Landing Gear Servo choice?

Posted by Mark Aylward on October 27, 2014 at 5:49pm

Hi Folks,

I have a foldable landing gear for my OCTO but only manually.  I would like to buy a servo to drive the gear up and down. Naturally it needs to be light and it should not need to be very powerful as the landing gear is quite light as well.

My question is this.

Does someone have experience in choosing their own servo motor for this? What was your choice?  Did it worked out as planned? etc.

Secondly, how does one go about setting the travel limits on the servo motor? I would like to simply use a toggle switch and have the motor know its supposed to full travel from up limit to down limit.

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Tags: gear, landing, servo, limits, travel
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Replies

  • Developer
    Randy October 27, 2014 at 6:49pm

    With AC3.2 (now in testing) it should be possible to setup a TX channel for pass through. Then set the RCX_MIN and RCX_MAX for the range of travel of the servo (where "X" is the channel used).  The limitation is that the input and output channel must be the same.  I.e. if you use input channel 10 then the output channel must also be 10.

    • Artem > Randy October 27, 2014 at 7:47pm

      Randy, is there a way to aitomate retracts like so: auto-up when in alt hold/loiter/poshold/auto and above certain height, auto-down on any Failsafe, auto-down just before final descend  in non-Failsafe RTL. 

    • Developer
      Randy > Artem October 27, 2014 at 8:11pm

      Artem,

      No, but it's tentatively on the to-do list for AC3.3.

    • Artem > Randy October 27, 2014 at 9:38pm

      Maybe for 3.2.5? ;) 

  • Artem October 27, 2014 at 6:09pm

    get these:  http://www.tarot-rc.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=...   available from GLB too. 

    or these: http://www.goodluckbuy.com/er4070-electronic-retractable-fpv-landin... 

    Do not get the servo based retracts those are bulky and weight twice as worm-drive based retracts. Those can handle much more weight, wile requiring fewer reinforcements. 

    • Mark Aylward > Artem October 27, 2014 at 6:37pm

      Yes I've seen both these solutions.  I have a Tarot and would opt for it but it pisses me off that their octo says folding landing gear to find out they sell you manual folding.  All I need is a servo.  I have most of all the other materials to rig it to work.

    • Artem > Mark Aylward October 27, 2014 at 7:44pm

      Yep, its tricky: folding and retracts are different. If you want an optimal solution I would suggest you buy their retracts, you will save about 100-150g compared to the servo based ones.

  • Mark Aylward October 27, 2014 at 6:02pm

    I'm thinking this might do the trick.

    http://www.alofthobbies.com/kst-ds245mg-servo.html

This reply was deleted.