I see more Jolly Ranchers in my future. I need some props anyway. 
Twitchity quad with power board - test build
- Thread starter jhitesma
- Start date
On the next PDB please use a resistor for each of the leds. That way they can be selected based on the requirements of each led if one wants to use different colors. The current scheme at best supports one color pairs and I would like to run 4 different colors. Running red on left and green on right with 270 ohm flea sized resistors will not let the front (blue) or back (purple) light. These resistors should come with an inhalation hazard warning.
On another note I would like to try some KISS esc's but not at $100 for a set. TOO rich for my blood. Possibly when my skills improve (if they ever do that is) and I go to insanely expensive motors (T-Motors) then insanely priced ESC's might make sense, BUT not Today! Does KISS stand for Keep It Steep Sales?
Thurmond
On another note I would like to try some KISS esc's but not at $100 for a set. TOO rich for my blood. Possibly when my skills improve (if they ever do that is
) and I go to insanely expensive motors (T-Motors) then insanely priced ESC's might make sense, BUT not Today! Does KISS stand for Keep It Steep Sales? Thurmond
I see more Jolly Ranchers in my future. I need some props anyway.
I actually just ordered 10 more bearings off ebay for $3.50 with free shipping from a US seller. Not sure how good the quality on them is but at this point I'm thinking they can't be any worse than the stock bearings...
Another motor started growling on me
The other two are squeeling though they've done that since the day I got them and oiling doesn't seem to help. The squeal comes and goes though, and is hard to reproduce, I've been waiting to see if they "break in" and it goes away but at this point I'm leaning towards not being impressed with the DYS bearings. Maybe I just got a bum batch. Maybe banggood has a bum batch and that's why they dropped the price on them. Dunno. I'm curious to see how the one from MRM does after the issues I've been dealing with on the ones from banggood. Maybe I'm just hard on them or unlucky as I haven't heard other people having bearing problems like these with so little time on them. Maybe the one flight on 6x4.5's put a bit too much heat into them. Maybe the cut down 6x4.5's are still a bit much for them. I'm not drawing any conclusions yet...but I figure if I'm ordering bearings I should get quite a few.There are good VXB bearings on ebay for $35 for 10...but I'm not ready to spend that much on them just yet (I've gone way past my hobby budget for the week already!) if the cheap ones don't last then I may risk some name brand bearings.
Heck could always pop these in there - full ceramic lube free: http://www.bocabearings.com/bearing-inventory/Radial-Full-Ceramic-Bearings/22384/2x6x3-692TPC3ZS5LD
But $120 in bearings for a $11 motor seems like overkill.
(I've been trying to source high quality bearings at a decent price for MRM so they can carry them - but bearings are a DEEP rabbit hole and I'm not having much luck.)
I did get my jolly rancher with my props today - it was tasty and helped lift my spirits.
My evening has been frustrating - feels more like a Monday. Left work in a good mood but when I picked my daughter up at school she was wired and wouldn't sit still. Our trip to the grocery store was excruciating trying to control her - even after I strapped her into the cart seat. Apparently she got skittles as a reward for napping nice at school. She says she only got one, but I think she means one pack not one skittle because sure sure seemed to have a sugar high and it lasted for about 5 hours. She just now finally fell asleep 2 hours after I put her to bed
I got a brief break when my wife came home for her "lunch" break and I went out front for some quad therapy. After all the Twitchity was flying nice at lunch! Maybe I'll do a bit more PID tuning. So I brought out my USB-OTG cable and FTDI so I could tune from my phone. But...I couldn't get the FTDI to maintain a connection. Worked fine in bench testing but would drop almost instantly outside
Oh well, my tune is close enough let's just have a touch of fun.But...the wobbles came back. I checked all the screws...none loose. Looked for any other potential issues, none found. Grrr. Flew it again...hey it's smooth! Until I crashed (high rates, acro, small area...yeah crashes are going to happen) then it was wobbly again.
Decided quad therapy was just causing more stress not less and read a book for a bit instead. It helped.
