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The End of Wiring Woes

Posted by Michael Colton on June 23, 2013 at 1:48pm

3689531742?profile=originalHi everyone! I am finally ready to show off something I've been working on for months! It's a motherboard (which I am calling the MAXboard) that all the various electronics for a multirotor aircraft plug into. It eliminates pretty much any possible wiring mistakes, and all soldering. It makes it much easier to build, repair, and upgrade your aircraft.

This is an open source project, and am I running a Kickstarter campain to get some funds to continue development. I am also really hoping to get the support of the DIY Drones community to help me test it and work out bugs.

There is also a frame I designed to go with it as well as a ground station I think you'll like. I'll post more information on those, as well as some videos, soon.

For more info, or to help support the project, please take a look at my Kickstarter. Thanks! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1703258614/maxrotor-open-source-plug-and-play-modular-quadcop

Tags: apm2, arducopter, maxboard, maxrotor, maxstation, utah aerials, utahaerialscom
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Comments

  • Daniel Nugent June 25, 2013 at 9:54pm
    This is one of those "I wish I would have thought of that!" ideas.
  • Michael Colton June 25, 2013 at 7:47am

    Peter, Love it! Most of my early helicopters used crossed booms like that (the one that flew from the hot-air balloon in the kickstarter video, for example) but I didn't know PCB design back then. I may have to revisit it. Man, you're giving me all sorts of ideas! Maybe I'll have to do something similar when I have time. I'm also learning the STM32 right now, they are cool chips!

    Steve, Thanks for the kind words. Yes, I can do that, but I don't actually know how. Do you have a link to instructions? I think there is fine tuning still to be done on the vibration damping (better suited rubber bumpers, I think the current ones are a little stiff) but we have to start somewhere.

  • steve June 25, 2013 at 7:01am

    Beautiful design! Love the vibration isolation. Can you post a IMU graph of your xyz accel in a hover?

  • Peter Glukhovsky June 25, 2013 at 5:10am

     I'm flying with minimal wiring too,  may be went a bit further -  mother board combines central plate, distro board, UHF LRS, 2.4G  link, FC and soon more.

    http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=25252318&postcoun...

    MULTIBOOT_FC.jpg  

    RC Groups - View Single Post - Show Us Your Scratchbuilt Multirotors
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  • Michael Colton June 24, 2013 at 9:03pm

    Taylor, you're awesome! Thanks!

    Alexsev, thank you very much! I really appreciate the great feedback.

    Luiz, you're one of a few people who have asked. Maybe I'm missing something. What interference are you talking about? I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary while flying it, but I'll be the first to admit that there are things I don't know how to thoroughly test. If it's RF interference, I do have access to a spectrum analyzer and probe set at work. Maybe I should try that. Or are you referring to something else?

  • Luiz Miranda June 24, 2013 at 1:40pm

    Very nice, have you tested for interference yet?

  • Alexsey Novik June 24, 2013 at 10:06am

    Most impressive copter design i ever seen!

    Good work!

  • Cloud9Drones June 24, 2013 at 10:04am

    Just backed! I can't wait to see where this leads

  • Michael Colton June 24, 2013 at 8:00am

    Nick, you're right that RF interference is something to keep an eye on. So far the board flies very well and I am not aware of any RF issues, with one exception: I routed the video line too close to one of the servo control lines and it picks up some noise on the current board (you can see my fix on the top of the board in some pictures.) that will be fixed in the next revision to the board.

    As for ground loops, I was very careful to avoid them. Not only that, but I kept the speed controllers and control electronics on different legs of a star ground to reduce noise. It's a little hard to see, but in the picture, the power and ground for the speed controllers go around the outside of the board, while the electronics are powered by the large ground in the center. They are connected in only one place. This is the top layer only, the bottom layer has all the connections between modules.

    3692754763?profile=originalR_Lefebvre, Yes, of course I've flown it! There is video on the kickstarter page, and here's a little more, including a demonstration of the prop guards:

    Sayan, I'll have to see if I have room for that. You could certainly use a splitter if you wanted. In about three years of flying multirotors, I've never had a battery fail in flight. Admittedly, I've run out of power, but that's pilot error, and I don't know that two batteries would help. What kind of failure are you worried about here? I did include battery monitoring as a built in part of the board, so that the pilot can keep an eye on it in flight and land before it runs out. Then again, maybe this is just an issue I've been lucky not to have experienced. I'll put that on my list of things to try to incorporate into the next board revision. Thank you for your suggestion!

  • Rob_Lefebvre June 24, 2013 at 7:07am

    It's a novel concept, that's for sure.  Have you test flown the frame?

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