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Taking a budget amateur aerial video setup to the next level

Posted by Charlie Raley on September 6, 2014 at 12:26pm

UPDATE:

Spent another evening capturing some footage on the farm of cultivating this time. Wind picked us slightly causing some unwanted yaw wobble in the shots but overall im very pleased.

Take a look, I hope you will enjoy it:

After many months of trial and error and budget building I have finally ended up with footage worthy of a youtube upload!!

I am extremely pleased with the results I am now getting using my home designed hexacopter built from plywood and aluminium box section:

I am running a hobby king apm 2.5, cheap 20 a esc's and even cheaper hobbyking dt750 motors.

the gimbal is my own design and uses a Martinez board (That took about 2 months to tune!!!)

Here is the video I shot of farming in Yorkshire and I hope, like me, you will be quite impressed with the results:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O57pZUvoN8

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aerial, footage, gopro, hexacopter

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Replies

- hal > Greg Nuspel September 7, 2014 at 8:52am
  
  Another way to solve that potential issue without reworking or engineering is to put a couple loose zip ties or strings between the plates through a few of the dampers. If the dampers fail, the plate and camera will hang from the zip ties and be ok until you land.
  - Charlie Raley > hal September 7, 2014 at 10:57am
    
    Yeah good idea I think I'll go for the zip ties!!!!
    Hadn't thought of that yet. :)
John O'Shaughnessy September 7, 2014 at 6:55am

Very nice! I assume the farmer was aware of your activities beforehand? Otherwise, I can just imagine him thinking, WTF?" :)

It looked like there were power lines diagonally across the field. Lots of planning went in to the nice work. Great job.
- Charlie Raley > John O'Shaughnessy September 7, 2014 at 11:03am
  
  Hahaha yeah would be quite alarming if you didn't know about it.
  It was my dad driving the tractor, I live on a farm so plenty of free space to fly!
Todd September 7, 2014 at 6:24am

Nice job, great footage.
- Charlie Raley > Todd September 7, 2014 at 6:36am
  
  Thank you
T3

Richard Boyhan September 6, 2014 at 7:04pm

Very cool footage. How many flights did it take to get the footage? How many flights did it take to get the footage? What size props and batteries are you using? How long of flight do you get on charge? What was the farmer doing in the field? Thanks for sharing great footage!
- Charlie Raley > Richard Boyhan September 6, 2014 at 11:24pm
  
  It took 3 flights to get all the shots seen in the video, a total of about 24 minutes flight time.
  I run 9x4.7 inch props, the cheap slow fly ones, and a combination of battery's:
  - one 5000mah 4s giving about giving about 6 min of flight
  - two 3300mah 4s in parallel giving about 8 min of flight
  - two 4000mah 4s in parallel giving about 10 min of flight
  
  The farmer was sowing wheat ( in Yorkshire, UK)
  Thanks for your interest
Gerard Toonstra September 6, 2014 at 1:25pm

Your result is indeed impressive, judging from the cost vs. quality of the setup in the picture. I know consumer pro level platforms that have more vibrations and jello. Nice piloting work too.
- Charlie Raley > Gerard Toonstra September 6, 2014 at 2:25pm
  
  Thanks a lot!
  I do think I got a bit too daring at points :/
  It is amazing what you can achieve with some cheap electronics, a ton of cable ties and some patience.
  Here is my first ever multirotor footage from a home built quad!!
  http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce-5mxTuakk
  It dosent get much worse than that!
  
  YouTube