After I got my daughter to bed I took another look at the quad. Did an ESC calibration as I noticed the new motor from MRM seems to spin up a hair slower than the other three. I've never actually done an ESC calibration on these because they're simonk and I have my config in the FC set to match the default settings in simonk...so may as well do a calibration. Wow, that turned out to be a huge pain with the afromini. Had to disconnect power from the BEC in the ESC and the afromini so I could power the mini with the FTDI and get the config app running - then power up the ESC's separately. See, this is why I haven't shrunk my heatshrink yet
Ok. Except now that I shortened the motor leads I had to actually unmount the motor and remove the heat shrink (glad I'm using shrink that's probably too big since I can actually get it over the motor and arm with the prop adapter off) to get to the power wire. What a pain. But the ESC's are calibrated for sure now.While I had it setup like that I ran each motor up individually again just to hear them purr. But motor #1 didn't purr. She growled. Angrily
Second time I powered her up she purred again. Then started growling. Arrrgh. I admit I've had some good crashes on these motors...but I've had way worse on the 2204 Sunny's on the warp I got to fly and while I did swap bearings on one of them it turned out that what I thought was bearing noise went away when we swapped that build to KISS esc's. Which leaves me wondering if it's the ESC's or the bearings here causing the problem.
I was actually kind of planning on reflashing these BS12's with BLheli tonight...but all this time mucking about with motors means I'm not going to get to do that yet.
So I ordered 10 bearings off ebay since I'm getting pretty good at swapping them on these mini motors now. I'll swap the motor I just replaced the bearings on with the one that's making noise now after dinner before I crawl into bed....maybe. Maybe I'll wait until lunch tomorrow.
On the upside I found that I do have 4m nylocs in my parts bin so I was able to ditch the cones. And I found a bag of gently used HQ6x4.5 props I forgot I had...which I thought was a full set and 2 spares but upon closer inspection I realized I've got 3 L rotation green's and no R's. Would have picked up a few R's on this last gothelirc order to make two sets of props if I'd realized I had these. Oh well, sure I'll be ordering more props soon enough
Just one of those evenings. At least I remembered to buy Coke and limes at the grocery and have a new Rum I've been meaning to try - guess I should have stuck to my book tonight!
On the next PDB please use a resistor for each of the leds. That way they can be selected based on the requirements of each led if one wants to use different colors. The current scheme at best supports one color pairs and I would like to run 4 different colors. Running red on left and green on right with 270 ohm flea sized resistors will not let the front (blue) or back (purple) light. These resistors should come with an inhalation hazard warning.
I came very close to doing that...but wanted to keep things simple. I was also thinking about adding pads for LED's on the bottom since they'd be more visible - but also more easily damaged.
On another note I would like to try some KISS esc's but not at $100 for a set. TOO rich for my blood. Possibly when my skills improve (if they ever do that is
I can't afford them either...but having experienced them...I'm going to find a way. The change they made in that warp was so astounding I just have to get some for myself. The Twitchity right now (when the motors run smooth) on HQ6x3's is flying about like the warp did on HQ5x4's when it had the BS12's. It's not the blistering performance you expect from a fully tuned out and properly propped warp...but it's still pretty impressive. So I really suspect that swapping to the KISS would give it that same incredibly locked in feeling even if it still doesn't have the same top end (at least not until I can find funds for some 2204's.)
But here's the thing. I would rather put $100 into some KISS's for it with the DYS1806 motors even with the bearing problems I've been having (which REALLY have me wanting to swap motors right now) than put $110 into some 2204's. I don't need the eye watering blistering performance the 2204's can give. But I know I can fly a lot better with the super locked in feel that the KISS's give.
Kind of like on my dune buggies where I'm more interested in improving the handling and brakes than I am upgrading the motors. Power is nice...but having control first is key. The KISS's give amazing control and are where I'll be putting my money once I can save it up.
I hate intermittent issues.
After dinner I went to swap the motor that was growling for the one I replaced the bearings in. Figured I'd fire it up and let me wife hear how bad it sounded first. But when I spun up the motors they were all quiet and smooth again.
At this point I'm not sure if it IS a hardware issue or if it's an ESC issue. Probably going to try and flash blheli tonight to see if that helps.
