The frame of this quad rotor is made out of Carbon fiber. First I thought of using two of them in parallel to give it more strength, but then as I saw other project and based on the experiments I did I found it safe to start with only one and then increase to two just in case needed. This way I can save some weight and fiber carbon for crash recovery. For this I won’t use any mounting method which could be destructive, so I can recover the tubes for a possible future change.
In the pictures above you can see the final revision in which the motors are fixed with four screws and the frame has been cut down to 600×600cm. Motors are installed 270mm from the center. The final setup with me holding it from the center seems to hover at 4-6A, which seems pretty interesting to me! The video below shows the experimental setup not the final setup. More videos to come.
Please read here before you start your motors. BLDCs are powerful and propellers are strong and once they come attached together they make an extremely dangerous thing to work with. They can cut you deep for the number of times that it takes propellers to stop.
Look at an example over here (Warning harmful pictures of injuries)
I got the stuff delivered to my door some days ago. I ordered the following components from Hobby king (for ~64$ on a 4Kg package) on 4th Dec. and they got here in Sweden on 8th Dec. :
ESC : Turingy Plush 25A, TowerPro 18A
Motor : 5 x Hacker style 20-22L 5 x Towerpro 2410 18A
Prop saver : 4x 3mm (sets of one for APC), 1 x 3mm (10 set for GWS motors)
charger: Turnigy Accu6
Battery : 2x Flightmax 20C 3S 2.2A, 1x Flightmax 20C 3S 4A, 1x Flightmax 20C 2S 1A
Frame square Carbon Fiber tube : 4x 10.5mm, 2x 6mm, 2×3mm
Round Carbon Fiber tube : 2×8mm
Woven FG sheets : 1.5mm,2.5mm (Were not in stock )
5 min epoxy Glue : 1x
Battery monitor : 1 x 3 cell
Plug : 1x
I ordered propellers from www.APCProp.com with EMS for 46$ from US. They got shipped on 3rd of Dec. and got here on 8th of Dec.
APC 1047SFP
APC 1238SFP
APC 1047SFP
APC 1238SFP
So far I’ve got the ESC/motor setup running with servo command of Arduino. Wish me luck with the components. The problem right now for me is how to fix the propeller on the shaft of motors. Shaft are 3mm and the the 1238/1047 Propellers accept 4.7mm/5.99mm(with the included adapter) or 7.92mm(without adapter). It seems I need to keep on searching to see how others got around this.
I’ve got the BLDCs (Hacker Style 20-22L and Tower pro 2410) running. Hacker Style already looks sturdier with higher quality and the accessories included are very handy.
I can include some information just for the sake of the people who don’t have any remote controls (RX/TX units) and want to run/configure their ESC BLDC controllers wired !
I do have an Arduino in hand which I use for PWM generation. Normal servo frequency works with both of the controller (20ms) that I’ve got in hands : Tower Pro 18A and Turnigy Plush 25A. I use a potentiometer connected to the Analog input pin which provides a variable voltage between 0-5.
The ESC can be connected pin-to-pin like when you connect a servo. BUT, it is important that Unlike with a normal servo there is no need to provide the +5V (Vcc) from the Arduino board to the ESC. The red wire from the ESC is actually an output not an input. So never make the mistake of connecting this pin to the Arduino’s 5V. This has to be left unconnected. Only connect the Signal (Orange or White) to pin 9 and Ground (Orange or Black) to Arduino’s ground.
Then I use this code From Michat Rinott to read the poti and send the servo pulses to the ESC.
// Controlling a servo position using a potentiometer (variable resistor)
// by Michal Rinott <http://people.interaction-ivrea.it/m.rinott>
#include <Servo.h>
Servo myservo; // create servo object to control a servo
int potpin = 0; // analog pin used to connect the potentiometer
int val; // variable to read the value from the analog pin
void setup()
{
myservo.attach(9); // attaches the servo on pin 9 to the servo object
}
void loop()
{
val = analogRead(potpin); // reads the value of the potentiometer (value between 0 and 1023)
val = map(val, 0, 1023, 0, 179); //l179); // scale it to use it with the servo (value between 0 and 180)
myservo.write(val); // sets the servo position according to the scaled value
delay(15); // waits for the servo to get there
}
I give power to the Arduino first and then I connect the battery. As soon as the battery gets connected I receive an initial tone “123″ and then it will beep N times (N being the number of battery cell, for my 3 cell battery it beeps 3 times).
Then if at the beginning when you have connected the battery the throttle (Potentiometer) was and stays at the highest position (maximum voltage,~5v, on its middle pin) it will enter programming mode after 5 second which is indicated by another nice tone “56712″.
Jumbo was the second line following robot I designed. It could accept up to 16 Infrared sensors giving the most versatility in placement of the sensors. It was capable of following the white line over the black surface and vice versa as well as the unexpected mixture of the mentioned paths. Due to the well arrangement of the sensors and the interrupt based controller code, Jumbo was capable of following the path seamlessly not even altered by the cuts in the path or the inversion of the surface and path color.
Jimbo was my first line follower robot. A line follower robot could follow a black line over a white surface and Jimbo thanks to its special placement of sensors and the intelligent controller code was able to do the job very well. Jimbo has won 2nd place at University of Najaf Abad and the 3rd place at University of Dezfol in national robotics competition.
Digital Car Control System (DCCS) was a digital dashboard display and autonomous controller specially designed for a car. The Digital dashboard were consisted of numerous 7 segment displays which displayed different gauges such as Speed, Oil pressure, Water temperature, Battery Voltage, RPM and warning LEDs. Controller section had the ability of electronically controlling the car’s electrical instruments such as windshield wiper, headlights, and alike with providing a greater control over them just than the on/off switches.
Hardware: AT89S52 + ADC0838 + 74HCT165 based 7 segment display
Field Book was a portable handheld tool, which helped recording gathered geodesy information. User interface was consisted of a four line LCD and a 4×4 Keyboard. It was capable of recording information on more than 30,000 points. After gathering information, data could be transmitted to the PC where an application read the data and convert it to a CAD map. I did this as a bachelor research project in which I was responsible for building the hardware.
Hardware: AT89C52 + 4×4 Keyboard + 1024K EEPROM + RS232 + PC side application
)
