Electrohub Y6 Build

[RandomChaos]

I've been flying my Electrohub Quad in the Spider layout for awhile now with my APM. It gets good flight times on a 4000mah 3S battery, roughly 15 minutes. It's nearly at its maximum weight though with the Yi camera mounted on it, and I know in the future I would like to add a Gimbal to it. The motors I was using with some 10 inch props were the Sunnsky A2212 980kv motors. I got them for fairly cheap when I built my first quad, and they have lasted me a good while. They just don't have the thrust numbers I want, nor the 4S capabilities. I had originally planned on just upgrading to some Sunnysky 2216 900kv motors running 4S, and still in the Quad layout, but that all changed when 3DRobotics put alot of IRIS+ parts on sale.

Enter the IRIS+ 2213 950kv motors! They appear to be T-Motors 6th anniversary release set. At $3 each, I snagged 6 and a few extras. Figured hey, why not go ahead and build up an decent AP rig with some redundancy, enough power to lift whatever gear I want, and all running on a 6000mah 4S battery. This also required me to upgrade from my older 30a hobbywing knockoff ESCs, to some BLHeli ESCs. I am pretty excited about the new setup, so on with the build!


I first started with painting the 3 booms. I did my usual flat black, but then added some red paint to the end of the tail boom, and blue to the ends of the front ones. This is more for looks and to match the LEDs than anything. After that, I added the FC mount from the store, and the rail system on the bottom. I ended up buying the rail system as seperate parts from Amazon. Cost a little more, but left me with some extra hardware. Also, the FT store was out of stock when I placed my order.


I needed a way to attach the battery to the rail system, so I cut 2 rectangular pieces from hobby plywood, and mounted them to the rail system with slits for the velcro straps. This will let me get the battery strapped down nice and snug, and still be able to slide it fore and aft to adjust the CG.

Next, I am working on the landing gear. I was thinking originally that I would just go with the same setup that comes with the AP Y6 in the store, but might try a different approach now. I was thinking I can model up some angled pieces that will attach to the side of the rail system, and then insert the square T dowels into those. If I can get them designed and printed to be strong enough, this might be a lighter option (less hardware), that still allows for me to move the landing gear fore and aft as needed.

 

[cranialrectosis]

Sweet. I wanna see what kind of thrust to weight you get with this one. It should be a frickin' rocket in a punch out assuming the wood booms can handle the stress.

 

[RandomChaos]

Here are 2 ideas I came up with for some landing gear mounts.

The long version
http://www.123dapp.com/123D_Design/Electrohub-Landing-Gear/4963736

A shortened version
http://www.123dapp.com/123D_Design/Electrohub-Landing-Gear-Short/4964138

This should allow for a wooden boom to be attached to the rail system at a 30 degree angle. The longer version uses 2 bolts to hold the boom to the bracket. The shortened version uses only 1 bolt. Not sure if the single bolt option would be strong enough. I set the wall thickness to be 2mm, which I feel should be more than enough, since the main stress point will really be where the bracket bolts to the rail. I added some alignment notches to help get the landing gear nice and level in the rail.

Now, to get them printed and test fit

I also received my new ESCs today. They are the 25A Slim BLHeli ESCs from ReadyToFlyQuads.com. They are going to fit perfectly with this frame! The same exact width of a boom

 

[RandomChaos]

I got some more work done last night. Tested one of the ESCs with a motor, and figured out which wires connected to which pads turn a motor CCW or CW. I then shortened the wires from the motors, sleeved the wires, and began soldering the ESCs directly to the motors depending on how many motors I need in CCW and CW directions. Here is a quick photo before heatshrinking the ESC again.


It looks like I will need 2 CCW motors, and 4 CW motors with the APM setup, if I am understanding the layout correctly. If the top motor needs to be CCW, and the bottom motor needs to be CW, I can use a CCW for both the top and bottom motor, since when you flip the motor upside down, it then will spin the opposite direction, with the prop mounted in the pusher position.



I'm not too worried about the threading on the motor itself, since I will be using the nylon inserted lock nuts from the FliteTest store, so will just be putting the silvers on top and blacks on bottom. I've also never had a prop nut spin off on my previous motors, which were all CW threaded.

Let me know if my thinking here is wrong

 

[cranialrectosis]

I think if you have 6 motors, 3 need to be CW and 3 CCW to offset torque.