After dinner I went to swap the motor that was growling for the one I replaced the bearings in. Figured I'd fire it up and let me wife hear how bad it sounded first. But when I spun up the motors they were all quiet and smooth again.
At this point I'm not sure if it IS a hardware issue or if it's an ESC issue. Probably going to try and flash blheli tonight to see if that helps.
Sometimes I have to just put this down and have a nice Scotch a book and some Bach and the occaisional Jolly Rancher (though not with the Scotch). I orderd two of the surprise me bags to get me through the next few builds.
My DYS motors were pristine when I got them. I was astounded at how little vibe they had on the bench. Unfortunately, the first real flight of my hex on 4S (yes I ran them on 4S) ended with me face planted in the sand. :black_eyed:
I botched a flip and the copter slammed into the ground upside down at > 50% throttle. I had incorrectly set failsafe and when the copter 'landed' the receiver disconnected from the Naze and the Naze went to the last known signal received. The copter was upside down, the motors furiously tunnelling back to China when I got to it. They spun until a few of them, choked with sand and hotter than Hades, seized and I was able to flip the copter and disconnect the lipo which was also blazing hot. :black_eyed::black_eyed:
There was so much dust from the motors spinning in the sand my first instinct was to grab a fire extinguisher to put out what I thought was a lipo fire. It was my worst crash to date.
Truly, I wish I had the GoPro running. It was epic enough to make Earhog blush. :applause:
The motors were a week old when that happened and I am having a heck of a time getting them to spin without 'growling'. I can synch ESCs all I want. The motors will not spin up at the same time. I have brushed them out, blown them out with compressed air, lubed the berings and the shaft and while they spin better and quieter, I have not been able to get all the sand out. Each time I open them, no matter how much I brush them, more sand is revealed.
I have considered putting them in water and agitating them to try to get the sand out. The copter has been entirely rebuilt but until I can figure out the failsafe thing (which affects my ability to fly all my copters) and the sand thing, I am stopped.
I have new berings, rotors and motors (just in case) on order. I have replaced the old receiver (smashed it) and am working on setting failsafe that works. I don't want anthing fancy. I just want the motors to stop dead duck when the Naze or the receiver have no signal.
My DYS motors were pristine when I got them. I was astounded at how little vibe they had on the bench. Unfortunately, the first real flight of my hex on 4S (yes I ran them on 4S
) ended with me face planted in the sand. :black_eyed:I botched a flip and the copter slammed into the ground upside down at > 50% throttle. I had incorrectly set failsafe and when the copter 'landed' the receiver disconnected from the Naze and the Naze went to the last known signal received. The copter was upside down, the motors furiously tunnelling back to China when I got to it. They spun until a few of them, choked with sand and hotter than Hades, seized and I was able to flip the copter and disconnect the lipo which was also blazing hot. :black_eyed::black_eyed:
There was so much dust from the motors spinning in the sand my first instinct was to grab a fire extinguisher to put out what I thought was a lipo fire. It was my worst crash to date.
Truly, I wish I had the GoPro running. It was epic enough to make Earhog blush. :applause:
The motors were a week old when that happened and I am having a heck of a time getting them to spin without 'growling'. I can synch ESCs all I want. The motors will not spin up at the same time. I have brushed them out, blown them out with compressed air, lubed the berings and the shaft and while they spin better and quieter, I have not been able to get all the sand out. Each time I open them, no matter how much I brush them, more sand is revealed.
I have considered putting them in water and agitating them to try to get the sand out. The copter has been entirely rebuilt but until I can figure out the failsafe thing (which affects my ability to fly all my copters) and the sand thing, I am stopped.
I have new berings, rotors and motors (just in case) on order. I have replaced the old receiver (smashed it) and am working on setting failsafe that works. I don't want anthing fancy. I just want the motors to stop dead duck when the Naze or the receiver have no signal.
