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DIY Ghetto Retractable Landing Gear

Posted by benbojangles on January 2, 2015 at 2:36pm

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Hello and happy new year.

I decided that I wanted to have retractable landing gear on my hexacopter, but I didn't want to pay the full price for a ready made set (£50/$80). With all the parts I gathered, it came to about £12/$18, so that's quite a saving to be made.

I made a write up article to help others to make their own in hope that we can begin to develop the Ardupilot to enable automatic retracting landing gear like on the DJI systems A2 flight controller. I hope that Droidplanner will have a dedicated button to enable/disable auto landing gear, and also to set the altitude trigger, using either the barometer or gps or optical flow sensors. If anyone has undertaken this suggestion already, i'd be grateful for some links posted in the comments. 

Many thanks and happy flying

Tutorial Link: http://dalybulge.blogspot.co.uk/

Tags: automatic, dji, gear, landing, retractable, servoless, skids
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Comments

  • benbojangles January 2, 2015 at 9:44pm

    I like the idea of using a separate arduino to control the retracts and also reading a sonar HC-SR04 sensor. I figure the Arduino pro mini and sonar connected to the 5v ubec would work, and has got me rubbing the old beard.

  • benbojangles January 2, 2015 at 9:16pm

    Can't we just do a simple if statement in a separate tab in Arduino ide?

    Something like:

    //------------------------------AUto REtract sketch etc

    def x = 3; // set an altitude to engage retract switch

    void_loop() {;

     if apm_alt = <x; // what is the correct variable fro alt?

     retract_ch = 1; //I made up retract_ch but it could be defined, right?

    else;

     retract_ch = 0;

    }

    Anyhow, I have no idea what the codes are for Arduino Ardupilot as I haven't trawled through the code as there is quite a lot of it. right now, I only know how to comment/uncomment code to allow me to use ppm/pwm  etc.

  • benbojangles January 2, 2015 at 8:51pm

    nice thought to have the transmitter take care of auto switching. 

  • Whirligig January 2, 2015 at 7:46pm

    For what its worth, this gentleman built an altitude activated landing gear for his helicopter using sonar and arduino with a sketch provided:

    http://flitetest.com/articles/arduino-automated-landing-gear-based-...

    I can imagine a Taranis radio can do this using a Vario sensor and adding some altitude limits to turn on or off the retracts channel.

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