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DistributorPermalink Reply by Martint BuildYourOwnDrone.co.uk on January 8, 2012 at 12:02pm

Hello Jerome,

 

The camera mount is very good from Jdrones, a customer and I was talking about them the other day, he bought one from me and said it was as good as one he spent a few hundred $'s on!

 

The Telemetry kits here in the UK have to be 2.4 GHz, I have made a blog about them you can see here.

 

The sonars are good for Alt hold to about 2.5 meters then the baro takes over on the autopilot, I have never done an auto landing, someone else might have a view on this.

 

For batteries they need to have as much Mah for the lightest weight, please check the recommended cell count on the battery / ESC, most will do 3 and 4s packs, a 4s pack will give a good 10 min's plus depending on how you fly, lots of hard powers on to climb fast will suck a lot more power!

 

Not sure what you mean by the perimeter, if you are talking about the range you can fly then that is limited by local law and battery power, which ever runs out the soonest!

 

I have many customers using that radio and they seem to work fine, I have only every used Futaba, so another member might be able to help you on that radio a little more.

 

The FPV systems are limited to 5.8 GHz on this project if you are useing radio and telemetry on the same GHz, I would check the FPV forums for the best systems, they are not so widely used here.

 

Regards

 

Martin

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Björn Geir Leifsson on January 8, 2012 at 12:24pm

Hi Jerome

Your English is absolutely "pas mal" :) 

As a recent starter myself and still a newbie and judging from my own experience I would say this:

Go with the Jdrones quad as a first multicopter. It is well proven, gives you all the starting experience and if you buy from Martin at buildyourowndrone.co.uk you will get excellent advice and backup if you need. He has put together a 2.4GHz telemetry kit which works flawlessly. I have not found any other supplier of a working telemetry kit for EU yet. (900MHz is unusable in EU). Get a couple of sets of the composite (gray) propellers. The plastic black ones are useless. Make sure to  balance them carefully as that is absolutely essential.

I have not seen why one should choose the 3DR Quad frame over the JDrones one. Perhaps someone may shed light on that?

I had no problem assembling the electronics and airframe. The trick is to read the Wiki carefully about four times and then check and double check as your work progresses.

You are not a beginner in RC and have help-training so I guess you will have no problem with the controls.

The Quad has no problems with carrying a GoPro and transmitter and you can use that as an FPV camera using the "live video out" (lots of how-to advice on the net).

I think the Spectrum DX8 is an excellent choice. (Someone has to back that up as I do not own one)

Sonar is a must for low flight at least. I think I chose the MB1200 XL-MaxSonar-EZ0 as the best one (I'm not at home right now to check)

Flight time is a balance between capacity/discharge performance/flying style/weight/battery capacity/weight and perhaps more factors. So you really have to experiment but there is an online calculator you might find useful  I mostly use Turnigy 3S1P, 3000mAh, 40-50C discharge cells and usually get at least 10 mins flying time. I am going to add LED's to alert me for low battery status .

Perimeter of use is simply "line of sight". That means you can see it with bare eyes and control it. Anything else is not only inadvisable but illegal in most of the world. FPV flyers usually break that rule sooner or later.

Line of sight is also the are distance for your control link. You can find equipment that extends this range but they are illegal in some countries or require a HAM license at least. 

Cheers

Bjorn

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Permalink Reply by Jérôme Niklès on January 8, 2012 at 1:00pm

Thank you Martin and Bjorn !

I will check those links and yes, I prefer to buy locally ;-)

Your help is really appreciate !

Regards

Jérôme

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Permalink Reply by Björn Geir Leifsson on January 8, 2012 at 1:25pm

Heh... I had not seen Martin's reply when submitting mine :)

Of course you buy locally when that is most favorable or you want to save time, but the this market is in effect global in most respects and you can do well by picking the best bites from wherever depending on many factors like price, shipping, support and your local import restrictions. 

The only real problem are the low-price sites such as Good-luck-buy (name says it all) Hobby King  and SunSky to name those that I have (mostly less than optimal) experience with. You can find useful things on these sites but you definitely get what you pay for.

PS: I meant "heli training", not "help training" in my first reply. Sorry.

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Permalink Reply by Jérôme Niklès on January 8, 2012 at 1:30pm

But I've not understand what you want to say by

 Get a couple of sets of the composite (gray) propellers. The plastic black ones are useless. Make sure to  balance them carefully as that is absolutely essential.

It's about the arm ? Because there is one model with black arm and the other one is different,

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Permalink Reply by Björn Geir Leifsson on January 8, 2012 at 1:36pm

Non, les hélices I believe is the french term. The propellers are the main source of vibration. It is very important to balance your propellers as well as you can because vibration can seriously affect your sensors.

The black propellers that come with most kits are from poor plastic and break easily. The gray one's are made of glass fibre filled plastic and very strong but as most propellers they need balancing.

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DistributorPermalink Reply by Martint BuildYourOwnDrone.co.uk on January 8, 2012 at 2:58pm

I will Confirm the 1200 Sonar is the "one" to have, this is the most used and supported out of all the sonar units!

 

The black arm model is the 3DR?

 

The Arducopter Bjorn is talking about is this one, this was the first Arducopter the 3DR was the second copter to the market.

 

Both the 3DR & Arducopter come with the black props.

 

Jorome your English is fine :) I deal with people all over the world and we always manage to communicate and get the right parts to do the job!

 

Regards

 

Martin.

www.buildyourowndrone.co.uk

 

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