Twitchity
Senior Member
Just a heads up... the 18A KISS ESC's are showing in stock http://flyduino.net/KISS-ESC-2-4S-18A_1
Yeah...but I've blown my budget for the week and probably a good portion of next month the past two weeks
Have to keep reminding myself of my promise to myself not to put anything else on credit until I've paid off my last card....in two more years. So tempted though. I'm suspecting more and more that my problems are ESC related and not actually motor related. Upped the motor_pwm to 450 last night on a bit of a whim and turned the gyro_lpf up to 98 - first test flight at lunch felt really good. But then the next two things were running rough again
Going to try and see if I can't get BLheli on them tonight and see how that goes. Just a lot of work since I'll have to take all four motors off to get the ESC's off to access their PWM wires...and I've got to make an arduino interface for a USBlinker....
Have to keep reminding myself of my promise to myself not to put anything else on credit until I've paid off my last card....in two more years. So tempted though. I'm suspecting more and more that my problems are ESC related and not actually motor related. Upped the motor_pwm to 450 last night on a bit of a whim and turned the gyro_lpf up to 98 - first test flight at lunch felt really good. But then the next two things were running rough again
Going to try and see if I can't get BLheli on them tonight and see how that goes. Just a lot of work since I'll have to take all four motors off to get the ESC's off to access their PWM wires...and I've got to make an arduino interface for a USBlinker....
Cyberdactyl
Misfit Multirotor Monkey
$100 just for ESCs is way too steep for my blood. I'll have to enjoy you all's videos.
Plus, I think my next sizable MR purchase is going to be an APM card of some flavor.
Plus, I think my next sizable MR purchase is going to be an APM card of some flavor.
Said it already but...if I hadn't experienced them myself I'd be saying the same thing. But having experienced the difference the KISS make first hand...I'm not going to be happy with my mini until I get some on there. And that's coming from a guy too cheap to buy a flight controller
FGA's video gives a taste of the difference they make. But until you experience it yourself...it's really hard to comprehend just how big of a difference they make. I really do think it's a bigger difference than going from stock to simonk was.
FGA's video gives a taste of the difference they make. But until you experience it yourself...it's really hard to comprehend just how big of a difference they make. I really do think it's a bigger difference than going from stock to simonk was.
FinalGlideAus
terrorizing squirrels
You may find Jhitesma that it may be the esc hardware themselves. Those BS12a's don't tend to like repeated hard hits and components on the PCB start to fail.
Agreed on the SimonK/non SimonK comparison with the KISs ESC's. Particularly for a high powered acro quad the difference is amazingly huge.
SimonK by default runs at 400hz so the default motor_pwm_rate of 400 should be fine but if you haven't already, adjust looptime in the naze to 2500 to get it doing it's thing at 400hz also.
Agreed on the SimonK/non SimonK comparison with the KISs ESC's. Particularly for a high powered acro quad the difference is amazingly huge.
SimonK by default runs at 400hz so the default motor_pwm_rate of 400 should be fine but if you haven't already, adjust looptime in the naze to 2500 to get it doing it's thing at 400hz also.
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That is indeed something I have not yet ruled out. Like I've said, lots of variables. Just working on nailing down the obvious potential issues like motors that sound funny being turned by hand
These BS12's have seen their share of abuse and I'm no stranger to physically damaging ESC's. But this just doesn't seem like a damaged ESC issue to me right now. Not ruling it out...but it's not at the top of my list of suspected issues.The oscilators are the most easily damaged components on them and you may remember I mentioned in the warp thread on RCG my concerns about them given the suggested mounting method from Soma. Before these came off the warp I had changed the mounting lust a bit to provide a bit more padding and protection and I've carried that over somewhat on the wooden ubmq and now on the twitchity.
I am leaning more towards suspecting the ESC's though as the motor that I swapped is doing some goofy things that the old motor was doing as well. I may try moving it to a different ESC to help rule out whether it's the motor or the ESC causing the issues...but I'm leaning much more towards it being the ESC. I figure trying a different firmware will help rule out issues from simonk which I know has never done very well with the high KV motors...even the older version I'm still running that's supposed to be the best with them the overall feeling is that it just doesn't do well as I'm sure you know.
The latest reports on blheli v12 are sounding pretty good...so I'm probably going to give it a try. Just flashed one of my "broken" arduino megas (the one missing a 3.3v regulator) as a USBlinker so we'll see how this goes....blheli still intimidates me but I've been reading up on it for two weeks and think I'm ready to take the plunge...maybe.
