Blogs

3D Robotics

My first ArduCopter flight--perfect, right out of the box!

Posted by Chris Anderson on September 19, 2010 at 1:00pm
I'm a bit late to the party in actually building a beta ArduCopter kit, but I just finished last night, loaded the code and set the motor rotation directions this morn. Then the kids and I took it out to our tiny backyard and just took off. This is the result--amazing. Rock-sold stability (this was in windy conditions, too) and no tuning required--these are the default settings. So much better than the Gaui 330 XS, both in terms of performance and setup!

Ted Carancho's configurator software is the key. Best setup experience I've ever had. It not only tests all your hardware, but really walks you through the process in an intuitive way. It looks great, too:


My only issue was the the rudder channel seemed reversed in the configurator, but worked fine on the quad. I'll dig into that a bit more. But the main point is this: ArduCopter is in great shape, and as far as I can tell, ready for prime time. Really looking forward to the commercial release in a few weeks. Huge congrats to the team!

E-mail me when people leave their comments –
Follow

You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!

Join diydrones

Comments

  • Ground Loop September 21, 2010 at 9:55am
    That looks great!

    With flight that smooth, I'm willing to go Beta too. Is there a build thread that describes the components you got?

    Cheers!
  • AVS September 21, 2010 at 6:50am
    Chris, looks great. I don't think you were late in your build. I think you timed it well for a stable ArduCopter build and waited for the blue engines to arrive into Ted's stock :)

    I agree the configurator is excellent, escpecially over xbee. If Ted adds a google earth view then it would also be a gcs?
  • DODY September 21, 2010 at 6:32am
    @Chris, congratulation very beautiful flight.....
    @Jani, can you give in detail what will contain the complete kit and the price?
    And can you give me the exact address to order the kit for delivery in France.
    Thank you with the team for super work.
    DODY.
  • kinzua September 20, 2010 at 9:25pm
    looks gr8. congrats chris. cheers to d team 4 such a gr8 effort. fantastic.
  • Bill Vickers September 20, 2010 at 7:23pm
    You have a ball park figure on the kit yet?
  • Developer
    Jani Hirvinen September 20, 2010 at 6:37pm
    @Chris, beta frames did not have any motors/escs/propls only frame it self. And yes next batch is a lot bigger so we should not run off stock immediately and if we do it means that we are doing good work and in that case we create more of them. Full Kit will include motors/escs/props/electronics so basically you only need to add battery, rx/tx and radio to make it flying.
  • Chris September 20, 2010 at 6:32pm
    hey jani were the beta kits with the small engines?
  • Chris September 20, 2010 at 6:31pm
    jani i hope you guys ordered enough as not to run out as i definitly want a full set with some nice big hauler engines and props w00t, then gonna get my x9 radio and truerc battery
  • Peter Seddon September 20, 2010 at 3:26am
    The rudder being the wrong way around in the Configurator is a known feature ;)

    Peter
  • Toby Stein September 19, 2010 at 10:56pm
    got it thanx! :)
This reply was deleted.