Moving again

I got started again. Used a multimeter and determined that it is, indeed, a bad connection in the power distribution wires.

I'll work on that Wednesday night and do some more troubleshooting.

But, hey! Back on task. That's something.

Taking it apart

Not much to report, since taking the quadcopter apart in preparation for component testing took all of my daily hour of work.

As I said in the last post, I'll be missing some days for the holidays.

Meanwhile, let's look at a behind the scenes from one of Seattle's premier photographers. Chase Jarvis directed a commercial for REI, here is his article about it and the video showing the behind the scenes. Note: this is a full helicopter, not a multicopter, but neat nonetheless.

So...all put together.

So...all put together.

But nothing works.

It seems to be a lack of power to the ESCs. There should be a chime or lights or something when they are first plugged in, but I'm getting nothing. The battery charger indicates both that it charged the LiPo and that it is full. So I'm guessing that there is some fault with the power distribution spider.

I'm going to have to tear the rig apart and make an individual test of a single motor plus ESC plus battery and see what I get. Which means a new set of leads to solder, but that's becoming routine by now.

Let's look at the work I did this weekend.

Motors start with the axle sticking out the mounting end. This does not work for a multicopter, so the axles have to be knocked through and re-pinned. In this picture, you can see a finished motor on the left, with the original state (plus soldered on connectors) on the right.

Let's look at these pins more closely. (Cut to macro photos)

A pin is mounted in a groove, holding the inner and outer bodies of the motor together.

Pin was removed, screw lock on other end loosened, then axle knocked down to end-of-axle groove and re-pinned.
Then mounting bracket was screwed on and motor is ready for attaching to quadcopter arms.

The entire body of the quadcopter is done. All of the components are on and attached. Here is the final look (before I tear it apart to figure out why it is not working).

Quadcopter, without props

View through protective cage at the simple flight controller from HobbyKings.

An ESC stuffed into an arm of the quad, with triple connectors going to the motor.

I have holiday plans interfering this week. (*cough* Still need to buy gifts for family...) So little work will be done on the project until I get home on Christmas afternoon.

Meanwhile, I tested out the light camera intended for this first flying platform. I strapped a Contour GPS to my Santa hat and went on a pub crawl. There were technical issues and I did not have a lot of time for editing, so I just hacked together this crappy video so that I had some idea of what my wearable action cam was going to produce.

[Video in the process of uploading to YouTube.]

A little more work over the weekend.

Not much done this weekend or Monday, due to other commitments. But I did get the power "spider" finished and sandwiched in between the top deck and the bottom deck.

Someone should tin his wires better before soldering a joint...

Tip to the beginner: melting solder produces heat in your wires high enough to melt your hot glue. Expect to require three hands (like usual). But the drilled holes did a great job of holding all of the wires together at the junction point. And the hot glue should insulate the top and bottom sets.

Monday evening is being spent reversing the axles on my brushless motors so the propeller turns above the quadcopter, not below it.

Tuesday I have another project (and some Skyrim), so expect little or no post on Wednesday.

I know I have one of those around here somewhere...

Wednesday evening's efforts were apparently focused on hunting for a misplaced glue gun.

Photo by CraftyGoat on Flickr.

Can't seem to find the glue gun, so I'm saving the power spider creation until another day. Meanwhile, I am assembling most of the frame according to the instructions on Frank's Instructable's page. Not much to report on.

Meanwhile I did figure out what was going on with the motor. I have to reverse the shaft so that the motor can mount properly. I found a good step-by-step procedure on the MachineGrid website. It even shows the exact same model engine I am working with, which is probably no coincidence.

Burned fingers

I've got bullet connectors down. They are actually fairly easy. It's splicing a bunch of wires together with solder that is darn hard.

This just isn't a good solution. Since these need to be insulated, I'll just drill a bunch of holes in a plastic bottle cap, insert wires, and then do the soldering. Pictures tomorrow.

Also, how do you get this prop mount attached to the motor? No instructions and so far, I have not found any tutorials online.

The prop mount definitely goes on that side, but I can see no way to attach it. Frustrating.

I thought I was half way done Monday night, but no. I only had most of the bullet connectors done. The power spider and figuring out some of these issues without instructions continue to be challenges.

Hot metal

Soldering is a little smelly and you risk burns, especially when inexperienced. I managed to get away uninjured (this time), but I've got some more soldering to go.

Today's post would be impossible without the guides provided on Frank's great Instructables step-by-step and a viewing of the YouTube videos found at the bottom of his tutorial.

Click on any image to see it larger.

Using three-in-one bullet connectors.

Connections consist of: motor, bullet connectors, ESC, more bullets, battery

Motor and ESC aligned on my soldering rig

Close-up of male-end bullet connectors in soldering rig (a block or firewood with holes drilled into it.

Three down, 21 to go...

Motor and ESC bullet connectors aligned and ready for connection.

All motors are now connected to the ESCs, which have their power connectors  ready to go.

It took about 70 minutes to get the work space set up (a cooking term called mise en place applies here) and to finish the soldering. I have another session tonight when I create the "power spider" for the entire rig.

Hopefully the triple connectors will make it clear which wire goes where on the ESCs. For two motors, I flipped two leads, so that should make these two motors spin in the opposite direction from the other two. Since the quadcopter needs two clockwise and two counter-clockwise motors, as long as I didn't screw that up I should be set.

Given that screwing it up means unsoldering and resoldering two bullet connectors, Murphy's Law suggests that I probably screwed up.