Just to add to that I'm in no hurry to rush out and buy KISS's for my knuckle quad. I'm sure I'd enjoy the change - but it would feel kind of like putting a tuned twin turbo V8 into a rusty old minivan. Yeah, it would improve the performance...but the overall package would still be lacking and there'd be a lot of potential performance being wasted.
But on a mini with high KV motors that's flown LOS for acro...I just can't see myself going without KISS for very long. It may take me a month or two of minimal hobby spending to set the funds aside, but one way or another I plan on having KISS esc's on this guy as soon as I can pull it off.
Yeah, I tried 450 just for giggles knowing it wasn't really optimal. Just wanted to see how things would go. I did try changing the looptime as well but haven't noticed much of a difference there yet.
Decided to experiment on my BS20's first since they're not in use right now but were flashed with Simonk with bootloader.
Unfortunately I've had no luck using an arduino Mega as a usblinker. It's recognized by various flashing utils...but can't get a connection to the ESC Not sure if it's a bootloader issue on my ESC's or if it's something else at this point. But more frustration than I'm up for tonight so it's being shelved as a project for another night when my daughter goes to sleep on time
Unfortunately I've had no luck using an arduino Mega as a usblinker. It's recognized by various flashing utils...but can't get a connection to the ESC
Not sure if it's a bootloader issue on my ESC's or if it's something else at this point. But more frustration than I'm up for tonight so it's being shelved as a project for another night when my daughter goes to sleep on time
So before I started this build I asked Twitchity if he could send me some extra arms with it since I planned on flying it hard and assumed I'd break the G10. He said no problem! But, due to a few issues that came up he wasn't able to send them to me at the time. And the arms he did send me were drilled for 2204 motors instead of the 1806 I've been using so I've had to make due with just 2 screws holding them in which has caused a few issues. I also forgot to find better motor mounting screws and the stock screws have left a lot to be desired.
Oh, I had also asked if possible to have the frame cut from "natural" G10 instead of black...but again due to a few issues black was what I got. No big deal, but I'm kind of sick of all black mini's and had been looking forward to a blank canvas to customize.
Well, I got a care package from Twitchity today addressing these "issues":
Four natural G10 arms drilled for 1806 motors and some nice hex head screws for mounting the motors, sweet!
For the record here's the most damage I've managed to do to the original arms so far despite quite a few good crashes onto pavement:
The natural G10 is a slightly green color...I wanted to paint two of the arms hot pink to match the rest of my fleet and the other two bright blue since, well, that was the only other color I had on hand in nice airbrush paint
I gave them a quick sanding with some wet dry paper under the faucet to take the sharp edges off, then took them outside and gave them a light coat of cheap whilte $1 walmart acrylic thinned with windex to help the final colors pop - then gave them a coat of the spectra airbrush paints. My cellphone camera doesn't have the color gamut to really capture this...the color is called "Neon Purple Berry" but anyone who sees it will agree that it's hot pink. I'll try to get better photos later showing off the color - it's bright...should hopefully give it a bit more visual distinction for orientation up in the air (Man I wish I could find some hot pink props...have ordered 8" pink props from two places and neither delivered )
The pink actually came out a LOT better than the photos make it look....it's more like the pink you can see on the coat hanger wire they're hanging from. The blue on the other hand came out a lot worse than they look in photos. The pink is nice and even while the blue is splotchy and I got a few runs - it just didn't cover as well as the pink and I ended up spraying too heavy trying to compensate instead of giving it more light coats like I should have. Should still look fine from up in the air
So...installing them....this is another one of those "worse before it gets better" moments. Thankfully I still have my knuckle to fly so I'm going to take my time and fix a few things while I'm at it. First...teardown:
The PDB looks to be holding up just fine so far despite the undersized traces. I was half expecting to see the soldermask bubbling off from too much heat I don't have a photo of it yet but the SMT resistors I ordered finally showed up so I swapped them on to make this a bit cleaner...didn't help the brightness of the LED's any though. Oh she looks sad torn apart like this (And yes, this quad is definitely a she given how temperamental the motor/esc combo has been so far!):
Organization always helps. I find one of these small disposable food storage bins is great for these 250 sized quads. They make a nice launch pad so it will sit flat despite the battery hanging underneeth, and it's a handy place to keep nuts and screws while working on it or even just swapping props:
I also went ahead and marked the motors (I / II / III / IIII) so I could tell which was which and try swapping them around if one is giving me issues to help tell if it's a motor or a ESC issue. Though I got mixed up and numbered them backwards so I is wired as 4 and IIII is wired as 1 and so on. (Yes, I know it should be IV but IIII is a lot easier to scrape into the side and I figured sharpie would rub off in no time.)
