Papa's Quad Build(s).

Great!  Good to see it flies so well.

How did the motors handle the 4S battery, did they stay cool?

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Also I don't have any expo at all yet, just flat line for everything until I go FPV then start playing around more.

Controls would get much less twitchy with some expo. In Betaflight I have 0,25 expo on pitch and roll and 0,10 expo for yaw. I also set expo on the Taranis itself for extra smoothness.

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I understand it as Angle is the easiest, you can't flip, it has a max angle you can tilt too far and Horizon is a Combo of Angle and Acro, Acro of course is full control.
Do I have this the wrong way round? If not then I think the SPF3 has it wrong, although I'll have to check my modes later to make sure I did't just set it up wrong? Hmmmm.

Noticed the same with my SPF3, the modes seem mixed up, but other then that it's working fine. And I assumed the same as you, as if there was a mix up, or something not right. But on the other hand, Horizon mode might refer to staying level to the horizon, and Angle mode to being able to do angles/flips.

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It feels so confident when flipping too BTW, I think it's just the power, and I seem to have the hang of it, luckily. Of course this is in Horizon mode, well aware of picking up bad habbits, but I'll say it again I need FPV now lol..

In Horizon/Angle mode the accelerometer helps levelling the quad. When the accelerometer is turned off completely, flying LOS becomes much more difficult.
And yes you do need to get FPV asap.

CANNER wrote:

Great!  Good to see it flies so well.
How did the motors handle the 4S battery, did they stay cool?

Yes, this is most impressive, cold basically.
First thing I did after each flight was feel all over for any heat and have a sniff around for any sign of warming, on 3s the battery wasn't even slightly warm and all other parts were cool. On the 4S battery was warmish but not very, ESCs no heat, Motors also cold...
Of course this is my first flight and only probably give it half what I could have at least, but initial impressions, impressive.
One day I may convince you it's worth balancing the motors, no defects cause it, just that it can be done. Better quality motors are balanced better of course, but no harm in testing, and it's free...
You did warn me about the tape coming loose, it did a little, so gonna get some proper motor tape and re-balance, trust me it helps. Hehehe

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Controls would get much less twitchy with some expo. In Betaflight I have 0,25 expo on pitch and roll and 0,10 expo for yaw. I also set expo on the Taranis itself for extra smoothness.

I will add a little, I did this on the Aurora, just to flatten it in the middle a little, cheers. My Yaw rate was very quick, I didn't do this much as I didn't want to disorientate myself too much, but it's quick so defo needs some there too.

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Noticed the same with my SPF3, the modes seem mixed up, but other then that it's working fine. And I assumed the same as you, as if there was a mix up, or something not right. But on the other hand, Horizon mode might refer to staying level to the horizon, and Angle mode to being able to do angles/flips.

This was actually my error, doh, I did have them flipped round, but I swear I did it right. Hey Ho, flipped correctly now...
I looked it up again, Angle mode is basically the easiest, it has a Max Angle it will tilt to. Horizon is a combo of Angle and Acro, with flip-ability at the extreme movements of the controls.

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In Horizon/Angle mode the accelerometer helps levelling the quad. When the accelerometer is turned off completely, flying LOS becomes much more difficult.
And yes you do need to get FPV asap.

Indeed I do need FPV ASAP...
...tried Acro on Aurora, was ok, but until I get FPV and practise like that I'm not going to do Acro in LOS for now, certainly not with this beast.

I think this must have the forum record as "Longest thresd" ever.



Long may it continue !

Hehe, Ace...

I was gonna split the Gravity build, but then started talking about it and got carried away, doh...

I can't edit the title I don't think, can you add "s" to the end of ti for me if you can mate?

Bought some aluminium tape which should bond better and be heavier, I feel a motor balance coming on...

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I can't edit the title I don't think, can you add "s" to the end of ti for me if you can mate?

Yes, you can adjust the title yourself. Just click the edit button of the first post, then above the edit window you can change the title. Click save, and it's fixed.

Thanks, didn't realise.

After a small gap in proceedings my super bright COB LEDs have arrived.

I cobbled together 2 controllable RGB ones for the back of the Gravity which were ok but I knew they wouldn't be bright enough for what I wanted. Having all 3 elements on RGB so it was white makes it pretty bright to see, but as I'm still flying LOS I use this for orientation, and they just don't cut it. At any kind of distance away, they're just not bright enough against the sky to sometimes see them clearly.

So I ordered these 12v beasts as I knew from trying a 12V COB bar before that they are far brighter than the 5v LED ones. Especially as they are just one single colour and a higher voltage, they do indeed pump out a fair bit more light, at least my Nighthawk one did but unfortunately that doesn't fit on the back of the Gravity. They are mostly used for daylight running lights for cars, no surprise really that they're bright!

I obtained the same array of LED in a smaller package that just fits perfectly across the back of the frame, 14cm long is just perfect.
Also they cost about 1/7th the price of the Nighthawk specific one from of course the Warehouse of Quad-building dreams, BangGood...

I got 2, because they're so frickin cheap, and bought a couple of smaller ones too that I might stick somewhere, perhaps on the front, but I may not as I don't want to draw too much current, we'll see.

Those are some rude LED bars  

Don't they use immense amount of battery?

From where are you going to power them? If you use a 12V BEC you could put them on a empty ESC point on the PDB

I was waiting to see if anyone spotted that I didn't have 12v output on my PDB...
Just testing ya, hehe.
Bag of Munchies to Canner for being very observant...


Was gonna post this tomorrow, but yeh I don't have 12v on my current setup...

