Polyvalent Starter Kit

Hi everyone !

I'ts my first post here and I'm happy to have find a beautiful site web with a great community !

First, I will apologize, I come from Switzerland and my first language is french and not english, so sorry for my faults !

I search a good ArduCopter starter kit to take aerial pictures/movies.

My small experience in RC is with a T-Rex 250 RTF and with a motorglider. My equipement right now is fast nothing :D

I want your advice to buy my equipement.

I think a will buy the ArduCopter 3DR Quad from udrones.com. http://www.udrones.com/product_p/acrtf2.htm
It's good ?

Which options are good ? For Telemetry, which frequencies a need to use ? 900/2.4 (Europe/Switzerland)

The sonar is for auto-landing ?

The camera mount from udrone is good for a GoPro ?

Which FPV system is good to use with this ?

The RC Spectrum DX8 is a good choice ?

Which batteries can I use ? How much flight time ?

What's the perimeter of use ?

Thanks a lot in advance for your response !

L33n0x

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

Replies

Björn Geir Leifsson January 8, 2012 at 11:24am

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

This reply was deleted.

Discussions

Polyvalent Starter Kit

Replies

Activity