get it to the point where it would not tip over.
I just gave it throttle and it took off without any problems.

I am going to finish tuning the PI in the morning and after that I can fly it a bit more aggressively to see what this thing will do before i have to take it apart to take it to Turkey.

I'll post a video when i get a chance.

Gig'em, Aggies !  

  

Wednesday, July 4, 2012



Well this is my latest project. I have been working on my own quad design for some time. I wanted a cheap fold-able quad that I can take overseas with out a problem. After a few days of designing this is what i came up with.
I used 5mm plywood because it is so easy to cut with a laser cutter and its super cheap. I got enough plywood to make at least a hundred of these things for just 10 bucks from Home Depot. For the booms I used Aluminum towel racks also from Home Depot costing me only about 8 bucks for all 4. With the frame out of the way lets talk about the most expensive part of the quad... The motors and the speed controllers. I lucked out on those and got everything i needed from a guy on RCGroups.com for only 80 bucks shipped to my front door. That also included a HK KK flight controller. 
My current cost is in the low 100s right now. Considering this is a 900mm quad that's not a bad price at all. 

Things I have left to do:
-Add the power distribution board and solder up the ESCs to it
-Add the flight controller and the Rx
-Fly it ! 

My batteries should be here tomorrow or by Friday I will try to trim it out and get it flying by the weekend before I go to Turkey for the summer. ( Contemplating about taking the quad with me or not)

Have a Happy 4th and Gig'em !

Monday, July 2, 2012



Update as I promised. I finished up wiring my V1 board on a spare proto board. But as I was soldering everything up I realized that I had no way of telling the arduino that if the fridge door is open or if its closed. 
In order to solve this problem I decided to install a reed switch. I will use a magnet from a hard drive to turn the switch on and off. But adding a new component means new code to write but it shouldn't be that bad.

For the board I'm going to etch the PCB this time to have a nicer looking board. That way I can reduce the chance of a bad solder joint or a loose jumper wire. On top of that it looks cool. Isn't that the reason for this project any way ?


New layout
V1 Board
The wiring doesn't look that purdy..... but it does the job!