heavy octo for semi-pro and pro video gear - with arducopter - Discussions

hey,

is there anyone on forum who have built (or bought) copter for carrying heavy-weight (3+kg) video gear and is using arducopter board to control it? Duran DeV is running droidworx AD8HL and i am trying to contact him to find out about his setup, but anyone else?

would anyone be interested in kind of .. "assisting the build", remotely?

what i need is advise on

- frame (so far looking at droidworx skyjib/AD8HLE, or cinestar 8?)

- motors for that frame (AXI?)

- powerboard (or esc?)

- props (size and manufacturer? i've seen more than one prop braking on my friend's MK, it's really f..ng scary when it happens 30m above the sea)

- i would really like to use arducopter instead of MK - small, compact and developing project (and cheaper, too) + strong engineering community

camera we are aiming towards is fs-100, which (with reasonable lens and battery) weights about 2,5kg..
camera gimbal - av200, no 360pan (at least, not yet).
flight time - 10 minutes in the air in reasonably chill weather would be great..

what did i miss?

budget for frame+motors+powerboards/esc+props should stay within .. ideally 3k€, and i'm located in europe (so when ordering something from USA/Asia i will have to add VAT 20% + custom fees, another 5-10%)

did i miss something? fpv gear i have, tx/rx will probably be spektrum dx8, and i can find good specialists in soldering/electronics (not that i would like to spend too much time in that area)

RTF packages on kopterworx (and anywhere else) are always running MK, usually include lots of stuff i don't need and are above my budget..

example calculation (based on kopterworx.com pricing):
frame: 1x cinestar 8 @ 1750€
motors: 9x kw4pro @ 80€
props: 5x 12x4,5 cf @ 79€/pair (no sure size is enough, but for price indication should be good, i suppose)
powerboard: 2x herkules II power board pro @ 499€

total is 3120 (tax deducted)..

it feels somewhat.. scary? to put tiny (reasonably cheap) arducopter in control of gear with flying cost a bit less than 10k€.. maybe what i need is a bit of .. confidence? :)

thanks in advance,
jk
p.s. in my fleet i have gaui330x to carry gopro, custom-built aluminium hexa (now dead due to frame failure) with arducopter, foxtech carbon hexa frame with arducopter, couple of light planes for fpv (hk epp fpv sub-2m wingspan etc), 450sized and micro heli's.. so i am not a complete beginner - but of course very far from being a professional..

Hey Jaan, Duran here :) Sorry for the delay just been sooo busy!

We are in the final stages of launching our very own film/cinema/production drones called "SteadiDrone" the website should go live early Feb and our first batch of system as well around that time. We are a media production company and have been flying our DW AD8 HL + AV200-360 mount for a while now, it's a great system but has it's issues, which we have tried to learn from and improve on our frame, which we've designed from the ground up.

We've flown well over 1000 flights using the Arducopter platform with not a SIGNLE issue, we are currently running a tweaked version of .49 but will start testing 2.1 as well. We started with MK and on our first real test flight had it flip and smashed the entire stack, so I thought there must be a better/morer affordable system our there, which is when I came across Arducopter, we we LOVE! It costs the least, works, with our testing, jobs and flying the best, and it's easy to setup, use and tweak the code.

Our new SteadiDrone systems (Already sold a few) will feature:

Quick Release motor arms with unique brushless motors not used on any other brand of multirotors (660w each!)
Full carbon fibre + moulded airframe, hex/octo configurations
Full 360 pan, tilt and roll camer mount including stand alone stabilization system
Wireless Video system + independant control|
Payloads from 2-8kg (Canon 5DII, Red Epic, Scarlet etc)
and much more.

Our main aim is to provide affordable yet highly reliable and effective systems for the photo/video/film industry with cheap spare parts, and still keeping it open with the use of Arducopter, or other boards if required, but we LOVE ardu.

Hope this helps, pop me an email for more info, any time.

Regards

Duran

Replies

Duran - ALTI February 12, 2013 at 12:27pm

www.steadidrone.com
CarbonCore May 23, 2012 at 3:15am

CarbonCore "MegaOcto 2-Axis" Built by ElectriFlite.co.uk

http://shop.carboncore.co.uk/MegaOcto-2-Axis
Gerry Mostert April 21, 2012 at 7:59am

Hi Jaan,

Me again, the pecky guy.

