infmetry's Posts

New XAircraft X650 Value4(8) and X450 Pro

Posted by infmetry on July 14, 2011 at 12:00am

After XAircraft successfully launched new four axis aircraft X450 and X650 last year, its new generation aerocraft will be released on 15th July. This new type quadcopter has been named officially: X650 Value (Best Value Version) and X450 Pro (Enhanced Version). X650 Value has two versions: 4 propeller(X4 model) and 8 propeller(X8 model). And plus “-4″ and “-8″ in front of the name for distinction, for example, X650 Value-4 is 4 propeller, X650 Value-8 is 8 propeller, X650V4 and X650V8 for short.

This new generation XAircraft X650V4/8 and X450 Pro will be over-emphasized on aerial photography, which has more stable and positive fly performance, and can stay in the sky for longer time, with its stronger load capability and distinctive external appearance. We believe it will definitely become your indispensable aerial photography sharp weapon that let you fondle admiringly. In the meantime, XAircraft will continue to manufacture parts for old X650 and X450, and also provide the upgrade kit, in which you can upgrade the old version to the new one, save the cost of upgrading in maximum limit.

For X450 Pro
It is positioned for entry level player which has a higher drop number fuselage, provided simple aerial photography function and a simple GOPRO mounting plate(Simple Camera Mount). Besides, it has the same flight control system and power driven system as X650(brushless motor and ESC). 10 inches propeller and brushless motor is a specially made structure, used for lowering the center of gravity.

For X650V4
Cheaper than old X650, it has adopted a new designed fuselage with more cool external appearance and practicability, can be quickly folded. The fuselage cover can also be quickly removed and installed. The fuselage of and X650V4 and X650V8 are made of carbon fiber material, the Mounting Plate, Motor Mount, Landing Gear are made by high strength plastic. The camera mount and battery can be slide on the crossbeamis which means you can adjust the center of gravity easily according to the weight of photographing device attached.

For X650V8
It has adopted the same fuselage, flight control, brushless motor, ESC and propeller as X650V4. That is, X650V8 has all the outstanding characteristic of X650V4, the only difference is X650V8 has 8 brushless motor, thus can provide stronger load capacity. X650 V4 user only need to order other 4 brushless motor, 4 ESC and 4 propeller, to upgrade X650 V to X650 V8 immediately! Of course, if you want, Value-8 can also be degraded to Value-4, in this way, it can help save more electricity, get more flight time.

X650 Value series are all using the “x” shape flight style, cannot use the “+” shape flight style (however the flight control in itself support).

In addition, the development of XAircraft’s biaxial camera mount has finally come true; its photography effect stands in the first-class level in the small aircraft. This biaxial camera mount has two models, CMGOPRO-TP (two axle control including 2 servos) and CM130C-TPS (two axle control including 3 servos). The CMGOPRO-TP is specially designed for GOPRO camera, with lighter weight, fit for GOPRO camera user. The CM130C-TPS is mainly designed for the card camera and the EVIL(Electronic Viewfinder Interchangable Lens), but at the same time it can also install the GOPRO camera, has a extra steering engine to controll the shutter, can also be used on the old version X650C and X650G, but can’t be used on X450 and X450 Pro.

Note: The transmitter,receiver and battery are NOT INCLUDED, you need to prepare a 6-chn(at least) transmitter and receiver, 11.1V or 14.8V/15C/2200mAh polymer lithium battery pack and assemble X650 youself.

The GPS, compass, biaxial camera mount are optional accessories, customers can select according to their own requirement. There are OSD, light and power supply for option in the future.

