I'm currently in the void between uni and full time work, so naturally I have a lot of time to go out and fly! I will be travelling to some pretty spectacular places over the following weeks to practice my cinematography. To keep up, follow my Instagram!

After two long weeks of waiting, finally the components arrived!

First of all, I am very impressed with the Tarot FY680 frame kit. Very impressed. Putting it together was a dream, the tolerance on the screw holes and their precise positioning was way better than I expected and the instructions were fairly clear, although there was no writing (all diagrammatic).

This is what came out of the box:

The carbon fibre is machined very nicely. This thing is going to look mean.

One small gripe is that they missed out some of the coloured plastic washers that connect the prop mounts as shown below:

Without these washers the collars will not fasten tightly around the beam, causing the prop mounts to slip. All in all, about 8 blue ones were missing, which meant that I had to fashion some makeshift ones out of heatshrink tubing. This works ok, but is not a permanent fix.

Here is the finished frame!

As you can see, it is a very mean looking machine. I was under the impression that the rods would be carbon fibre like the rest of the frame, however these are steel. They don't look too bad though. The central console has plenty of room for hardware and best of all, it can fold up into a compact package. The way I plan to route my ESCs will probably mean I will loose some of the folding capability at first, but I will figure out a way around this at a later stage.

Mounting the motors:

Unfortunately the pre-drilled holes in the motor mounts did NOT match up with the NTM Prop Drive 28-30S 800kV motors I bought, nor did they match with the adapter mounts in the matching Accessory Pack. So I had to drill my own, which proved to be quite repetitive and difficult (24 precision drilled holes in total). As you can see, drilling through the carbon fibre was quite sketchy, I had to go slow to ensure that I did not crack the mount. Some burring was unavoidable.

Attaching prop adapters:

Using 3mm screws to fasten motors to mount:

All props mounted:

Finally, the frame is completed!

In conclusion, if you are planning on building a hexcopter, I would thoroughly recommend this frame. The quality and ease of building took me by surprise and believe me when I say, I am not easily surprised!

Some things to keep in mind if you are considering a FY680:

• You may receive less washers than you need (fairly minor problem given the overall quality of the frame, but still a problem nonetheless).
• You will need a set of small allen keys (1-5mm) to complete the build, and a small phillips head screwdriver.
• Be careful with your motor choice if you do not wish to drill holes in the prop mounts. The provided holes are fairly standard I assume, however my motors were not compatible. This is strange because I'm fairly certain Hobbyking NTM motors aren't exactly rare.

On the whole, excellent frame, you get what you pay for. Spares seem to be readily available on the Tarot website, and only time will tell whether these are needed as I begin to subject it to my terrible flying. Stay tuned for my next post as I mount the electronics.

Blue Skies

ZERO TO HERO

Two weeks ago I decided take the plunge and build a drone. I'd been watching a heap of videos online, such as the monster drones from alishanmao as well as this impressive experiment by Raffaello D'Andrea. These guys and their creations inspired me to create something of my own (although I knew mine would be nowhere near as impressive). I challenged myself to build a drone that was as big and as versatile as I could achieve with my meagre budget (~$1000 AUD). Hardly being an RC enthusiast, and with basically zero experience with DIY RC before (I've built a flatpack RC plane and crashed quite a few cheap RTFs), I was essentially relying on my skills as an undergrad mechanical/aero engineer, but whether these would help or not I had no idea.

So I went ahead and started designing. The main deliverables were fairly basic:

1. Lots of rotors (hexacopter).
2. Bigger than 600mm diameter from rotor tip to rotor tip.
3. Fully open source, upgradeable flight controller so that I could code in different modules as I needed them (i.e. everything from GPS to telemetry to barometers, ultrasonic range finders, maybe even a seek and destroy mode with an automated nerf gun??) I didn't want to build something that would become obsolete.
4. Capable of carrying a DSLR for aerial photography.
5. Above all, it had to look cool.

Knowing only the very basics of drone building, I spent two days researching and configuring, trying to get my head around how to go about the whole thing. I scoured the Hobbyking and Ardupilot websites, as well as a bunch of drone forums for information, looking at different set ups, schematics, information on motors, props, ESCs, flight controllers, frames, prices etc.

FRAME

I decided that the frame would be the best place to start, so I ordered a Tarot FY680 from a dealer in Hong Kong (the cheapest I could find). I chose this frame because it was a) light (600g), b) big enough (>600mm diam), c) had room for a bunch of electronic equipment as well as a camera underneath the landing skids d) had lots of carbon fibre, was black, and looked totally awesome e) I had seen a few reviews of Tarot and it seemed that generally the consensus was good. Low vibration, high end performance.

PROPS, MOTORS, ESCS, BATTERY

In theory, the frame dictated the size of the props, which for the highest efficiency I figured should be as large as possible (max prop diam. size due to the constraints of the frame was 13''). The props would then dictate the type of motors that I needed to use, which would then require a certain specification of ESC. Once I knew the max consumption of the motors, I could get an overall figure for power and choose a distribution board and battery accordingly.

Overall I was a bit unsure about this whole process, getting used to electrical terminology took a bit of effort and I didn't want to go fully into the mathematics of the whole thing, so I largely just relied on looking online at other similar hexcopters to get a feel for what I needed. In the end I decided to go with these (all sourced from HobbyKing):

11 x 5 Thin Style E-Prop

NTM Prop Drive 28 Series Accessory Pack

NTM Prop Drive 28-30S 800KV / 300W Brushless Motor (short shaft version)

TURNIGY Plush 30amp Speed Controller

Hobbyking Multi-Rotor Power Distribution Board (DIY 8 x output PCB)

Turnigy nano-tech 4000mah 4S 25~50C Lipo Pack

FLIGHT CONTROLLER

Then I chose the flight controller - I decided to go with the 3DR Robotics Pixhawk (below). It looked schmick with lots of flashing lights, and all the open source functionality I could ever need. It also came with the 3DR GPS system with integrated compass (handy), and was fully compatible with the Ardupilot software and the 3DR radio telemetry system, which I was planning on implementing later on. I bought these directly from the 3DR website.

TX/RX

I wanted a 2.4 GHz system that had at least 7 channels, and the cheapest I could find for this sort of system was:

OrangeRX DSMX/DSM2 2.4Ghz Transmitter Module (JR/Turnigy compatible)
OrangeRx R710 Spektrum DSM2 Compatible 7Ch w/Failsafe
Turnigy 9XR Transmitter Mode 2 (No Module)

THE CRUNCH

So I went ahead and made the deal, and in total it ended up matching quite well with my $1000 budget. Including shipping, and a bunch of tools like a soldering iron, wire strippers, ESC programming card, and pretty much whatever else I thought I would need to get building, the whole package cost $1144.47 AUD.

The frame was the first thing to arrive, which happened today. I'm going to keep blogging throughout the build process, so if you're interested in how this project progresses, keep coming back over the next couple of weeks as I try to get this thing into the air!

Blue skies