So she's in pieces. I'm about to go on dad duty for a few hours now but will hopefully be tackling the rebuild this evening. Before I do though I'm going to try and flash blheli on the ESC's while I've got them all off. I could try making a 1-wire interface and use my FTDI adapter...but I think I may just solder a few wires right to the chips and do a full ISP flash with the blheli bootloader to be sure it all works well, then leave an extra signal/gnd wire so I can reflash them with the FTDI/1-wire setup later and experiment with different blheli settings.
Since that will probably take some time I'm not really expecting to finish the rebuild tonight. My wife has to work tomorrow so I'm single dad all day and will probably be too tired to make much progress then too. So it could well be a few more days before she's back in the air.
Oh, I had also asked if possible to have the frame cut from "natural" G10 instead of black...but again due to a few issues black was what I got. No big deal, but I'm kind of sick of all black mini's and had been looking forward to a blank canvas to customize.
Well, I got a care package from Twitchity today addressing these "issues":
Four natural G10 arms drilled for 1806 motors and some nice hex head screws for mounting the motors, sweet!
For the record here's the most damage I've managed to do to the original arms so far despite quite a few good crashes onto pavement:
The natural G10 is a slightly green color...I wanted to paint two of the arms hot pink to match the rest of my fleet and the other two bright blue since, well, that was the only other color I had on hand in nice airbrush paint
I gave them a quick sanding with some wet dry paper under the faucet to take the sharp edges off, then took them outside and gave them a light coat of cheap whilte $1 walmart acrylic thinned with windex to help the final colors pop - then gave them a coat of the spectra airbrush paints. My cellphone camera doesn't have the color gamut to really capture this...the color is called "Neon Purple Berry" but anyone who sees it will agree that it's hot pink. I'll try to get better photos later showing off the color - it's bright...should hopefully give it a bit more visual distinction for orientation up in the air (Man I wish I could find some hot pink props...have ordered 8" pink props from two places and neither delivered
)
The pink actually came out a LOT better than the photos make it look....it's more like the pink you can see on the coat hanger wire they're hanging from. The blue on the other hand came out a lot worse than they look in photos. The pink is nice and even while the blue is splotchy and I got a few runs - it just didn't cover as well as the pink and I ended up spraying too heavy trying to compensate instead of giving it more light coats like I should have. Should still look fine from up in the air
So...installing them....this is another one of those "worse before it gets better" moments. Thankfully I still have my knuckle to fly so I'm going to take my time and fix a few things while I'm at it. First...teardown:
The PDB looks to be holding up just fine so far despite the undersized traces. I was half expecting to see the soldermask bubbling off from too much heat
I don't have a photo of it yet but the SMT resistors I ordered finally showed up so I swapped them on to make this a bit cleaner...didn't help the brightness of the LED's any though. Oh she looks sad torn apart like this (And yes, this quad is definitely a she given how temperamental the motor/esc combo has been so far!):
Organization always helps. I find one of these small disposable food storage bins is great for these 250 sized quads. They make a nice launch pad so it will sit flat despite the battery hanging underneeth, and it's a handy place to keep nuts and screws while working on it or even just swapping props:
I also went ahead and marked the motors (I / II / III / IIII) so I could tell which was which and try swapping them around if one is giving me issues to help tell if it's a motor or a ESC issue. Though I got mixed up and numbered them backwards so I is wired as 4 and IIII is wired as 1 and so on. (Yes, I know it should be IV but IIII is a lot easier to scrape into the side and I figured sharpie would rub off in no time.)