 

[RandomChaos]

Yup, it will be working that way. What I realized is that with the Y6 having the motors on the bottom upside down, a motor that is spinning CCW right side up is actually turning CW when you flip it upside down, and vise versa for a CW spinning motor when its right side up. Since there are 2 CW motors and 1 CCW motor on top, that requires 4 motors to be setup turning CW and 2 motors spinning CCW when they are sitting right side up. This gives me the 3 CCW and 3 CW motors when you view it from the top, like in the diagram above.

 

[cranialrectosis]

Yup, it will be working that way. What I realized is that with the Y6 having the motors on the bottom upside down, a motor that is spinning CCW right side up is actually turning CW when you flip it upside down, and vise versa for a CW spinning motor when its right side up. Since there are 2 CW motors and 1 CCW motor on top, that requires 4 motors to be setup turning CW and 2 motors spinning CCW when they are sitting right side up. This gives me the 3 CCW and 3 CW motors when you view it from the top, like in the diagram above.

That makes sense. I guess perspective really is reality.

 

[RandomChaos]

A spaghetti monster attacked! Got all the motor/esc combos mounted and soldered up. Also soldered some wires for the LEDs.



Then I began drilling and mounting the LEDs to the tops and bottoms of the boom arms. I used some servo mounting screws to hold the LED boards on the arms. Had alot of those screws laying around . Sleeved both the hot and ground wires, and soldered them to the LED boards. After that, I was finally able to ziptie everything down to the boom arm. These LEDs sure are bright!



Once I finish the rest of the LEDs, and confirm all the electronics are getting power, I will use some liquid electric tape to protect all the connections I have soldered. Then its onto building the landing gear!

 

[William A]

View attachment 60996

Interesting how APM sets their motors up. EagleTree does it like this.

 

[RandomChaos]

Interesting how APM sets their motors up. EagleTree does it like this.

Yea, I have noticed almost every FC has a different motor layout.

 

[RandomChaos]

Well, got all the soldering finished up, and some liquid tape over all the connections to the PDB and LEDs. All LEDs wired up, cables sleeved, and ziptied out of the way. With the current rail system in place, and the FC mounted, it is weighing in at 809g. Working on the landing gear now. Going to standard Y6 setup to start for the landing gear until I get myself a 3D printer. I am really liking the layout so far. Lots of room on top for the receiver, GPS mast, and minimOSD. Will mount the 915mhz telemetry module to a landing gear, that FPV transmitter to the camera mount on the rails.



Now to decide which FrSky receiver to use. I was thinking maybe a DR4-ii since the APM 2.6 doesn't work with SBUS, but does with PPM. I can get the SBUS to PPM converter if I want to use the X8R, though I'm not sure if the X8R SBUS receiver works with the FrSky DJT module does it? Does the X8R get longer range than the D4R-ii?

 

[JUSS10]

Looks great. I also bought a bought of those motors and am thinking about a Y6. What ESCs did you use for your build?

 

[RandomChaos]

I went with some of the cheapest 25+ amp BlHeli ESCs I could find. They are the slims from ReadyToFlyQuads.com. Here is a direct link.

http://www.readytoflyquads.com/rtf-slim-25amp-simonk-rapidesc-686

They are supposed to be firmware updateable directly through the servo lead too. They end up being the exact same width as a boom arm too.

Be super careful when soldering the motor leads directly to the ESC. There are some small components extremely close to the pads, and a surface mount cap that heats up with a pad and can be knocked out of place with the slightest of nudges.

 

[JUSS10]

Thats what I thought you used. I was looking at those the other day. I may have to order some of those up. Price sure is great for what they are.

 

[RandomChaos]

Landing gear is done! I might extend the ground booms slightly, will have to see how it handles landings first. I ended up just drawing up the pieces to the exact size I wanted, and tracing out the lines onto the wood. After cutting the pieces out with my dremel, I then proceeded to glue it together, before drilling any holes. Amazingly to me, the CA glue is holding a strong bond! I decided I didn't even need to bolt it together, that the glue will suffice. The landing gear without any hardware weighs in at 70 grams.

After mounting the landing gear, I came to the conclusion that its placement would force the battery back too far, so added some risers to the battery mounting plates so the landing gear will fit in the middle, and I can still move the battery around to get the COG set.




I went ahead and mounted the GPS, setup the FC in mission planner, and calibrated the ESCs. All that is left to do now is wait for the props I ordered to arrive.



