One Step Closer

One newbies answer to your question, and a few observations:

I see you are going with 4S batteries; I'm thinking of changing up myself, but I am still doing calculations. I use 3S right now, because it was listed and recommended in the AC2 wiki. I am partial to the hobby king-sold FlightMax Zippy series, not because they are "good", but because they are all I have used. The math works out, and the cost works out, but I suspect there are sometimes quality issues. For my quads, I ended up purchasing Zippy 4400 mAh 15C 3S batteries. I also have some 2200 30C 3S batteries for lighter quads, but seldom use them for that purpose (my frames are unusually light) so I am planning to use those in my new Bixlers. To use these Lipos, you will want to learn a bit about lipos, and get a charger. I use and have had good experiences with the IMAX B6 (also handles 4S) and a AC adaptor, both available at hobby king. With anything hobby king, if you buy from them, try to get stuff from the US warehouse. These were the first things I ordered, and I had fully assembled and tethered-flight-tested quads and a second frame before these arrived in the mail.... Also note that the IMAX B6 is subject to clones, and the clones often burn out, so you might want to avoid knock-offs (other people suggest getting two of the knock-offs for the price of the genuine article, and just replace them when they burn out, I'm not a fan of that plan, but to each his own.)

The AttoPilot current sensor is not a ready-made product. To use it, you will need to solder on connectors (it is built for Dean's connectors, a male and female on each side) and also a three wire cable w/ standard .1" header (some configurations use three wires, some only two, supplemented by voltage monitoring direct from one of the battery connectors called a "balance" plug) In any case, I'm going into too much detail again, the long and the short of it, is with this, you will need dean's connectors, or some heavy gauge (12 or better, I think, for your build) and other type of connectors (XT60?) that you might use in your quad and batteries. Hobbyking sells batteries with all different connectors, and you might have to convert them, depending on what you get, and what the quad/hexa kit comes with. Unless you let that drive your purchasing decisions, that is. Opps... getting long again. But with the AttoPilot, you will definitely need a soldering iron (or soldering buddy,) some connectors, a spare servo cable that you can cut up, and maybe some wire. Depending on your ArduCopter connectors and battery connectors.

I see a maxbotixs sonar and cable, but I did not see the $2.50 mount for it. You can easily make one out of anything flat, just by cutting a 1.5" or so square, and putting a few holes in it. But with the trend in your shopping list to go for the preassembled, I thought I would mention it.

Speaking of missing, I did not see any transmitter/receiver for the FPV camera or video glasses. I have no experience with this camera, pan/tilt, or goggles so I cannot comment on them (I do have fatshark, but in the form of goggles rather than the camera. I use a sony WDS600 camera, and it has treated me well so far on the ground.) Getting a video transmitter might be a complex topic, FCC regulations, frequency conflicts with existing telemetry, RC, etc, power requirements, weight limits, antenna selection, transmitter placement, and I need to learn to keep these posts shorter, so I will not go into it more, other than to say I didn't see any on the list.

You are welcome to buy the ArduStation, but you should be aware that it does not (at present) work with AC2. There is at least one guy (I think more than one) on these boards working on writing code for it, and considering upgrading the hardware also, so that it will work with AC2. There are some guys with videos, and I wonder if they have it working w/ custom MAVlink code. Things move fast around here, so I could be dated, but I think the ArduStation is just pulling out of limbo and it is not yet clear if it will get a software refresh, a hardware refresh or both.

If you do FPV or hardware ground station, you will eventually get some kind of antenna stand, possibly a tracking stand. Even if it is just a camera tripod or belt-harness to keep your camera receiver and google batteries and ground station laptop or hardware ground station out of the dirt. But that is another topic, for another time?

I think this was mentioned (by more than me, I think; was it with someone else?) that while I cannot at all criticize for this two-feet approach (I'm a fellow newbie, and I now have three APMs, seven airframes, not including the AR.Drone, including three custom quad builds, a dozen Arduino boards of different types, and a lot of cameras, servos, over 20 motors, testing gear, ten batteries, and more) I want to point out that your full-up shopping list is missing some key components I think you will want. Spares. At least one motor, one ESC, two prop sets (come in two's, CW and CCW) and one ArduCopter arm. It is likely that you will break two of these things (a motor and a prop, an arm and a prop, an ESC and a prop) ... let me restate, you *will* break props, and you are likely to break one of either a motor, an ESC, or any arm (or all three) at some point early on. All the rest of the gear will be grounded if you don't have a spare. And the total cost of all the spares I mentioned is about $50, so having your $1800 worth of gear grounded for lack of $50 in parts.... your decision. I think CyberCrash had a better list of crash parts, I think he included a motor mount, but I have no experience with the AC2 frame. Listen to him instead.

For all that, I am excited for you. I've had more fun in the last 60 days messing about with this stuff than I have had in years. I hope you do too!

