I've been wanting an indoor-sized quad for a while, so when HK announced their new MicroQuad I sent off and got one. I was having some motor problems, and Andreas suggested it that the problem might not be in the motor or ESC, but in the HK controller board.
We swapped out the board with an APM2, and as you can see it flew quite nicely modulo some PID tuning. It's pretty neat that the APM2 is small enough to fit with no problem!
It's definitely the smallest APM-controlled thing I've seen -- any other tiny things out there?
Comments
Andrew, I have a quadpod too and I am about to swap out the flight controller for a multiwii 328P board.
Do you have a config file you can share ?
I also like flying the quadpod in the yard... flying with the standard controller is kind of tough. mostly I just manuver the quad with throttle and yaw. As soon as I start adding pitch and roll it becomes unstable and crashes. My APM 2.0 controller on my 450mm frame has spoiled me.
Have you tried flying in HEADING + MAG mode with your multiwii quadpod ?
@Robert, thanks! I'll give your param file a try.
I love these little quad frames, I smashed one into the concrete yesterday from about 30 feet, broke off a motor at the weak point, a little CA glue and carbon tube, solder and its as good as new (one with a HK 3.0 board on it by the way, seems flighty compared to the stabilized APM).
Try this param file, I posted it for someone else a few days ago. You may notice just the slightest oscillation which you can easily tune out.
http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/does-anyone-know-how-to-program-t...
@Andrew... neat! I've seen pictures of these units but didn't know who made them.
@healthy, that's exactly what I'm seeing, good catch. I'll give that a try and see if it doesn't help.
@ Mark
Was it the number 4 motor that was having issues and is it the most recent KK v4.7 X-copter firmware you were running? If so, that's the lazy #4 motor issue and you have to trim it out with the radio. You need to give a lot of forward pitch, left roll, and I believe right yaw to get it to work. Some people have the problem, others don't. I had issues using my Futaba 9C but when I switched to the DX8, it went away and flew just fine without the extra trim. I believe it's a radio servo centering issue where the board, I believe, expects 1520 as center but all radios are slightly different and it causes issues.
Give that a try and you'll probably see that the HK KK board works just fine.
I've done a similar sized quad on the snelflight quadpod
http://www.snelflight.co.uk/QuadPod.htm
but not with an APM - but now the APM2 is out it could be a contender I suppose. I have it flying great with a Multiwii now, the key things I've found for good flight are moving from 2 bladed to 3 bladed props, and flashing the esc with the 'fast pwm' firmware as detailed here
It's a great backyard quad, as you can fly it without fear of hurting anyone or taking down a commercial plane which everyone seems to be going on about.
It does get challenging to fly in wind, and you also have to watch the altitude very carefully, as turns, wind etc all seem to affect the height way more than a bigger quad
Oh sorry Rick, I didn't make myself very clear. The video is showing the APM... The KK board was very strange... one motor was running a lot slower than the others. It would tilt right and forward , but trying to tilt it left or back would make the unit flip. Andreas loaned me one of his KK boards and I'm going to verify that it works and the return the bad board back to HK.
From the video it would seem the oscillations are due to too high a sensitivity on one or more of the gyros. I have flown with the hk board many times over 2 of the versions and that is usually what causes those flight characteristics. Although you may not use that board again vs the APM I would suggesting turning the gyro pots down on your next flight. Cheers,
Rick