We have been flying our Skyjib 8 on an APM1, we are now switching to APM 2. Will let you know how it goes.

Anyone looked at the Q4 from Germany, I think?

Wonder what flight controller thay are using and where did they get the software, pretty amazing machine!

Another question, do you think they are running the two motors, one up and one down from the same speed controller?
Marko Kaariainen April 18, 2012 at 7:31am

Hi,

which is more stable/better to fly 650mm or 950mm hexa carboncore frame?

My setup is:

- 880kv motors

- 12x4.5 props
Jaan Kronberg February 14, 2012 at 1:14am

so, a bit of an update and question, too :)

i went for cinestar 8 and cs 360 camera gimbal should be here in couple of days (just got email stating that it's shipped).

question - i do get it correctly, do i, that for different camera (assuming that everything else is same, just weight is different) i have to (slightly?) re-tune PID's, right?

is there any simple rule, like "you add weight - rate_p should go xxx up/down and stabilize_p should be yyy bigger/smaller"?

thanks,

jk
Paul January 5, 2012 at 3:31pm

hey carbon, when is the dslr gimbal coming out?
Jaan Kronberg January 2, 2012 at 2:05pm

slightly offtopic, but nevertheless.

as i thought i might be buying octocopter frame from carboncore - he sounds honest and passionate guy, but being first to spend 400£ scared me a bit :)

so i decided to order small quad ("smallspy") frame from carboncore and see, how it looks and feels.

received it today, assembled and already had small hovering in the flat. frame looks and feels rigid and strong. not a feather, but it's not heavy either. it's okay :) it feels.. confident :)

i don't want to remove ardu board from my hexa (will have some filming as soon as weather permits) so for testflight i've attached gaui controller, 750kv turnigy motors, 18a esc's and .. 12"x4.5 props :) hovered nicely. i'm not sure this is optimal setup, but i have to wait till i will be able to do proper test-flying outside (snow + wind at the moment)

downsides:

- it looks gorgeous, but there is little to no space where to hide escs..
- with stock landing gear you have almost no space under the belly

but i'm pretty sure i know where i will be ordering my octo.. i know it's still a risk, but it's lower now :) for me, at least :) and i will put ardu on it.. :)

ahh, pics:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=341073979255017&l=0618a...
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=341216822574066&l=46ac6...
Duran - ALTI December 26, 2011 at 12:58am

Hey Jaan, Duran here :) Sorry for the delay just been sooo busy!

We are in the final stages of launching our very own film/cinema/production drones called "SteadiDrone" the website should go live early Feb and our first batch of system as well around that time. We are a media production company and have been flying our DW AD8 HL + AV200-360 mount for a while now, it's a great system but has it's issues, which we have tried to learn from and improve on our frame, which we've designed from the ground up.

We've flown well over 1000 flights using the Arducopter platform with not a SIGNLE issue, we are currently running a tweaked version of .49 but will start testing 2.1 as well. We started with MK and on our first real test flight had it flip and smashed the entire stack, so I thought there must be a better/morer affordable system our there, which is when I came across Arducopter, we we LOVE! It costs the least, works, with our testing, jobs and flying the best, and it's easy to setup, use and tweak the code.

Our new SteadiDrone systems (Already sold a few) will feature:

Quick Release motor arms with unique brushless motors not used on any other brand of multirotors (660w each!)
Full carbon fibre + moulded airframe, hex/octo configurations
Full 360 pan, tilt and roll camer mount including stand alone stabilization system
Wireless Video system + independant control|
Payloads from 2-8kg (Canon 5DII, Red Epic, Scarlet etc)
and much more.

Our main aim is to provide affordable yet highly reliable and effective systems for the photo/video/film industry with cheap spare parts, and still keeping it open with the use of Arducopter, or other boards if required, but we LOVE ardu.

Hope this helps, pop me an email for more info, any time.

Regards

Duran
Gareth Rens December 23, 2011 at 8:07am

I found the Photoship one MKTR pro camera mount to be great! 2 axis + built in landing gear.

All for half the price of the Photohigher one. Around $500.

Also I went with the MK Okto XL frame. Turnigy G10 810Kv motors... etc... :)
Paul December 21, 2011 at 9:53pm

thanks for clearing that up. must of taken some time to write that up :) - in the meantime ill keep up with your site for the new MKII gimbal. cheers.

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