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Michael Pursifull September 14, 2011 at 8:54pm

And I hope someone else chimes in here, because it would pain me if I was the only one of 18 thousand members of a very active, and much more savvy community than I, to lead you astray ;)
Moderator

Michael Pursifull September 14, 2011 at 8:48pm

One newbies answer to your question, and a few observations:

I see you are going with 4S batteries; I'm thinking of changing up myself, but I am still doing calculations. I use 3S right now, because it was listed and recommended in the AC2 wiki. I am partial to the hobby king-sold FlightMax Zippy series, not because they are "good", but because they are all I have used. The math works out, and the cost works out, but I suspect there are sometimes quality issues. For my quads, I ended up purchasing Zippy 4400 mAh 15C 3S batteries. I also have some 2200 30C 3S batteries for lighter quads, but seldom use them for that purpose (my frames are unusually light) so I am planning to use those in my new Bixlers. To use these Lipos, you will want to learn a bit about lipos, and get a charger. I use and have had good experiences with the IMAX B6 (also handles 4S) and a AC adaptor, both available at hobby king. With anything hobby king, if you buy from them, try to get stuff from the US warehouse. These were the first things I ordered, and I had fully assembled and tethered-flight-tested quads and a second frame before these arrived in the mail.... Also note that the IMAX B6 is subject to clones, and the clones often burn out, so you might want to avoid knock-offs (other people suggest getting two of the knock-offs for the price of the genuine article, and just replace them when they burn out, I'm not a fan of that plan, but to each his own.)

The AttoPilot current sensor is not a ready-made product. To use it, you will need to solder on connectors (it is built for Dean's connectors, a male and female on each side) and also a three wire cable w/ standard .1" header (some configurations use three wires, some only two, supplemented by voltage monitoring direct from one of the battery connectors called a "balance" plug) In any case, I'm going into too much detail again, the long and the short of it, is with this, you will need dean's connectors, or some heavy gauge (12 or better, I think, for your build) and other type of connectors (XT60?) that you might use in your quad and batteries. Hobbyking sells batteries with all different connectors, and you might have to convert them, depending on what you get, and what the quad/hexa kit comes with. Unless you let that drive your purchasing decisions, that is. Opps... getting long again. But with the AttoPilot, you will definitely need a soldering iron (or soldering buddy,) some connectors, a spare servo cable that you can cut up, and maybe some wire. Depending on your ArduCopter connectors and battery connectors.

I see a maxbotixs sonar and cable, but I did not see the $2.50 mount for it. You can easily make one out of anything flat, just by cutting a 1.5" or so square, and putting a few holes in it. But with the trend in your shopping list to go for the preassembled, I thought I would mention it.

Speaking of missing, I did not see any transmitter/receiver for the FPV camera or video glasses. I have no experience with this camera, pan/tilt, or goggles so I cannot comment on them (I do have fatshark, but in the form of goggles rather than the camera. I use a sony WDS600 camera, and it has treated me well so far on the ground.) Getting a video transmitter might be a complex topic, FCC regulations, frequency conflicts with existing telemetry, RC, etc, power requirements, weight limits, antenna selection, transmitter placement, and I need to learn to keep these posts shorter, so I will not go into it more, other than to say I didn't see any on the list.

You are welcome to buy the ArduStation, but you should be aware that it does not (at present) work with AC2. There is at least one guy (I think more than one) on these boards working on writing code for it, and considering upgrading the hardware also, so that it will work with AC2. There are some guys with videos, and I wonder if they have it working w/ custom MAVlink code. Things move fast around here, so I could be dated, but I think the ArduStation is just pulling out of limbo and it is not yet clear if it will get a software refresh, a hardware refresh or both.

If you do FPV or hardware ground station, you will eventually get some kind of antenna stand, possibly a tracking stand. Even if it is just a camera tripod or belt-harness to keep your camera receiver and google batteries and ground station laptop or hardware ground station out of the dirt. But that is another topic, for another time?

I think this was mentioned (by more than me, I think; was it with someone else?) that while I cannot at all criticize for this two-feet approach (I'm a fellow newbie, and I now have three APMs, seven airframes, not including the AR.Drone, including three custom quad builds, a dozen Arduino boards of different types, and a lot of cameras, servos, over 20 motors, testing gear, ten batteries, and more) I want to point out that your full-up shopping list is missing some key components I think you will want. Spares. At least one motor, one ESC, two prop sets (come in two's, CW and CCW) and one ArduCopter arm. It is likely that you will break two of these things (a motor and a prop, an arm and a prop, an ESC and a prop) ... let me restate, you *will* break props, and you are likely to break one of either a motor, an ESC, or any arm (or all three) at some point early on. All the rest of the gear will be grounded if you don't have a spare. And the total cost of all the spares I mentioned is about $50, so having your $1800 worth of gear grounded for lack of $50 in parts.... your decision. I think CyberCrash had a better list of crash parts, I think he included a motor mount, but I have no experience with the AC2 frame. Listen to him instead.

For all that, I am excited for you. I've had more fun in the last 60 days messing about with this stuff than I have had in years. I hope you do too!

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