quadcopter

TEGO v3

TEGO v3

By Aldux

This is yet another version of a 3D printed quadrotor, pointed to be one of the workhorses of my research… The main characteristic of this frame is that instead of using nut and bolts to join the arms and the base together, like in TEGO v2, I’m using Rotite®s!!!!

For those who don’t know what rotites are, you can give it a pick here, I was trying to find a solution to reduce weight of my previous TEGO v2 frame, and somehow I found this company, I immediately put in contact with them, and after several e-mail exchanges, phone calls and even videoconferences with the inventor, I was able to get my hands on some of their designs, there is a picture below where Stuart is giving me a lecture about Rotites.

So, I started playing in Solidworks, in conjunction with my favorite Industrial Designer, that was visiting me (it was on summer smiley ), and we did this design, using 90 degrees A and B rotites, 4 B’s on the main plate and one B on each arm.

total

Then I order some more ESC and motors, exactly the same as the ones on TEGO v2, and put everything together. But… I did a critical mistake when soldering the motors, and it wasn’t flying, but, using the resources around me (undergrads, hehehe) I “kill to birds with one shot”, so, I teach them how to solder and the quad-ESC-motors basics, then we re-solder the motors and voila!!!! TEGO v3 is flying. Dont forget to check the video!!!

The weight was dramatically reduced, and the endurance dramatically increased!!!

Many thanks to Stuart Burns (inventor of Rotite®) and of course, the Rotite® company to letting me use their designs 🙂

stu

Altitude test

Altitude test

By Aldux

Pues bueno… lets do a altitude test, I wanted cool pictures of my surroundings and of course test the limits of AlduxQuad, so, I did a couple of flights just with the idea of flight high 🙂

I was using the “position hold” mode, this mode automatically attempts to maintain the current location (based on GPS), heading (magnetometer) with manual throttle control. Wind gusts, PID’s setup and sensors will affect the effectiveness of maintaining position.

This mode relies on the GPS which must be ON and indicating that is locked before takeoff. The heading can be altered with the yaw control stick.

On the first flight I was able to raise it up to 117 meters, I did this on the parking lot of the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) because that place is always deserted on weekdays.

On the second flight I got to… better watch the video 😉 But on this video I change location due to the parking lot of the SECC was very close to a Heliport, and one helicopter pilot told I couldn’t fly there. The location I choose was the parking lot of the Riverside Transport museum and Tall Ship. I got a very strange behaviour, that I’m still trying to figure it out why it happen, at the highest point, the motors stopped, and AlduxQuad started falling… see the video for the exciting footage.

Glasgow Science Festival

Glasgow Science Festival

By Aldux

Some colleagues and I, participated on this years Glasgow Science Festival, I took AlduxQuad and TEGO, to show them to lots and lots of kids, it was a fun festival. Some of the organisers ask me if I could fly my quadrotor above a child for taking a picture, of course I say yes, so, we went to a more safe area (no people around) and try the stunt, I was a little scared of course, is not like the dream of all pilots to hover 4 rotors with deadly and sharp props spinning at 10000rpm… but is some of the things that you have to do in our life, so, I already check that one 😉

GSF twitter

No one was hurt, the photo was awesome (I presumed…) and everyone was happy, also the child!!!! I put the FPV gear to my child so he could see the action, and because it looks cool… and I was behind the photographer trying to hover.

kid

For science you monster!!!

Ahhh and I also got my 15 minutes of fame on the GSF twitter account 😉

Note: Is “Aldux” not “Aldos” hahahaha

3D printed Quadrotor (TEGO v2)

3D printed Quadrotor (TEGO v2)

By Aldux

Do you remember TEGO??? It was involved in a small accident during the Glasgow Science Festival… and one of the arms was not able to continue fighting 🙁

But, for my fortune, I have to my disposition a awesome Makebot Replicator 2, and appart of making combs and lots of useless things, the main objetive of this printer is to do this kind of stuff… so, at this instance I want to test the feasibility of using a 3D printer to make things fly, so I started printing.

The main body parts were easy to peel off the platform, but the arms were a CHALLENGE… I broke 2 of them trying to peel them off. And then I had to tear appart TEGO (ESC, motors, cables, FC, everything) and put it in the new frame. I did a small video testing the frame, it vibrates a little bit, but in general is ok, now with this experience, I’ll procede to make my own frame with a especial mechanical connector I found on the internet!!! 😉 Keep posted!!!!

