My first blog. I have been very careful with learning how to fly. So it is not very interesting.
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My first blog. I have been very careful with learning how to fly. So it is not very interesting.
You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!
Comments
I love the idea of the electrical tape. I will wrap the front of my quad with the electrical tape. I have yellow with green stripes, so it will be easy to see when I am looking at it against the sky. I will try that today. I will also definitely try the LED's but it will be in the future when I become more experienced. I am sorry to hear that you crashed. I am trying to be as cautious as I can, so that it doesn't happen to me because it took a lot of time and effort to build it. I know that it's inevitable that I will crash :(
David
Oh Andy sorry to hear that! Sounds like you had some fun though. I don't suppose you had a camera on it by any chance?
I've been learning slowly as well, I've done about 15 cautious flights, today I successfully tested all of the auto-modes, and did some 'fast' and fun flying for the first time... Wouldn't ya know it my last flight of the day I lost orientation, punched RTL, and she was coming back perfectly until she hit a tree and took out 3 props, 2 motors and an arm (motor mount area). Still lots of fun... thought I would stop by the forum before I buy more parts. ;)
Re visibility and a relatively easy way... If your copter is all black just some coloured electrical tape on the front. I have the sonar mounts front and rear so I just put some coloured tape around that (two bands). As for night or low light, any reflective tape should be fine, or do what I did and just get a bicycle light (like the night rider car) and you'll see it from quite the distance.
Different colored props for the front and back are visible (in daylight!) from a surprisingly far distance. Not really far obviously, but "beginner far". I was recommended and use orange and green ones, they are cheapish and probably about right for learning, at least the first several flights and then you might want something stiffer. Or not, they seem fine to me but might not be up to the performance required for carrying a decent payload or fancy maneuvering.
Those 12V/3s 3xLED strips are bright enough to see in daylight. White not so much, but red and blue stand out during the day quite well. You need a (hardware) driver to use these LEDs: running off of 12V+ is very important for daytime brightness, 5V is fine for night, but regardless of supply voltage you'll still need a driver to safely provide enough current that bright LEDs require.
I have two frames, the HT-FPV (which looks something like what you have) and a 3DR frame C.
The 3DR has the two blue arms but I can't tell from a distance. I have read some posts about adding lights.
JDrones has a board,
I will try the lights as then can be programmed. This may be useful as I become more advanced.
Perhaps someone can comment if lights work well in the day time.
Randy
I find the orientation also very hard, especially since I painted the whole thing black. The lights seem like a good idea but they wont be very useful in the day. I think they would just be too hard to see. Maybe painting the front with florescent paint would be a better idea. I might try that.
I also want to fly FPV but first i really need to learn how to fly line of sight and that might take a while.
Dave
Looks good, I'm learning also so easy is the key.
I find orientation can be difficult at times. Perhaps I have to add some lights. Green for the front and red for the back perhaps.
Had my 4th flight on Sunday but it was windy so I cut my practice short.
Once I have some experience then add the camera, telmentry and hopefully video tx.
Good luck.
Randy