So she's in pieces. I'm about to go on dad duty for a few hours now but will hopefully be tackling the rebuild this evening. Before I do though I'm going to try and flash blheli on the ESC's while I've got them all off. I could try making a 1-wire interface and use my FTDI adapter...but I think I may just solder a few wires right to the chips and do a full ISP flash with the blheli bootloader to be sure it all works well, then leave an extra signal/gnd wire so I can reflash them with the FTDI/1-wire setup later and experiment with different blheli settings.
Since that will probably take some time I'm not really expecting to finish the rebuild tonight. My wife has to work tomorrow so I'm single dad all day and will probably be too tired to make much progress then too. So it could well be a few more days before she's back in the air.
Oh yeah...one other thing while she's apart. I decided to try and make a camera platform out of some of the bits I'm not using since I'm using the afromini instead of a 35mmx35mm FC:
Not sure if that will get the mobius up enough to clear the props or not...if not I can always put some bigger spacers in.
More updates as they're worth sharing!
Not sure if that will get the mobius up enough to clear the props or not...if not I can always put some bigger spacers in.
More updates as they're worth sharing!
Ok, Little bit of progress to report on.
First a photo that gives a bit better of an idea just how pink these arms are now, and how bad the paint job on the blue ones is (click to view the fullsize, the resized version the color got mangled on the arms):
Next an update on my ESC situation...I don't have an atmel socket tool, and BS12's don't have programming pads. So I'm going to have to do these the hard way soldering six tiny wires right to the AVR to flash them. I decided if I'm going to go through that much hassle I may as well make absolutely sure these ESC's are worth the couple of hours it's going to take me to make 32 tiny connections 6 at a time with flashing in between. So I decided to clean them up and remove all of the solder from the motor pads and servo wire pads. These ESC's have been installed three times now and never got cleaned up well so there's original solder on there mixed with new solder and it's all been remelted several times. Bleah, that won't help make things reliable!
So out came the solder wick and the alcohol and I cleaned them up real nice. Doing so I may have found a big part of my problem. The signal wire on one of them was hanging on by a thread. It was a questionable solder joint and the physical wire itself was fatiguing from having been moved a few times. Not good. That could sure explain a lot of the symptoms I've been seeing if that connection is iffy!
So I've got them all super clean with freshly tinned pads now. Just waiting on my iron to cool down so I can switch to a better tip for soldering right to the AVR and dig in on the blheli adventure.....
First a photo that gives a bit better of an idea just how pink these arms are now, and how bad the paint job on the blue ones is (click to view the fullsize, the resized version the color got mangled on the arms):
Next an update on my ESC situation...I don't have an atmel socket tool, and BS12's don't have programming pads. So I'm going to have to do these the hard way soldering six tiny wires right to the AVR to flash them. I decided if I'm going to go through that much hassle I may as well make absolutely sure these ESC's are worth the couple of hours it's going to take me to make 32 tiny connections 6 at a time with flashing in between. So I decided to clean them up and remove all of the solder from the motor pads and servo wire pads. These ESC's have been installed three times now and never got cleaned up well so there's original solder on there mixed with new solder and it's all been remelted several times. Bleah, that won't help make things reliable!
So out came the solder wick and the alcohol and I cleaned them up real nice. Doing so I may have found a big part of my problem. The signal wire on one of them was hanging on by a thread. It was a questionable solder joint and the physical wire itself was fatiguing from having been moved a few times. Not good. That could sure explain a lot of the symptoms I've been seeing if that connection is iffy!
So I've got them all super clean with freshly tinned pads now. Just waiting on my iron to cool down so I can switch to a better tip for soldering right to the AVR and dig in on the blheli adventure.....
Well, that sucked. But not nearly as badly as I thought it would.
First ESC was no fun at all to wire up. Second on I was thinking "$20 doesn't sound so bad afterall on that socket tool" But by the 3rd one I was getting into the flow and by the fourth one it only took me about 3 minutes start to finish. In fact I went back and redid the 1st one again to confirm blheli suite could read it back.
One interesting thing...these were supposedly from RTFQ and pre-flashed with simonk with bootloader...but blheli reported them as locked....hmmm.