X450 Pro Standard Configuration(Price:$399)：
- 1x X450 Pro Fuselage
- 1x GOPRO Mounting Plate
- 4x new type External Rotation Brusless Motor
- 4x 10A Brushless ESC
- 2x 10 inch Clockwise Propeller
- 2x 10 inch Counter-Clockwise Propeller
- 1x XAircraft FC1212-S Flight Control Unit
- 1x XAircraft AHRS-S Attitude Sensor
- 1x XAircraft USB-Link PC Linker
- 1x XAircraft Flight Control Management(Parameter Adjustment) Software
X650V4 Standard Configuration(Price:$620)：
- 1x X650V4 Fuselage(Landing Gear，Carbon Fiber, Plastic)
- 1x X650V4 High Strength Fuselage Cover
- 4x new type External Rotation Brusless Motor
- 4x 10A Brushless ESC
- 2x 10 inch Clockwise Propeller
- 2x 10 inch Counter-Clockwise Propeller
- 1x XAircraft FC1212-S Flight Control Unit
- 1x XAircraft AHRS-S Attitude Sensor
- 1x XAircraft USB-Link PC Linker
- 1x XAircraft Flight Control Management(Parameter Adjustment) Software
X650 Value-8 Standard Equipment(Price:$720):
- 1x X650V8 Fuselage(Landing Gear，Carbon Fiber, Plastic)
- 1x X650V8 High Strength Fuselage Cover
- 8x New Type External Rotation Brusless Motor
- 8x 10A Brushless ESC
- 4x 10 inch Clockwise Propeller
- 4x 10 inch Counter-Clockwise Propeller
- 1x XAircraft FC1212-S flight Control unit
- 1x XAircraft AHRS-S Attitude Sensor
- 1x XAircraft USB-Link PC Linker
- 1x XAircraft Flight Control Management(Parameter Adjustment) Software
Optional Accessories：
- XAircraft GPS+Compass(Price:$247)
- CMGOPRO-TP or CM130C-TPS Biaxial Camera Mount(Price:$250)
- Uniaxial Camera Mount(Price:$79)
Additional accessories needed for flight：
- At least 4 channel remote controller(suggest above 6 channel)
- Above 11.1V or 14.8V/15C/2200mAh polymer lithium battery pack
- Lithium battery charger

x650 Technical Documents Translation：Problem About I2C Brushless Motor Speed Ccontroller

Posted by infmetry on October 2, 2010 at 1:00am

All along along, the brushless motor speed controller (ESC) of
four-rotor aircraft mostly use I2C digital communication. It put all
brushless motor speed controller connection in series on the bus through
two data lines (one for the clock SCL, one for data SDA), and send the
control signals to brushless motor speed controller at regular time. MK
products used this communication mode, as well as our early X500D X600D.

I2C communication mode looks perfect, you can save the number of
communication cable, moreover does not need to modify the hardware and
interface when extended the four-rotor to six or eight rotor, just
directly attached to the existing communications bus. This is a economy
design that easy to extend.

However, there are some problem in actual use:
1. As long as one of brushless motor speed controller broken down, will affect all the other brushless motor speed controller on I2C bus, this failure is fatal. Although we can change the software to make the all brushless motor speed controller to enter the normal working condition after broken down. But the I2C communication mode has greatly increased the probability of failure, for expensive camera equipment and x650 aircraft, this is clearly not the best choice.

2. ESC is working in Series on the I2C, the more ESC, the more time cost in communication. The maximum communication rate of the standard I2C is 400kbps, for reliability and stability, the general four-rotor will use the communication speed 100kbps, means it can only send and receive data only 10 byte per 1ms. No enough for high-speed and high-precision motor control, as 500Hz and 1000 control level with the increase in the number of motors.

3. There are many ESC in in the field of model airplane before four-rotor aircraft invention, after years of development they are become very mature and reliable and has a very rich type and power output. But I2C are incompatible with these traditional ESC interface, and nothing much in the type, inconvenient to extend.

In order to solve these problems, we used a more stable, reliable interface solution that compatible with current brushless motor speed controller, we called it UltraPWM technology:

All ESC are connect parallel to flight controller, any one of them brokecn down will not affect the work of the entire system, aircraft still able to landed safely via the remaining seven motor. This is essential for multi-rotor aircraft to meet high security requirement.

