My First Tricopter/Multicopter Build

[nishaad]

Hello all, so this was my first ever experiment into the multirotor world!

I chose to build a tri because I like the way they look, and their unique flying abilities! Not as robotic as a quad, and almost natural and fluid like! Inspiration was taken from rcexplorer.se, Cheers David! and the Aeroquad forums

So here are some photos of my build... Once I get used to flying it well I will sort out a video!








The downpipe clamp landing gear was too bouncy, so I had some landing gear 3d printed!



I also had the little velcro strap that held the battery tear off in flight! which ended badly... and so i built this! Again inspiration was taken from David from Rcexplorer and his design.

 

[voipmonkey]

Good looking tri whats the control board you built up based on?

 

[Cyberdactyl]

Looks great. And putting the motor inboard of the servo is a nice twist on RcExplorer's design.

 

[nishaad]

Good looking tri whats the control board you built up based on?

I used a arduino based flight controller. Its an arduino Mega with the sheild bought from Aeroquad, containing gyros, accelerometers, a magnetometer and a barometer. The code used to fly it is also from aeroquad.
The reason i went down that route, is because this year, I will be trying to use optical flow to make the tri autonomously follow an object! and an Arduino mega should give me enough flexibility to do just that. A Raspberry Pi will be used to do most of the image processing onboard.

Looks great. And putting the motor inboard of the servo is a nice twist on RcExplorer's design.

Haha yes, well it was more a necessity, I needed this in the air asap, and I didnt want to fluff around with the code too much. The servo was compensating in the wrong direction, so instead of using code to fix it, i just used a simpler mechanical solution - turn the whole thing around!

 

[voipmonkey]

Cool can't wait to see that. Played with a pi cool little pc ..

 

[nishaad]

Here was the first flight that was caught on video! its from last year... so features the older landing gear etc.

 

[nishaad]

 

[Black Knight]

looking good

 

[nishaad]

looking good

Cheers Black Knight! but sadly its grounded till I get a replacement tail servo. I managed to strip the metal gears and hence need to wait while hobbyking restocks the servo I used... Pain really, but such is life. Its currently a stormy winter, so the wait isnt so bad.

 

[nishaad]

Final video compiled