Hello DIY Drones community,
I've been researching on this site(and many others) for a few weeks now, and i'm super impressed by some of the projects you guys have done. I'm hoping some of you can shed some light on my own project. I'm attempting to build a quad copter most likely based on the APM/Arduino Mega as my senior design project for my electrical engineering degree. The biggest question as of now is to whether start from scratch or use existing parts from a previous project from another group. The last group never completed the project, and it was an overcomplicated design.
Parts Available:
4 x Hacker A-30 16-M BLDC motors
4 x Turnigy Sentry 25A ESCs
4 x Turnigy 5000mA Lipo batteries
It would be nice to save money and reuse some of these parts, however from what I've read the motors are usually used in rc planes. From all the research I've done, it seems there is no easy answer to all the power/weight questions. Obviously using 4 5000mA lipos would be out of the question, but how should I go about determining how heavy the quadrotor should be? There needs to be enough power for a small camera, plus extra sensors for obstacle avoidance, etc. I'll definitely be either buying or building a new frame. Any advice on this is greatly appreciated.
Replies
take a look at the arducopter project, it will safe you a lot of time for getting it up in the air
it's open, so you can easily add some sensors and stuff
you can use the motors and batteries, these ESCs are too small, you need bigger ones with more power (at least 40A)
Mark,
There are several rc related sites that have "motor calculators" with which you can calculate the amount of thrust and current for a particular motor/prop/battery voltage combination. That would be the best starting place if you want to look at using wht you have.