So I got my mobius today! I was getting a bit nervous since ebay predicted it's arrival last Thursday. I won the auction for a new mobius for $66 and change from a seller who's account was all of a week old and somehow had 4 glowing positive feedback already. No, nothing sketchy there. I set a deadline of tomorrow before I would start to panic, but had a hard time keeping that promise when an order of arduino pro mini's with free from China that I ordered the same day as the Mobius (from NJ) arrived on Saturday. Yeah, the seller had sent me a message through ebay saying "tracking info will be added soon" a day after I won...but with no tracking info and a good deal seeing China out fastship them was a little disconcerting.
But who cares! It was there waiting for me when I got home for lunch. Plugged it in to charge and read the manual. Did a quick FW upgrade to 2.1 then headed to work. Set it up to charge and when I saw it was full tried to switch it into timelapse for a quick test. Instead I managed to turn it off for an hour. At least it kept me from playing with it at work.
I then managed to hit the right buttons and put it into timelapse which did get some captivating footage of my left shoulder and the obstructed view out the window over it for the next hour.
After work I was itching to try it on a quad. No time for mounts, let's just see how it does. Up first, the Warpquad! Just a piece of foam board with some cutouts to protect the mobius from the screw heads and make it sit straight (with a slight upwards tilt) with some velcro to hold it right to the stiff carbon frame. I figured this would be jello city since the mobius was basically in direct contact with the hard stiff frame and it was held pretty tight the way I was able to get the velcro on.
I should note - all test flights done in Horizon mode just paying it safe and gentle in the front yard. No wild punch outs flips or fast runs. Just some gentle hovering and feeling out how it reacts with the extra weight and Horizon to keep me from being tempted otherwise. In the air it felt like a disaster, I used my gentlest profile but the warp is still an acro machine and doesn't like to sit still. I did do a few yaw moves I would never do if I was actually trying to get video I'd want to watch, but overall it just felt too twitchy and flighty to be getting good video. When I reviewed the video however the warp did way better than I expected with very little jello:
Next I strapped the mobius to my $100 budget quad. I haven't had a recording camera on it since upgrading to the new motors and was curious to see how it would do. Now to be fair these are kind of beat up HK props while the warp had very beat up HQ props. I really need to get some HQ props on this big guy to see how it does. The big quad also curiously enough had fewer mounting options than the warp. The warp had the nice big clean flat plate on top. My quad has piles of wires everywhere. I tried to mount it out on the front boom like I have before - but there was a zip tie holding the LED strip on in the way that I didn't feel like moving. The bottom of the quad is filled with battery. I don't really want to put it on the back and record video I know will make me sick. Hmmm. Well, I guess I'll just velcro it to the bottom of the battery which is itself held to the quad with velcro. I've heard people say velcro is a good enough isolator for a mobius..though I suspect that means with velcro stuck to the camera and the mounting spot not just wrapped around the camera. Still it should be more isolated than it was on the warp right?
Up in the air my quad felt wondrous if not ponderous, compared to the warp it's lumbering but feels majestic and sweeping. The warp feels like an insect that just darts in where it wants while the knuckle feels like a ballerina who gets there how she wants when she wants but it's going to be graceful and every motion is going to matter. Just a joy to control. It's got the power to get going and get up - and oddly enough I find I fly it lower thinking it's higher despite it being bigger. But when I pulled up the video none of that was apparent. All I saw was that I need to build an isolated mount:
Well, I am planning on a budget gimbal to go with the budget quad. Just getting hard to rationalize building one as cheap as some can be bought now. The big quad just feel better lifting things and just feels like it can do slower more cinematic movements. I just can't even look at it right now due to the jello.
But there are a LOT of differences between these two builds aside from price. Wood vs. carbon. 250mm vs. 380mm frame. 6" props vs. 8" props, 2400kv motors vs. 1400kv motors, 1.3ah vs 2.2ah.
They do both run MW 2.3 with MPU-6050 as the primary sensor. Though even there one is a 2560 arduino with sensors on a separate isolated board while the other is a 32u4 custom controller with integrated sensors integral to the frame. So still lots of differences!
I think the big issue causing vibration on my big quad now is the ziptie mounted motors. I don't crash it very often anymore and am really considering hard mounting the motors once I get a second smaller quad to sate my acro urges which will save it from 90% of the crashes it endures right now. Once I have a smaller quad I will definitely hard mount the motors on the big one. If not convert the big one into a slightly bigger v-tail at the same time at least stiffen up the motors
I've still got stuff on hand to make an isolated mount for the big quad and will be starting on that soon now that I have a camera. But I need to test this guy out for hat cam duty next. Would be doing that now but I can't find my hatcam hat We'll see how the timelapse sunset does while I look for that hat....