The current draw for the COB 12v is 450ma, quite high~ish, but the RGB LEDs have 18ma each, there are 16 so a total of 288ma, so about 150ma more...
Basically, try it, see if it breaks, test the difference in times on and off during flight.
As soon as I'm able to fly better (FPV) I wont need this and perhaps won't have it on there, for now it'll help and I'm just experimenting really, plus it'll look rather awesome too.

Oh yeh, the 12v issue...
I also bought this 1gram BEC just for this, it can supply 1.5a at 12v...

Loadsa lights,yay ! 

I noticed when I took my mavic out the first time that the lights can`t be seen against
the blue sky and not at all if a distance away.

Aye it might be pointless even with these bright 12v ones, we'll see....

The Mavic as far as I know only has 2 single LEDs pointing forward and motor lights, they're single dot prob 5v so not very bright, maybe look for an upgrade or strap your torch to the top...

It'll be interesting to see if these uber bright COBs will be visible, I imagine they will as they're the same as car day running lights, but they might need a lens which adds weight, be interesting to see how it looks.

I also need to angle it down slightly, as it's mostly, hopefully in the sky above me...

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Bag of Munchies to Canner for being very observant...

 

Haha!

COB LED fitting...

That sticky back 3M foam stuff is awesome, I wish I had a 3D printer though as I would make a custom small clip mount for this, for now, this will do...
Made 2 channels from 2 strips and 2 layers deep of foam, one channel for each wire, one left one right. Then another piece of foam across that to hold in the wire and make a sufficient stand off distance for it to fit perfectly.


The foam has 2 uses, to allow the wire to go neatly down the back of the aluminium, and of course stick it firmly to the back of the lower frame...


Uber bright Sun Blast and of course the pic doesn't do the brightness justice...
I could do with this on a switch, but of course it's directly powered at the moment from VCC to BEC to LED...
...I may change this in future but I'd need a small module to take a switched signal from the FC (probably even hack to LED one), then turn on the LED, easy to make but I'm sure something already exists, for now, it's ready to go...


I think this might just be bright enough...

Perhaps cut flight time in half though...

Looks very bright, too bad the photo can't show how bright.



Any idea how the LEDs are set up? Like serial or parallel, would be shit if 1 LED breaks and the whole bar fails. Probably will be okay, just curious. Maybe cut some old thick transparent plastic packaging to cover up the LED bar?

It is hard to tell from photo, I'll get a video soon, you can compare with the 16 5v LEDS from last vid against this 1 sort of, at least see it against the sky...
From my eye, at least 3-4 times brighter, but hard to tell, they should look like car LED lights I reckon which are visible from a fair distance. I looked for a funky lens to focus the beam like in a car, but there's nothing I can find off the shelf that fits.
It has a wide beam angle of something like 160°, so good visibility from higher up too, so maybe better without lens anyway.

If one DOT goes it's not worth fixing, £1.24 each, I bought 2, not likely I don't reckon, we'll see... COB is Chip on Board or LED printed onto circuit board, difficult to strip back and fix I reckon.

It has a tough outer clear silicone cover bonded across the LEDs onto the aluminium, you can see the outer white line of the bonding, ti's very tough. It'll withstand much punishment, again a test, less weight too without anything additional to protect it....

Must buy me some scales too, about £8 from The Warehouse of Dreams.

Sure looks bright m8y !
I`m sure I saw a simple on / off switch that plugs into a channel on receiver but
can`t remember where 

muckyman wrote:

Sure looks bright m8y !
I`m sure I saw a simple on / off switch that plugs into a channel on receiver but
can`t remember where 

Probably saw it at Banggood.

https://www.banggood.com/search/on-off-switch-rc.html

PapaLazarou wrote:

Must buy me some scales too, about £8 from The Warehouse of Dreams.

One would be enough.

Haha Canner, I like to buy spares but yeh one set of scales will be fine.  

Cheers chaps, yeh I could use a manual on/off switch, but meh that's too easy...

See how it goes, but I want to have it controlled via the Taranis, winter project for me should be easy enough though....

Aha!
I'll use the PIC chip method to controlled it will take a channel input (I have stuff to do this), my code monitor the input from the Channel and switch a transistor with an output to flip the 12v on/off, Plus this is the lightest possible way...

Many other ways, I'll leave this here for reference in future...
Switching LEDs On/Off

Ta.

Or this is basically what I would build, 2 LED control on one 3 way switch, perfect!

Could get the 1 LED control version, but the weight is most probably the same, I'll remove cable until I perhaps need to attach my two smaller lights to take my flight time down to less than one minute, hehehe...

https://www.banggood.com/LED-Lights-Controller-Electronic-Switch-2A-For-FPV-RC-Quadcopter-p-976106.html?rmmds=search

This is the one I ordered...

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Easy connection, plug directly into any free channel in the receiver can easily control the LED lights

Remote Switch Night Flying For RC Multirotor

So how is the squished banana coming along m8 ?
Camera fitted yet ? Need news,can`t just stop updating and tease us like this m8y.

Hello,
Yes, sorry about that, bit of an intermission whilst waiting for weather and the BangGood Pigeon Fleet.

In the mean time, here's is one of my peg Minions doing some Pole Dancing.
Tart...

PapaLazarou wrote:

Hello,
Yes, sorry about that, bit of an intermission whilst waiting for weather and the BangGood Pigeon Fleet.

In the mean time, here's is one of my peg Minions doing some Pole Dancing.
Tart...

Dat right there sum seriouz Tesla shit bro!