So I'm on version 5 of my drone. First was a simple s500 quad that flew great, but after a crash developed a really bad vibration that I couldn't ever fix. So bought a hex kit, to make into a fully automated beer delivery drone. It actually flew really well except I was too cheap to buy 4s batteries so it just couldn't handle anything other than calm winds. And I couldn't ever get the payload to drop automatically through the Tower app. Then I wanted to build a folding quad. I build a couple varieties of these but again they were heavy and delicate. I gave up on that and just rebought another s500 kit that AGAIN developed vibration issues that I now realize are inherent in its arm design. I also got obsessed with weight savings and eventually just took all the landing gear off and had just an aluminum bar to protect the gimbal. It flew fine, especially with 4s batteries but the vibration wouldnt let me go over 60 percent power on the motors without a crash.
After getting really frustrated with trying those I just wanted something sturdy, good looking, and I could actually just go fly. I wanted, simple,nimble, and something i could actually carry without worrying about holding it wrong.
So I bought some thing aluminum C-bars from home depot and some scrap polycarbonate from a plastics place down the road. The guy there showed me how to bond the poly together to make it crazy strong for how thin it is for weight savings. Previously my quads have been a mess of zipties holding everything together, so I wanted this to look better, at least from the outside. I hard soldered all my video switcher and such to reduce wire clutter and worked how it would all fit in google sketch up. The result is a super cheap quad that flies amazingly! It had heat issues that i am working on fixing with tons of holes drilled into the frame. But it has all the features I want and I'm actually going to try to wire it up to add auxilllary hookups for another gimbal or a servo to drop stuff using the camera snap settings.
Total length is around 14 inches included the entire gimbaled camera. Has full telemetry, dual cameras, with the ability to switch from gimbal, frame hard mount for FPV and also a HUD FPV view through my OSD. I can switch between feeds, and control the firefly 6s from the transmitter. I did an autotune and it was able to handled a super sharp tune like a champ!
On to the pics...
Beer drone...
[img]http://imgur.com/0LjIlsN[/img]
My favorite so far, arms folded in and the handle made it super easy and convenient to carry, but it was heavy and felt like one crash would destroy it.
[img]http://imgur.com/QI8WyNb[/img]
Last X quad before the vibration issues started again. this was the one I added the aluminum bar to guard the gimbal from hard landings
[img]http://imgur.com/bo1sy0H[/img]
Here's the current H quad. Polycarbonate and aluminum C-Channel bars.
Video is smooth with my home made light weight gimbal mount, the name of the game was light and no frills with this one...and it's paid off! I don't have a pic of all the hole drilled out, and I plan to add some LEDs to the bottom of the arms, but I think I'm counting this one done and need to move on. It's been a blast to build these though and I'm not giving up on my folding handled one quite yet, but I really need to just get flying and practicing more than anything.
[img]http://imgur.com/qOEdsCD[/img]
[img]http://imgur.com/hWYUokt[/img]
[img]http://imgur.com/hZ9TZMU[/img]
[img]http://imgur.com/ta7r162[/img]
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