When it came to props, I spent probably way too much time trying to decide on what to go with. I finally decided on some Gemfan DJI style 9.4x4.3 props to start, since the t-motor 9.5x4.5 props aren't in stock anywhere. I had to get them with the DJI style hub, since the hubs on the HQ MR props I was trying to use were too thick. There were not enough threads available to comfortably tighten the prop nuts on. I also couldn't go with self-tightening props, since the props on the bottom motors need to be in a pusher configuration. I may try some slowfly props as well, but found on my previous quad, the MR styled props seemed to give a more stabilized flight in windy conditions.

Stay tuned for the maiden later this week

 

[RandomChaos]

It flies!

It was a cold morning, 29 degrees, still had frost on the ground. No wind though, so made it super easy to maiden.
I will need to extend the horizontal parts of the landing gear. They are too short, and let the quad tip forwards or backwards easily, as you can see in the landing. Other than that, it flies good. Once I get it Autotuned it should fly even better. Has plenty of punch at full throttle. Going to try enabling active dampening on the ESCs next, and see how that effects its flight characteristics. Then its on to an Autotune, maybe a few more tweaks, and then a hover time test. Really looking forward to flying this, and learning more about AP, as well as GPS autopiloting.

 

[RandomChaos]

After trying to tune it a bit, and seeing horrible flight characteristics, I discovered that the FC was getting some pretty bad vibrations. After playing around with the FC mount a little, I decided the Gemfan 9443 props were just crap, threw caution to the wind, and slapped my 1045 HQ MR props on it. The outcome was quite fascinating. The vibrations calmed down a good bit, and it now holds itself better. The 1045 props turned it into quite literally a rocket ship. I bumped it to full throttle for maybe a split second and it shot up 15 meters before I could drop the throttle back down. In loiter, it shows an average power consuption of 14.5 amps. Full throttle is close to 80 amps. Once I get the vibrations out of the FC, it should be a pretty nice AP rig.

 

[n.hoof23]

Amazon Rail system

I've been flying my Electrohub Quad in the Spider layout for awhile now with my APM. It gets good flight times on a 4000mah 3S battery, roughly 15 minutes. It's nearly at its maximum weight though with the Yi camera mounted on it, and I know in the future I would like to add a Gimbal to it. The motors I was using with some 10 inch props were the Sunnsky A2212 980kv motors. I got them for fairly cheap when I built my first quad, and they have lasted me a good while. They just don't have the thrust numbers I want, nor the 4S capabilities. I had originally planned on just upgrading to some Sunnysky 2216 900kv motors running 4S, and still in the Quad layout, but that all changed when 3DRobotics put alot of IRIS+ parts on sale.

Enter the IRIS+ 2213 950kv motors! They appear to be T-Motors 6th anniversary release set. At $3 each, I snagged 6 and a few extras. Figured hey, why not go ahead and build up an decent AP rig with some redundancy, enough power to lift whatever gear I want, and all running on a 6000mah 4S battery. This also required me to upgrade from my older 30a hobbywing knockoff ESCs, to some BLHeli ESCs. I am pretty excited about the new setup, so on with the build!

View attachment 60867
I first started with painting the 3 booms. I did my usual flat black, but then added some red paint to the end of the tail boom, and blue to the ends of the front ones. This is more for looks and to match the LEDs than anything. After that, I added the FC mount from the store, and the rail system on the bottom. I ended up buying the rail system as seperate parts from Amazon. Cost a little more, but left me with some extra hardware. Also, the FT store was out of stock when I placed my order.

View attachment 60868
I needed a way to attach the battery to the rail system, so I cut 2 rectangular pieces from hobby plywood, and mounted them to the rail system with slits for the velcro straps. This will let me get the battery strapped down nice and snug, and still be able to slide it fore and aft to adjust the CG.

Next, I am working on the landing gear. I was thinking originally that I would just go with the same setup that comes with the AP Y6 in the store, but might try a different approach now. I was thinking I can model up some angled pieces that will attach to the side of the rail system, and then insert the square T dowels into those. If I can get them designed and printed to be strong enough, this might be a lighter option (less hardware), that still allows for me to move the landing gear fore and aft as needed.

Where did you get the rail system parts? I have this on my Y6 straight from the FT store, and I wanted to get a few extra rail bolts but can't find them anywhere!