Weight testing of 8 motor Arducopter

Been flying more with my eight motor version of arducopter. Lately I've been attaching different weights to see what the copter is able to carry and how long. Results have been exactly as i presumed them to be. Flying with 4-cell 5000mAh lipos it can fly with 800-900 grams of weight aboard and flight time will be around 7-8 minutes.
After the weight tests I've been trying to get the AH and PH working. Those have been bit dissapointing features after getting used to precise and accurate way the German Mikrokopter keeps its place when told to. But I still use RC2 version of the code and am in the process of getting the AH+PH PID settings right. A wiki page of adjusting your AH+PH would be appreciated.

One lesson I learned the hard way is protecting your APM+IMU from moisture. One day I crashed the copter upside down into a snow bank and the snow melted on top of circuit boards. This fried the APM and I had to order a new one. DIYDrones store came to rescue and just 4 days later I had a new APM and my copter was again airborne. Big thanks to them for saving my weekend and making this video possible. Way to prevent moisture from destroying the circuit boards is covering them with protective spray.

Next step for me is to get my camera stand repaired. I smashed the servo on it during one of the flights. After that it is time to take the first aerial photos with the Hashcopter.

Part one of the story:

http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/arducopter-quad-with-eight

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Comments

Markus Jahn February 18, 2011 at 7:22am

Thanks. I've been really happy with the frame. It has nice access to everything and the center shaft can be taken on table for troubleshooting with electronics. Besides 8 motors in perfect circle seems to have good stability when flying.

I used this one:

http://www.tme.eu/html/EN/prf-plastic-spray-protective-varnish/ramk...

But I think that's finnish product and not available everywhere. I think in every electronic components selling store should have something similar to offer. You should of course protect connectors and the pressure sensor when spraying the PCBs. I was a little careless and had to scrape the connectors clean to get everything working smoothly afterwards.
Paul Feely February 17, 2011 at 2:37pm

Hi Markus,

Really nice frame, you're brave flying so close to the power lines!!

What protective spay did you use to coat the boards and did you have to cover up the barometer/pressure sensor on the IMU? Thank, Paul
Markus Jahn February 17, 2011 at 12:26am

It is nice to know things are getting better. I just love the work you are doing with the Arducopter. Eagerly waiting for the ACM to be in beta phase.

Here's an example what a Mikrokopter can do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B1hydEkNrQ

And it doesn't have any better GPS than the MTK we use with the Arducopters. They must do something to the data coming from GPS. This feature is important for me because it is really helpful during photographing. You can just forget the flying for a while.
3D Robotics

Chris Anderson February 16, 2011 at 10:13am

GPS and altitude hold is much improved in the next version of the code. Check it out in the video here.
Markus Jahn February 16, 2011 at 7:35am

It was really wet weather and around 0 degrees celsius. I took the copter from inside out so it was warm. I should have stopped when I noticed snow melted on top of the IMU+APM and they were wet. But I put this up as a notice that things can go wrong with snow/water. I too flew around 15 flights in snowy conditions without trouble before this happened.

The can of protective spray cost me 6 dollars and now my APM and IMU could be dipped in water and would still work. So I consider it to be another lesson learned the hard way...
bergsprekken February 16, 2011 at 7:17am

One thing you could do when the electronics are covered in snow is to use air pressure and blow off all the snow. Carefully though. My arducopter was covered with snow from tip to toe, even the motors but it still flew 10 minutes after I blew off all the snow. Ofcourse this depends what type of snow,wet,dry and puffy..and the temp outside.
Markus Jahn February 16, 2011 at 7:08am

Haven't weighted the whole system together but it will be around following:

Copter around 1.3 kilograms

Battery 550 grams

Camera(my old Canon 350D) 750 grams

So the total is about 2.6 kilos.
T3

Rory Paul February 16, 2011 at 6:28am

Markus

What is the total weigh of your system?

This reply was deleted.