But who cares! It was there waiting for me when I got home for lunch. Plugged it in to charge and read the manual. Did a quick FW upgrade to 2.1 then headed to work. Set it up to charge and when I saw it was full tried to switch it into timelapse for a quick test. Instead I managed to turn it off for an hour. At least it kept me from playing with it at work.
I then managed to hit the right buttons and put it into timelapse which did get some captivating footage of my left shoulder and the obstructed view out the window over it for the next hour.
After work I was itching to try it on a quad. No time for mounts, let's just see how it does. Up first, the Warpquad! Just a piece of foam board with some cutouts to protect the mobius from the screw heads and make it sit straight (with a slight upwards tilt) with some velcro to hold it right to the stiff carbon frame. I figured this would be jello city since the mobius was basically in direct contact with the hard stiff frame and it was held pretty tight the way I was able to get the velcro on.
I should note - all test flights done in Horizon mode just paying it safe and gentle in the front yard. No wild punch outs flips or fast runs. Just some gentle hovering and feeling out how it reacts with the extra weight and Horizon to keep me from being tempted otherwise. In the air it felt like a disaster, I used my gentlest profile but the warp is still an acro machine and doesn't like to sit still. I did do a few yaw moves I would never do if I was actually trying to get video I'd want to watch, but overall it just felt too twitchy and flighty to be getting good video. When I reviewed the video however the warp did way better than I expected with very little jello:
Next I strapped the mobius to my $100 budget quad. I haven't had a recording camera on it since upgrading to the new motors and was curious to see how it would do. Now to be fair these are kind of beat up HK props while the warp had very beat up HQ props. I really need to get some HQ props on this big guy to see how it does. The big quad also curiously enough had fewer mounting options than the warp. The warp had the nice big clean flat plate on top. My quad has piles of wires everywhere. I tried to mount it out on the front boom like I have before - but there was a zip tie holding the LED strip on in the way that I didn't feel like moving. The bottom of the quad is filled with battery. I don't really want to put it on the back and record video I know will make me sick. Hmmm. Well, I guess I'll just velcro it to the bottom of the battery which is itself held to the quad with velcro. I've heard people say velcro is a good enough isolator for a mobius..though I suspect that means with velcro stuck to the camera and the mounting spot not just wrapped around the camera. Still it should be more isolated than it was on the warp right?
Up in the air my quad felt wondrous if not ponderous, compared to the warp it's lumbering but feels majestic and sweeping. The warp feels like an insect that just darts in where it wants while the knuckle feels like a ballerina who gets there how she wants when she wants but it's going to be graceful and every motion is going to matter. Just a joy to control. It's got the power to get going and get up - and oddly enough I find I fly it lower thinking it's higher despite it being bigger. But when I pulled up the video none of that was apparent. All I saw was that I need to build an isolated mount:
Well, I am planning on a budget gimbal to go with the budget quad. Just getting hard to rationalize building one as cheap as some can be bought now. The big quad just feel better lifting things and just feels like it can do slower more cinematic movements. I just can't even look at it right now due to the jello.
But there are a LOT of differences between these two builds aside from price. Wood vs. carbon. 250mm vs. 380mm frame. 6" props vs. 8" props, 2400kv motors vs. 1400kv motors, 1.3ah vs 2.2ah.
They do both run MW 2.3 with MPU-6050 as the primary sensor. Though even there one is a 2560 arduino with sensors on a separate isolated board while the other is a 32u4 custom controller with integrated sensors integral to the frame. So still lots of differences!
I think the big issue causing vibration on my big quad now is the ziptie mounted motors. I don't crash it very often anymore and am really considering hard mounting the motors once I get a second smaller quad to sate my acro urges which will save it from 90% of the crashes it endures right now. Once I have a smaller quad I will definitely hard mount the motors on the big one. If not convert the big one into a slightly bigger v-tail at the same time at least stiffen up the motors
I've still got stuff on hand to make an isolated mount for the big quad and will be starting on that soon now that I have a camera. But I need to test this guy out for hat cam duty next. Would be doing that now but I can't find my hatcam hat
We'll see how the timelapse sunset does while I look for that hat....
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