TEGO Micro quad

TEGO Micro quad

By Aldux

This is a quadrotor build intended for making quick tests and flights of FC, so far this cool and nice quad has tested 3 different FC…

Its a PCB frame, 250mm from rotor to rotor, the ESC are directly welded to it, and it contains:

  • Turnigy T1811 (2900kv) brushless motor
  • Turnigy ESC 6 amps
  • 5×3 props
  • 1500mah NanoTech LiPo

TEGO v1 2

In the flight controller department I have succesfully tested:

  • NanoWii
  • MW and Megapirate AIO
  • MicroWii ATMEGA32UA

Its really easy to crash it if your PID settings are not correctly fixed on the FC… Always remembet to use the GUI of MultiWii.

I have broken the arms in several occasions, but a little bit of cyanoacrylate does the work for it 😉

Its a nice frame, easy to build, and cheap.

Angry dog vs Alduxquad

Angry dog vs Alduxquad

By Aldux

It was a beautiful day in sunny Glasgow… So, the buddies at the office decided to go to have lunch at the park, after that, Harry decided to go to the river with his beautiful bitch Kaya (let me enfatize that Kaya is not the angry dog) so, I naturally took the quad and did a wee flight over the Kelvin river… Of course several mistakes happen that day, and the worst of them is that I “pressed” the record button on the GoPro…

So, this guy in the river was taking care of several dogs, and one particular dog (the actual angry dog) noticed when I started flying and he started barking, I tough that it was going to be a problem… Eventually Harry remove his footwear and socks and went to river to make a magnificent catch of my flying quad!! (thanks for that dude!!!) saving my quad from a tasty bite and the dog of getting “bit” by propellers.

Murray was able to take this wee video of the “angry dog”, thanks for that and for sharing mate!

Unfortunately the GoPro didn’t record anything :§

Harry took one for the team and had to receive a tetanus shot because he step into something when he was on the river, ouch.

Flying a quadcopter from the computer

Flying a quadcopter from the computer

By Aldux

The next part of my quad-rotors project is to control them via the computer. Having that sorted, I can play with nice swarm algorithms and of course motion tracking using Optitrack cameras that are available at the SAS lab in the University.

So… I have tested two FC (flight controllers), the APM (Arducopter) and the MultiWii.

I still need to make the post for a micro quad-rotor build I did for testing the MW, hopefully later in the day.

I find that the code is a little easier to read and modify and also the hardware for MW is quite more cheaper, the NanoWii cost me like 20 bucks… So, I think that if I want to build swarms of small UAV’s the way to go is MW.

I been reading the code of the config GUI for the MW, its really quite impressive, they implemented a nice serial protocol for us to play with it, the only problem is that we have to figure out how it works by ourselves :S

But after some days I was able to perform my first flight using a joystick connected to my computer, and 3DR modems (UART), and it was not so bad… Still need a lot of work, but I can say that for right now its “flyable”, sort of.

The problem is that the GUI demands lots and lots of data coming from the MW, and of course when its plug in into a USB port, there is no problem at all, but when you try to use it with a serial modem at 115200 bps, that can be a huge problem, and that problem is lag.

So, I strip the MW protocol to the minimum, I’m only sending the RC data and receiving the ATTITUDE from the MW, and in that way, it works well 🙂

Next step… translating that code to MatLab.

Note. The first video is lagged for some reason, my GoPro was misbehaving that day 🙁

University of Glasgow Flights

University of Glasgow Flights

By Aldux

I was getting really tired to always flight inside the lab… AlduxQuad is built to fly outside!!! and its really good at it!!

I did this flights in the main building of the University of Glasgow, in the pole, West and East Quadrangle.

I was grounded by my supervisor for making this rogue videos without the proper authorization and insurance information 🙁

AlduxQuad crash

AlduxQuad crash

By Aldux

Well… what did you expect??? any RC pilot eventually has to crash… 🙂

This was a “fortunate” crash, and the most important thing is that nobody and nothing was hurt.

I was really lucky that the GoPro wasnt on top of the quad in that moment 😉

First onboard camera flight

First onboard camera flight

By Aldux

After some videos and getting more comfortable flying the quadrotor, I put a nice GoPro Hero 3 camera on top of the quadrotor and make a wee flight… Everything go according to plan…

The GoPro is a awesome camera, with some great characteristics. Capable of capturing digital video up to 4K and 2.7K resolution. Frame rate is lowered to 15 frames per second when capturing at 4K resolution. 4K is a resolution of 3840 pixels × 2160 pixels.

For those owners of a GoPro, I really recommend to read this excellent post.