This is a couple of flights from my holiday that I made my first quad copter for. My wife and I (and two kids under 2) were planning a 2 week four wheel drive trip across the Simpson Desert in central Australia. For those not familiar with the Simpson Desert it is 550 km of desert, 1100 sand dunes to cross, and 3000 km round trip. The quad seemed like the perfect way to get a different perspective on the landscape.
I didn't have much time before the trip and only had experience with RC gliders before so I purchased a cheap frame from Hobby King. It didn't take long to realise that it wasn't going to but up to the task so I set about designing and building my own using 3mm ply. My first wasn't going to fit in a fully packed 4WD so I had to design and build a folding version.
In the end it took four full days (over 2 months ish) from start to finish before I left on the trip so I had very little time to learn to fly a quad and optimise the tuning.
I didn’t get to develop my flying skills much before I left and I only started to get comfortable flying FPV near my last flight of the trip. Unfortunately I missed one of my ESC connectors worked its way out and I crashed the quad after approximately 10 flights. I some good footage though. The crash is at the end of the video.
I would like to thank the DIY Drones community and everybody who contributed to the ARM 2 board!
Just for kicks I thought I would put a rendering of my SolidWorks design and what it looked like after it was built.
Edit:
Post processing I did on the GoPro footage
As you can see from parts of the footage, my piloting was still pretty poor and I didn't get time to balance my propellers before the trip. I also found that the fish eye on the GoPro was pretty hard to watch when set to 720P (170 degree field of view). Before I went I tried to work out what I should be setting the camera to but people didn't post the settings or post processing details. So here is what I did for this trip:
GoPro settings:
720P (170 degree wide)
50 fps (this minimised the rolling shutter I found)
Post processing using Virtual Dub:
1. Resize 1900x1600
2. Deshaker v3.0
3. Barrel Distortion
4. Resize 1280x720
I did this as a mass batch process using DubMan. Here are my processing settings for Virtual dub. There are two because Deshaker takes two passes.
All this is free but then I added 20% saturation in CyberLink PowerDirector 10 Deluxe when I cut the video together.
Comments
Pity about crash, I really enjoyed your Outback footage especially the aerial views of the desert prior to the crash
Lucky you had a casing on your GoPro otherwise that would have coped some damage.
Hi Michael and John,
Yeh it is already up and running again. That is the advantage of the ply, all I had to do was print out another drawing of the plates, tack them to the ply then run around them with the router and drill holes, another set of $5 aluminium arms from HK and I was done.
The crash was caused by the the ESC signal connector coming out. Going across the Simpson isn't exactly a smooth trip so I should have been checking them every time. Live and learn.
Flying amongst the Whistlers was fun and a bit nerve racking at the same time. I would hate to hurt one. There were heaps of them at Mungerannie because the native rat population was in plague proportions. As soon as I took of they swarmed around me for a look. I had to be very careful changing altitude. At times they were less than a meter from me.
I also took video at Big Red and Birdsville, it was quiet spectacular because of all the water around. In the end I got about 10 flights in before it hit the dirt. The last flight was the first flight that was FPV from take off to landing. Since then I have improved the landings somewhat :)
Nice work! Really like the simplistic design. Was is a bullet connector or a ESC signal connector that came loose?
Nice job - shame about the conclusion. Sounds like you'll be out amongst again soon.
Flying amongst the Whistlers must have been fun - were they all nesting there ? or what were they up to? Any close encounters?
MJ
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