I purchased a 3DR quad kit and APM 2.5 in April of 2012, built and flew on/off over the past year but have never had the time and persistance to go for fully autonomous flight.
Over the past weeks I've found the time to rebuild my quad *mostly* from the ground up in order to handle the latest software and associated vibration, compass, and PPM improvements from the past 6 months. I've pieced together what I needed to do from all over the forum and wiki and it's amazing how much better and comprehensive our documentation has gotten over the past year, that said I just kept wondering about all those old 3dr kits out there, surely there are others like me who are staring at this cute bundle of wires and legs and wondering how or what they need to do to upgrade so I wanted to throw a post up on my experience thus far:
Here are the new parts I purchased as part of this upgrade:
Kyosho Z8006 Zeal Vibration Absorption Sheet
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002U2GS2K/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
3DR Power Module
http://store.3drobotics.com/products/apm-power-module-with-xt60-connectors
New Sonar (upgrading from EZ0)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A7YH1RE/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Disassemble the electronics stack and take the APM out of the case.
Upgrade the PPM encoder firmware, since my APM 2.5 was one of the first sold back in summer ’12. (http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/common-ppm-encoder/)
Reconfigure the electronics stack to try and minimize interference from the PDB. I was trying to use the existing 3DR parts I had on hand so I only ended up adding a little extra space between the PDB and the APM. Combined with the addition of the Gel pads under the APM case this seems to be adequate based on my initial flights.
In the above picture you can also see my APM case with the Gel added, this was pretty simple, I cut 4, ½ in. squares from the gel sheet and placed then on each corner of the APM case. I was quite concerned that this wouldn’t be enough but my vibration test flight shows that everything is within the correct thresholds. (http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/ac_measuringvibration/)
At this point I started re-assembling things with the intention of building a ghetto-quad suitable for initial flight testing. GPS stuck on the front, radio taped onto the sonar bar etc… Just enough to get some initial logs created. As with any new upgrade, run all the configurations; compass, radio, accel, AND THEN DO THEM AGAIN.
It may be ghetto but it flies perfectly:
First Flight: 30s to get throttle mid-point (550 -600 depending on which battery I use)
Second Flight: 1 min to get baseline Accel log stats (see results above)
Third Flight: 7 min; flew wide circles via the radio and then tested both Alt_hold and loiter… both working perfectly… I had a near perfect loiter for 3 min….
Up next: RTL and failsafe RTL, then auto landing and takeoff tests, then hopefully my first Auto flight.
Hopefully this rundown is helpful to others sitting on an “older” 3dr. All in, I spend about $50 and it took me 3-4 days of about an hour or two per night to perform this rebuild.
Planned improvements:
Vibration; I read that vibration can be reduced further by placing some foam/rubber band over the top of the APM case so I’m planning on trying to one day.
Sonar; So far I’ve kept the sonar disabled but will be starting to test with it shortly.
Replies