Hi All, its been a while since I have been on here. I got me a Syma X1 quad RC. It love the thing, very simple and tough. I was curious if anyone has converted one of these to be a drone or if anyone has experience converting traditional RC quads into drones. I have no experience doing this, I can solder and understand basic electronics and minimal programming. I have the Syma X1 and an Arduino Duemilonove (thinking it might be a bit big for the intended purpose). Any discussion about this would be greatly appreciated. :-)
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I will be a friend. ;)
The Syma X1 looks like a clone of the Blade mQx (or Blade is a clone of the X1?).
To upgrade the core control electronics for this would be quite a project and no one, so far, has tried to tackle this..at least not mention it here.
Jack Crossfire (a member here) has hacked/modded several items for more specific control and processing projects but I cannot recall one of these in his collection.
I do not recommend trying to convert this unit -- use it for 'stick time' and flying skill building.
It just so happens that the DIY Drones contest is been judged and winners announced. My Instructable can answer many of your basic questions but it does not address the subject of telemetry or GPS. My goal was to approach the aircraft from an perspective for any hobbyist and then grow/build on it. Mark Harrison also has a simple quadrotor that won in the same contest HERE.
APM is a super piece of gear and should be able to help you reach your vineyard goal. The aircraft (or a Rover...no worries about it crashing into vines and you having to go fetch it) can be in several forms.
Keep Thinking!
-=Doug
Oh.. sad day. No love for me today. *bump*
Perhaps I should explain my main goal... I would like to work on a small drone that would fly through grape vineyards at a scheduled time carrying a few simply sensors and catalog the data from the sensors with the current GPS coordinates. The drone would be given a low flight path slightly under the vine canopy and return to base once the determined number of passes have been completed. That is the end goal, for now I'd like to wrap my head around what is needed for the drone and why, I'm a hands on learner so I figured the best place to start is make or covert a quad and break- I mean play around with it. :-)
Oh!!! So the telemetry is definitely for wireless programming right? Where the radio controller such as a FlySky should work for control? I presume that there is a manual flight mode switch on the APM? At this point it looks like it might just be easier to build my own drone, perhaps using a DIY foam frame kind of like this one here?
http://youtu.be/5XinbTcQAAc
Does anyone have a list of all absolutely necessary parts for a basic quad using the APM 2.6? I'm open to alternative setups too, the best cost to quality ratio preferred :-)
So in further research it appears that I would likely need an APM 2.5 preferably with GPS. What I'm not sure about is the Telemetry and power connectors. The battery that comes with the X1 is a standard JST connector which the APM comes with either Deans or XT60 connectors which I am not familiar with either of those. The Telemetry appears to be available in a complete package as the 3DR telemetry kit which looks like it would work for wireless programming. Would this also work for manual flight mode? I guess thats where I am confused. I understand that it is supposed to fly itself most of the time, however what would be required to switch to manual flight mode?
Another question, which I believe is probably the most important question. The X1 appears to be quite small compared to some of the examples I have seen here. It weighs in at roughly 50g or so. Is it even a viable option to convert this to a drone or would the weight of the extra electronics make it unfeasible? Or would it be a case of upgrading the motors and increasing the prop size and battery capacity?
Sorry for the newb questions.