Tomorrow I'll try connecting them up to my arduino and see if I can't read their settings over the signal wire. Then I can look into how exactly to set these for optimal high KV motor use. It looks like dampening isn't enabled right now so I don't think they're quite setup the way I want...but I haven't fully investigated all the blheli options yet.
FGA - any tips from your experience with blheli on what the best settings tend to be for high kv motors? Best being relative of course. I'm not expecting KISS performance here just looking for the best settings I can get for these little motors given the constraints of the hardware.
First ESC was no fun at all to wire up. Second on I was thinking "$20 doesn't sound so bad afterall on that socket tool" But by the 3rd one I was getting into the flow and by the fourth one it only took me about 3 minutes start to finish. In fact I went back and redid the 1st one again to confirm blheli suite could read it back.
One interesting thing...these were supposedly from RTFQ and pre-flashed with simonk with bootloader...but blheli reported them as locked....hmmm.
Tomorrow I'll try connecting them up to my arduino and see if I can't read their settings over the signal wire. Then I can look into how exactly to set these for optimal high KV motor use. It looks like dampening isn't enabled right now so I don't think they're quite setup the way I want...but I haven't fully investigated all the blheli options yet.
FGA - any tips from your experience with blheli on what the best settings tend to be for high kv motors? Best being relative of course. I'm not expecting KISS performance here just looking for the best settings I can get for these little motors given the constraints of the hardware.
FinalGlideAus
terrorizing squirrels
For 1806 2300kv (and 2204) ONLY do this setting. Demag off and timing med-high. They are the important ones. Demag on and lower than med-high will result in smoke eventually.
Note: If this is the new revision of BLHeli then after trying the above setting you may be able to drop the timing to "Med" since the latest BLHeli has improved things I'm told but I haven't tried it since I now have the KISS esc's.
Note: If this is the new revision of BLHeli then after trying the above setting you may be able to drop the timing to "Med" since the latest BLHeli has improved things I'm told but I haven't tried it since I now have the KISS esc's.
FinalGlideAus
terrorizing squirrels
I have found the lower the power to weight ratio the less you notice the regen effect of the KISS esc's which makes sense I guess. The Warpquad is a HUGE difference. The Blackout mini H was noticeable but not as big but as I went 4s it was more noticeable. I test flew a new prototype FPV mini H quad today which the original Franken-Warp 2206 2000kv motors on 4s with 6x4.5 props and it is really noticeable. I can't wait to go play with it...
Hopefully in a couple of weeks time I can show people pics of it when it goes public.
I LOVE that my Twitchity Hex came in a neutral color G-10 and not black.
With black you are so limited in color options and I too am getting tired of always seeing black copters. A brightly colored, named copter is so much easier to explain to older people and parents with kids. Black just looks more menacing at the park and introducing parents to the bright orange Great Pumpkin homemade copter is easier to do than introducing them to a "drone" named The Terminator or The Beast 666.
I liked that I didn't have to do anything special to the paint to get a bright copter. I have an airbrush too but just used spray paint in light, even coats to get a purple and flourescent green copter that is bright and easy to see and doesn't look like a military weapon or government spy device.
When I first built my Twitchity Hex, I thought I would trash the G10. The way I fly, I go through wood booms pretty fast. I didn't want to spend a lot of time painting booms I thought would be broken in a few weeks. Twitchity sent me spare booms but I am still on my first set after several crazy faceplants.
With black you are so limited in color options and I too am getting tired of always seeing black copters. A brightly colored, named copter is so much easier to explain to older people and parents with kids. Black just looks more menacing at the park and introducing parents to the bright orange Great Pumpkin homemade copter is easier to do than introducing them to a "drone" named The Terminator or The Beast 666.
I liked that I didn't have to do anything special to the paint to get a bright copter. I have an airbrush too but just used spray paint in light, even coats to get a purple and flourescent green copter that is bright and easy to see and doesn't look like a military weapon or government spy device.
When I first built my Twitchity Hex, I thought I would trash the G10. The way I fly, I go through wood booms pretty fast. I didn't want to spend a lot of time painting booms I thought would be broken in a few weeks. Twitchity sent me spare booms but I am still on my first set after several crazy faceplants.
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