So last night in mmeyer's "If i were hypothetically bit by the mini quad craze......." I found myself wondering. What happens when you get bit again while in the middle of collecting parts to build one?
I've not very secretly been gathering up parts to do a test build for Twitchity on his quad. I even jumped in and designed a power distribution board that we're waiting on while my parts show up. Then yesterday I got the call that the owner of the warp I've been kenneling is back in town and his KISS esc's showed up. Bad news - the warp is going home to it's owner after I perform one last set of upgrades on it. Good news - I get the BS12a's coming off of it and that means I've got all of the parts I need to put a quad in the air on hand!
But the first test PDB boards for Twitchity won't be here until later this week, and then he has to cut my frame and ship it to me. So my real build won't be starting for probably another week. And with all these bits sitting here it's got me thinking...all I really need right so I don't go miniquadless when the warp goes home is a frame.
Flight test taught me how to deal with this problem ... time to return to my parts bin and use what I have on hand. Leftovers from my ultra budget build!:
Hmm, looks like it could work. Initial tests with the kitchen scale are looking promising.
Bit more work and suddenly it's looking like something that may fly:
It's a little porky. That's still without power wiring or ESC's. But with a lot of extra motor wire (I'm going to leave them long for now since I won't be cutting them to size until I move all this gear to the Twitchity frame in a week or so, this is only a temporary copter but I'm already starting to grow attached to it and with MRM having the 1806 motors so cheap in the US I may find myself building another one of these if it flies at all decently.)
Motor mounting is one other issue I need to deal with still, I plan on doing it similar to how Chad did on the HandyCopter for Make only since the 1806 motors don't come with a mounting cross but happen to have two mounting holes that line up perfectely next to a 1/2" wood boom I'll just cut some straps to go under the boom and mount the motors directly to the boom that way. I have to find some suitably long screws though which may not be possible locally. LHS is closed today but maybe I can stop in tomorrow and see if they have anything, don't think the big box hardware stores will have anything that small! If that fails I may look into some kind of mount that extends off the end...just not sure what I'd use yet. I was going to pick up some polycarbonate to use for the top/bottom plates to see if it would help shave any weight (but would look cool and probably be stronger if not.) May try fashioning something out of that if I go that route.
The afromini I plan on using on the Twitchity build isn't here yet so this seemed like a good opportunity to document putting together an arduino pro mini+mpu-6050+A7105 build since a few people have been asking for more info on this route. I have all the parts on hand so why not! Maybe I can even fit it inside the frame this time....
Got a lot to do today and then it's ESC upgrade time for the warp and a little flying session afterwards. So I won't be making more progress on this until this evening. I am taking a lot of photos and even trying to do a few time lapses with the mobius on the build (though the first timelapses didn't go well, bad aim on the first missed most of the action and in the second my wife tossed her "delicates" laundry into the background. This morning I kept meaning to set up the camera but was in a rush to use the little time I had available to build this much and share it.)
I've not very secretly been gathering up parts to do a test build for Twitchity on his quad. I even jumped in and designed a power distribution board that we're waiting on while my parts show up. Then yesterday I got the call that the owner of the warp I've been kenneling is back in town and his KISS esc's showed up. Bad news - the warp is going home to it's owner after I perform one last set of upgrades on it. Good news - I get the BS12a's coming off of it and that means I've got all of the parts I need to put a quad in the air on hand!
But the first test PDB boards for Twitchity won't be here until later this week, and then he has to cut my frame and ship it to me. So my real build won't be starting for probably another week. And with all these bits sitting here it's got me thinking...all I really need right so I don't go miniquadless when the warp goes home is a frame.
Flight test taught me how to deal with this problem ... time to return to my parts bin and use what I have on hand. Leftovers from my ultra budget build!:
Hmm, looks like it could work. Initial tests with the kitchen scale are looking promising.
Bit more work and suddenly it's looking like something that may fly:
It's a little porky. That's still without power wiring or ESC's. But with a lot of extra motor wire (I'm going to leave them long for now since I won't be cutting them to size until I move all this gear to the Twitchity frame in a week or so, this is only a temporary copter but I'm already starting to grow attached to it and with MRM having the 1806 motors so cheap in the US I may find myself building another one of these if it flies at all decently.)
Motor mounting is one other issue I need to deal with still, I plan on doing it similar to how Chad did on the HandyCopter for Make only since the 1806 motors don't come with a mounting cross but happen to have two mounting holes that line up perfectely next to a 1/2" wood boom I'll just cut some straps to go under the boom and mount the motors directly to the boom that way. I have to find some suitably long screws though which may not be possible locally. LHS is closed today but maybe I can stop in tomorrow and see if they have anything, don't think the big box hardware stores will have anything that small! If that fails I may look into some kind of mount that extends off the end...just not sure what I'd use yet. I was going to pick up some polycarbonate to use for the top/bottom plates to see if it would help shave any weight (but would look cool and probably be stronger if not.) May try fashioning something out of that if I go that route.
The afromini I plan on using on the Twitchity build isn't here yet so this seemed like a good opportunity to document putting together an arduino pro mini+mpu-6050+A7105 build since a few people have been asking for more info on this route. I have all the parts on hand so why not! Maybe I can even fit it inside the frame this time....
Got a lot to do today and then it's ESC upgrade time for the warp and a little flying session afterwards. So I won't be making more progress on this until this evening. I am taking a lot of photos and even trying to do a few time lapses with the mobius on the build (though the first timelapses didn't go well, bad aim on the first missed most of the action and in the second my wife tossed her "delicates" laundry into the background. This morning I kept meaning to set up the camera but was in a rush to use the little time I had available to build this much and share it.)