Multirotor Top Tips

Cyberdactyl

Misfit Multirotor Monkey
I have none of my ...power wires... cut and I have been flying an almost exact copy of DW's tri for 9 months.

As to the prop rotation, you should have the left CW, right CCW and the rear CW. But, it is not critical. When 'backing up' the tri acts a little odd when you have a abnormal prop layout.
 
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Craftydan

Hostage Taker of Quads
Staff member
Moderator
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Secondly, I've read on a forum somewhere that with the tricopter, one of the signal wires need to be cut as it is not needed.

Signal wire from the ESC cable? NO. Power wire from the ESC cable . . . maybe.

It should be fine without it, but there's an outside chance that the UBEC from ESC's 2 & 3 could fight and burn each other out. ESC on M1 is isolated already, and you'll need the power (middle wire) from either 2 or 3 to power the servo, but not both. If you're concerned, pop the middle pin out of either 2 or 3's connector, and tape it off.
 

jhitesma

Some guy in the desert
Mentor
One more tip - Put your name and contact info on it!

Getting mine back today because I did this. I initially did it because I had to put my callsign and name on it to be legal with my 440mhz RF system - but while I was putting that on I decided full contact info would be a good idea.

I had failsafe setup in my flight controller, I had failsafe configured in my RX. I had bench tested both. Still something went wrong and the quad wound up almost a kilometer away from the area I planned to stay within. I thought I had my bases covered and couldn't suffer a flyaway. Thankfully because I had my contact info on the quad I'm getting at least parts of it back.
 

Anirudh

Junior Member
Hey guys im new to forums... I have trouble with tuning my quad... it flies pretty decently but i feel its still sluggish... the pid's are pretty high though... i also have a multiwii wondering if that will run better than the kk2... the kk2 is running the beginner version of the steveis firmware
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFZrpFYZ4gQ
 

Craftydan

Hostage Taker of Quads
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Anrudh,

Have you adjusted the stick scaling yet?

the Control board is really flying the craft and your radio is telling it what you want to do. the stick scaling tells it how strong of a response is expected for a given stick input -- the higher the scaling, the faster/harder it will pitch/roll/yaw in response to banging the sticks.

Take your time adjusting it up -- small steps (10 or so) and test. it won't take much to get twitchy.
 

Anirudh

Junior Member
Thank you so much... I had never thought about stick scaling... I'll definitely give it a try... And what are you're thoughts on multiwii flight controllers... Are they better ? I have one lying around but am using the kk cause it is easier to tweak on the go... Thanks again...
 

Craftydan

Hostage Taker of Quads
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My experience with the multiwii is:

- harder to setup
- less consistent (MW has a wide variety of sensors and processors it supports, so it's performance depends on what you have)
- Marginally better acro flight (full PID control loops, instead of just a PI)
- More expandable, but every expansion adds complexity -- each control loop needs to be set up and tuned separately

It can be a better setup, but it will take work to get it to that point.
 

xuzme720

Dedicated foam bender
Mentor
The multiwii can be a really great board, but like Dan says, it takes some getting used to and some tuning experience to get the most out of it. Keep it handy for later on when you have more exp. points under your belt and then you'll know more about how to tune it to it's capability. Stick with the KK2 for now and you'll be a happier camper...
 

Balu

Lurker
Staff member
Admin
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After reading once again that prop savers were used on a MR and the props flew off, perhaps add a tipp that those are not a good idea?
 

Petfrogg

Junior Member
I'm stuck on #6.

Where can i find good matching ESC and motors? Is there a list somewhere - like a wiki or something?
 

FinalGlideAus

terrorizing squirrels
What you buy depends on the copter you are building and what you want to do with it. In basic terms you would choose the motor prop combo for the copter you are building and then find an esc that will handle the current draw of the motor/prop combo you chose with a little but of extra margin for head room. The only downside for going too big with an esc is marginally more dead weight. The downside of going too small is a fried esc.

As an example, I chose Sunnysky 2212 980kv motors for my camera platform tricopter running 11x4.5 props. Thrust tests I found on the internet showed it pulled 15a at full throttle (WOT) so a 20a esc would be fine. I ended up buying 30a ESC's since I thought I may be upgrading motors later on and increased the copters weight by about 15g buy doing it.

Ask on the forum her for recommendations for the type of copter you want to build. The typical esc choices are the HobbyKing F-20 and F-30a, the Blue Series 20 and 30a and the Afro 20 and 30a ESC's. The Afro ESC's already have SimonK Firmware flashed on them but I think the the other ESC's are a better choice hardware wise. The only problem is you have to flash SimonK on those ESC's which requires some other tools to buy although they are not expensive.
 

Petfrogg

Junior Member
Thanks for the tips!

Where can i find a nice calculator to balance props and motors in order to calculate lift?

My goal is to create agile v-tail for racing as my first testbed.
 

cranialrectosis

Faster than a speeding face plant!
Mentor
Welcome to FliteTest, Petfrogg.

I am assuming you are new and have never built or flown before. If I am mistaken, I apologize for the newbie advice.

You are asking one of the toughest questions a newbie is faced with. You need to balance the total weight of your copter including the weight of the battery agains the motor spinning the right rotor at the voltage you plan to run.

There are no simple answers we can give you as we don't know all the variables. ecalc is good and accurate but you really need experience to use it correctly.

Assuming you are new and in the US, for the reasons stated above, I recommend the Anycopter X-Quad with the Altitude Hobbies electronics kit running a 35 C 1800mAh lipo and 8045 nylon Gemfan rotors to learn on.

Many of us here on this forum started this way. Lots of us have these electronics. Altitude delivers and stands behind the products. This set up will work for your first build and can grow with you as your experience level grows. After you lean to fly and build, you can shorten the booms on the Anycopter and build the V tail you want with it and with the 8045 rotors still have room to spin them. The 1450kv motors will give you the responsiveness you want for a racing copter and can be toned down with a bit of expo and low stick scaling to learn to fly.
 

Petfrogg

Junior Member
Newbie!
Sweden!
Anycopter X-Quad was on my list as a base for the first build!

I need 3-4 times the lift then that kit can produce due to a friend of mine that wants send his big camera up in the air later on...

(I got a small Hubsan 4X as training wheels.)
 

Balu

Lurker
Staff member
Admin
Moderator
if I will have diffrent esc's on my multirotor will it be ok?

It might. Or not. :)

That depends a lot on the ESCs and their firmware I guess. The flight controller might be able to work around any issues, but depending how big the differences are it might fly funny.

If you don't have the money to buy a complete set, you should at least see if you can update all to SimonK firmware.

And if it doesn't work and crashes, you can still try to fix that buy getting identical ones ;)