Motor control frequency 500Hz, 1000 control level. The the control pulse width error between two brushless motor less than 1%.

Compatible with the existing ESC interface, without requiring high speed and high precision control, instead, it can work with the general speed controller too.

Due to most of xaircraft X650 documents are chinese that hard to get the details of it, for convenience I will translate(poor translation) all article on their website and post it in www.xaircraft.org, also this forum.

x650 Technical Documents Translation：XAircraft Flight Controller Architecture Design

Posted by infmetry on September 29, 2010 at 9:00pm

Due to most of xaircraft X650 documents are chinese that hard to get the
details of it, for convenience I will translate(poor translation) all
article on their website and post it in www.xaircraft.org,
also this forum.

XAircraft Flight Controller Architecture Design

XAircraft has designed several flight controllers for internal research and development and testing without sell
since 2007.

In the R&D process, in order to achieve standardization and scalability in flight control, we repeatedly modified the architecture design. The picture below shows the final design of flight control architecture which we we called "standard flight control system".

The master control chip ARM of standard flight controller provide 100MPIS processing power to meet the requirements of complex and high-speed control. Flight controllers support 7 exptend modules, two of them are built-in input signal capture module(input module) and control signal output module (output module).

Input Signal Capture Module(Input Module) Features:
Support 12-channel remote control signal capture.
Each capture channel has 1us pulse width identification ability.
Compatible with any type and frequency remote control, such as Futaba, JR, Spektrum, etc.
Support two or more remote control devices to capture the signal at the same time, on some special occasions, often requires two people to execute a remote control mission, as one person control flight, another control camera mount, requires two remote control devices to work simultaneously.
Detect the pulse width of remote control input signal, for some advanced remote control, this feature can be used as control protection and signal stability testing.

Meanwhile, users can adjust parameters and check the working condition of input signal capture module by using
XAircraft Flight Control Management(Parameter Adjustment) Software and XAircraft USB-Link PC Connector.

Control Signal Output Module (Output Module) Features:
12-channel output capability.
Each channel output control accuracy: 1us
Support the general and high-speed digital steering engine, 12 channels are divided into 3 groups, each pulse signal can be arbitrarily adjusted.
Support High-Speed (UltraPWM mode) Electric Speed Control Device(UltraPWM ESC), low-speed mode are also available.

Although the X650 is a quadrotor (Quadcopter) products, but it equipped with the standard flight control can support up to 12 rotor, usually retaining four output channels for the camera mount, means the X650 flight control can drive 8 rotor(8 propeller) without need to purchase a new flight controller.

Except the two built-in modules, XAircraft standard flight control module also has 5 extend ports, they are PortA to PortE, one of them used for AHRS (Attitude and Heading Reference Systems) which provides Pitch & Roll Angle and heading. As the flight control get the AHRS attitude and heading signals, like 30 degrees tilt, 18 degrees yaw, the flight control algorithms adjust the aircraft's attitude to achieve a smooth flight.

AHRS module is a standard configuration on X650.

The remaining extend port can also be used to connect other modules, such as GPS Module, Range Finder Module, LED Module(indicate aircraft status), Power Monitor Module and so on.

There is a special interface called the connector port (Link Port) in flight controller. All devices connected to the port are called connectors (Linker). Player can set the parameters of flight control Via USB-Link, or upgrade firmware for the flight control.

USB-Link is a standard configuration on X650. Users can also install the Bluetooth device (Bluetooth-Link), OSD-Link and so on. We actively cooperate with several universities in China to improve the control instruction of this interface. It will be announced to help the secondary development of flight control system.

infmetry's Posts (3)

New XAircraft X650 Value4(8) and X450 Pro

x650 Technical Documents Translation：Problem About I2C Brushless Motor Speed Ccontroller

x650 Technical Documents Translation：XAircraft Flight Controller Architecture Design

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