Hi,

 Just a quick update for the thrust vectoring coaxial drone project,

Config:

Maxxprod Himax contra-rotating brushless motor CR2805,

7x5 props replaced by T-Motor carbon fiber 9x3 resulting in more efficiency.

Flight time is about 15 minutes with Fatshark HD pilot and 12 minutes with a Gopro 3. Could be even better with a more adapted motor. The advantage of this system is to allow large props with little frame (the 3D printed frame of this coax weights less than 30 grams) resulting in a very good efficiency.

Flight controller is a CC3D revolution with a standard coaxial vehicle config.

The system seems to not accept too much the integral (often resulting in a counter pendulum effect during fast pitch forward translation but maybe it can be a variable overshoot??) but no pendulum effect with a simple P (no I nor D) for the inner loop (acro) and a simple P (no I) for the outer loop (attitude). With this config, the system reacts very good and is very stable and controllable even with wind.

Next step will be to remove the clevis in the commands because the system could maybe accept a direct servo in the roll and pitch plates and take advantage of a larger roll and pitch travel (-45°, +45° for ex) and more room in the frame (or a lighter one). CC3D will be replaced by a SP racing F3.

Thanks for your comments if you have!

Here you can see the first "flying" prototype of TCRS UAV.

PID tuning need to be refined to have a smoother flight and video.

The frame is 3D printed

Lipo 3S 4400mAh ;

Maxxprod CR2816 with 2 x 20 A controller ;

2x Futaba S3155 digital servos ;

Custom flight controller (see http://vgrsystem.free.fr) ;

2 props 9x7 ;

GOPRO Hero3 Black Edition ;

TBS BOSS 200mW 5.8Ghz video Tx ;

Below is a scheme of the system.

Hi,

Here is a video and a 3-views drawing explaining the mechanism of a new tilted coaxial system.

The machine has a frame, and a motor comprising a lower output shaft and an upper output shaft. A lower assembly of blades is fixed to the lower output shaft, and an upper assembly of blades is fixed to the upper output shaft. An orientation module is mounted on the frame, and the motor is fixed on the module. The module includes an orientation unit to pivot the motor around a pitch axis and a rolling axis. The orientation unit comprises a plate mounted on the frame via a pivot link around the pitch axis.

Components embedded in the drone:

- Camera Fatshark Pilot HD

- 200mw 5.8Ghz Tx with Spironet antenna

- 2 JR DS385 sub-micro digital servos

- 1 contrarotating bruhsless motor Maxxprod CR 2805

- 2 ESC brushless 10A

- 1 Lipo Battery 3S 2200 mah

- 1 flight controller uPilot32 (VGR-Systems)

- 1 Graupner Rx for command input

Weight: about 500g

Flight time: 10-11 minutes

The main advantage of the system is the size: features of a big quadcopter but ccarried in a bag pocket.

Here is a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnAL1ygwNg8) of a new implementation of an AHRS algorithm, thanks to Seb Madgwick and Fabio Vareseno works.

Source code is available on the website http://vgrsystems.free.fr/?page_id=79

Feel free to comment!

VGR 

Test of the uPilot32 UAV Devboard. The MAX7456 OSD Layout Display is composed of 30 rows and 15 lines.

Therefore, the WriteString functions has a x (1 to 30) and a y (1 to 15) to position the first character of the string in the screen.

See more about the MAX7456 OSD : http://datasheets.maximintegrated.com/en/ds/MAX7456.pdf

See more about uPilot32 : http://vgrsystems.free.fr

Code will be available soon here : https://code.google.com/p/vgrsystems-upilot32

A new dev-board PIC32 80MHz based with 10-axis IMU, OSD, GPS, SD card, Xbee, USB connection, etc...

New video showing the GPS and Xbee features:

http://ning.it/1cfRMby

More information on the website : VGR-Systems feel free to contact me.