Folding Quadcopter for the holidays

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Not much space if you're going on holiday with the family in a Renault Clio. This design fits into a 52cm toolbox with transmitter and all accessories.

Just thought I'll share my crash resistant design that has evolved through many drops and repairs. On impact it is now usually just a matter of replacing a rivet or a prop. The electronics and battery can quickly be removed for installation on another airframe.

The props are 15" RC timers and as shown I get about 23min flight time with a slightly damaged 5000mAh 4cell Lipo at 1500m above sea level, 25 deg C.

The difference in spacing between front and rear props doesn't have a noticable effect on stability and it flies waypoints very well.

I'll post basic plans if anyone is interested or if you want an airframe let me know.

Update: Plans for the airframe

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Comments

  • That's great to hear directly from the developer himself!

    I know we are talking about motors like the RCtimer 5010 360kv. However is the Hextronik DT700 also considered a  pancake motor? Would BLHeli be better for it. Thanks.

  • Wow,  that's fantastic news! Will try it out immediately. The few percent loss in max power are not so interesting, it's not an acrobatic copter anyway....

    Didn't want to change my escs just because of this because I just got them all so nicely soldered and shrinkwrapped. Will be curious, too, as to how the flashing via servo cable turns out....

    Thanks a lot for your hint, would have never figured that one out on my own!

  • Hi!

    The sync loss with BLHeli and the pancake motors caught my attention :).

    In BLHeli I implemented SimonKs concept for avoiding loss of sync due to long demag time after commutation.

    It is a concept that greatly helps in handling slow demaging motors. And in BLHeli there are several settings for this "demag compensation". It defaults to "1", which gives a minimum of protection. Setting it to "3" or "4" will give much better protection, however at the cost a few percent (maybe 3-4) reduction in max power.

    If you have the chance, you may try this.

    Thanks,

    Steffen

  • Here's the link to a video I made with the foldable Alien Locust: Oasis in fall

  • They could drive 12" props, too, according to rctimer, but then I'd have to prolong my arms because it's probably not good if the props are above the corpus. The longer arms I already have lying around but I will still play a while with the 10" inch props because soon I'll get my apm that will go on there and that means there'll be enough things to do including finding a way to properly mount the motors so that they not turn on the round arms...

    If you look into SimonK, read about Wiiesc, too. There's a comparison on youtube between wiiesc and simonk. The wiiesc firmware is obviously specifically made for pancake motors to prevent them from cogging. I'll flash it soon on my redbrick escs.

  • @mdrm: Sorry, I have no idea, but I'll try flashing with SimonK when I have some time on my hands to see if there is a difference.

    @Zidlov: Very nice! I'm sure those motors can drive larger props though.

  • ...and about Escs: With my first quad, a Dex mini, I noticed a HUGE different in performance between the standard firmware and SimonK. Throttle reaction was much faster and the whole quad flew much better. If you use standard firmware and your escs are flashable: it's definetely worth it!

  • Here you go! Sorry, it's not in it's best shape now. Just replaced the broken motor and still haven't put props on again since first I wanna flash WiiEsc and then also balance my motors. This is supposed to become my camera platform. Btw. the earplugs seem to be the best option for jello reducing. Tried moongel as well but it didn't seem to help as much like earplugs, but I will try to confirm this in some more serious comparisons. Would like to use bigger props than the 10"ones but I calculated the efficiency for different prop/battery combinations for this motor with rctimers table on the product page and the 3s/10" combination seems to be the most efficient. Did two flight with two 3s 2.2 Ah Lipos in parallel and got about 15min flight-time. Didn't measure it exactly yet, just a guess. Working on a flight video I did with the Locust and will post the link here once it's uploaded to vimeo.

    Cheers!

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  • @Murray: The JDrones ESCs are "low resistance" - does that help with efficiency?

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