1/4" braided wire shield, group buy



Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
What's it for?

Hi Nic,

People talk about magnetic interference from wires and such so I was thinking of putting motor wires in the braid where they come out of the arm to where they connect to the ESC's. There's concern amoungst the Hoverfly community that mag interference is keeping the GPS from performing better.

I'd like to see if it make any difference but I can't seem to find shorter lengths to experiment with and the 50 ft spool is about 4 times as expensive.

Bart
 



Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
Sorry Ste.....I mean , Kloner,

I just bought 4ft of it from the retail place. If it works I'll go for the spool and sell short lengths in the classifieds.

Bart
 

nicwilke

Active Member
Hi Nic,

People talk about magnetic interference from wires and such so I was thinking of putting motor wires in the braid where they come out of the arm to where they connect to the ESC's. There's concern amoungst the Hoverfly community that mag interference is keeping the GPS from performing better.

I'd like to see if it make any difference but I can't seem to find shorter lengths to experiment with and the 50 ft spool is about 4 times as expensive.

Bart

OK, so you'd earth this braided tube to neg terminal of the battery to reduce EMF yeah? Seems like a great idea. I wish I was part of the hoverfly community, I'd give it a go.
 

RTRyder

Merlin of Multirotors
You should be able to accomplish the same thing by simply braiding the motor wires together while doing the build.

Realistically I doubt it's going to make a lot of difference with the mesh braid. I've got 4 different flight controller systems with magnetic compasses and GPS on hand and none of them need to have the wires shielded or the steel hardware swapped for non-magnetic to make any of them work properly, I won't even go into the subject of there being fairly strong magnets inside the motors...

Ken
 

Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
i'm not saying i believe or don't believe there's interference, i'm just trying to do something in an objective fashion to see if it helps. there are a lot of magnetic sources but none of them will fluctuate the way the fields from the wires will. i've seen my heli hunting around in heading with the GPS installed so that's the gremlin i'm trying to eliminate.
 



RTRyder

Merlin of Multirotors
i would think a lot do, why?

VTX can cause issues with GPS units especially if they're too close. Mainly the problem is seen as the GPS taking a long time to get full sat lock or not getting a lock at all. In my experience it's mainly been an all or nothing thing with VTX interference, either it takes a long time to get a lock then works normally once it does or it simply won't work at all, very little in between where it could be said to cause wandering or poor GPS performance although that could happen under the right conditions.

Ken
 

kloner

Aerial DP
anybody that has the problem should see what happens if you unplug the power to the vtx before powering everything up..... 2.4 video is best, but 900 works alot better with sats than 1.2 and 5.8
 

I am having issues with my GpS without the VTx. I'd hate to see how bad it is if I turn it on. I am hoping the external mag helps but I have been working on reducing emf anyway.
 

Gump

Member
..... 2.4 video is best, but 900 works alot better with sats than 1.2 and 5.8
Please explain further. What is it about 2.4 that makes it the best? What is it about 900 that makes it work better with sats. This is not a challenge, but merely a question since I will soon be purchasing such equipment and want to learn all I can about it.
 

DesJardins

Member
I think about all the wifi... 2.4 & 5.8 everywhere.
I can tell a very large difference when flying in an open field vs. any local park where that is everywhere.

Of course I'm flying 2.4 and looking through 5.8, lol
 

ChrisViperM

Active Member
In order to get away from all the guess-work we have to do all the time....is there actually an (affordable) way to measure or track down Electomeagnetic Fields....?

Maybe something like this:







Chris
 
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R_Lefebvre

Arducopter Developer
What systems are you guys flying? What type of GPS chip? Where is the Magnetometer located?

I'll tell you, we've been ALLL over this on DIYDrones. Been up and down the block many times. End of the day only 2 things seem to really work: Reducing the creation of the field in the first place. And distance. And of course this is all assuming that you have a good magnetic field calibration code.

First off, braided shield will do nothing for you. EMF shielding does almost nothing to stop magnetic field lines. Second, the high frequency field is not the problem for the magnetometer if that's what you're concerned about. The field from the motor wires is a completely reversing sinusoidal form, so it has no net effect on the magnetometer. It's just noise. What you really need to concern yourself with is static fields. Those come mostly from the DC power wires, and the battery itself. You can't do much about the battery, but twisting the DC power wires helps a lot.

I worked on this stuff for so long, because the yaw of my heli with Arducopter was so bad, I assumed it was the mag field. Turns out it was just that the yaw control code was rubbish until I fixed it in June. Then the GPS position hold was no good, and that was largely due to the MedaiTek GPS which just didn't work well. With the Ublox, much better.

But in the meantime, we tried everything to block mag fields. What you really need to be looking at is MuMetal. It blocks magnetic fields. We tried all sorts of things using MuMetal foil under the board, etc. But the only time we could block mag fields from affecting the compass heading, we also blocked earth's magnetic field. So that doesn't work either.

At the end of the day, there's a reason why DJI place the GPS and Mag on a puck up on a stick.

Another part of this is the calibration code in your program. We used to have just the simple static calibration. Same as everyone else. But then developed an in-flight calibration that works much better. It actually uses the power of a PC to do it. You fly around, it collects data, then after you land you have the PC calculate the offsets. Upload and save them, done. Seems to work much better.

The reason you need to do it in-flight, is that it takes into account all the fields going on in your airframe. You don't get that with a ground based calibration.

Now as for this wiring stuff... I work at a wire manufacturer. I've been looking to see if there is an opening for a product for this market, but haven't really seen anything. Unfortunately, I can't produce high strand count, silicone insulated wire, we mostly do industrial. But if I could get spools of the stuff, I could run it through a cabler, do shielding, braiding, custom jacketing, etc. But as I say, I just haven't really seen any need or demand.
 
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kloner

Aerial DP
Please explain further. What is it about 2.4 that makes it the best? What is it about 900 that makes it work better with sats. This is not a challenge, but merely a question since I will soon be purchasing such equipment and want to learn all I can about it.

when places make stuff for rc, they try to avoid making rf noise in that frequency cause so many people use spektrum, futaba, etc. sattelites aparently use or in the next wave of 1.2-1.3 cause it very much so affects 3 different sattelites i have seen myself. 5.8 vtx in general just makes things take longer, 1.2/1.3 makes it flat not lock without alot of attention to details and seperation most MR's don't have. a 900 video system just works, but the parts for that band are generally not the best.


2.4 in video is the bomb, look at some of my live feed videos from recently..... the zII videos are actualy processed twice before there captured. my tracker rx is a lawmate 2.4 that has a immersion 5.8 vtx in the tracker that transmits to the 5.8 on my monitors so it's a wireless connection. The dvr is on the output of the 5.8 rx on the back of my monitor......


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-03L9genUE

but not having 5.8 in teh plane makes the sattelite lock nice.... you can see it on the osd,,, sat is the number of sats it's locked into, sig is how strong that is,, dis is distance in feet from me, left bar is speed, right is altitude of the ground where i plugged the battery in

that's the power of 2.4 video, problem is you want to use a lrs radio system so your rc control is further than the video signal, keeps ya out of trouble and doesn't cross up your video signal. ch 5 and ch 8 on 2.4 video systems work fine with a 2.4 spektrum or futaba but your gonna loose signal sooner or later and crash the model from loss of rc signal
 

iseeit

Day or Night...
What systems are you guys flying? What type of GPS chip? Where is the Magnetometer located?

I'll tell you, we've been ALLL over this on DIYDrones. Been up and down the block many times. End of the day only 2 things seem to really work: Reducing the creation of the field in the first place. And distance. And of course this is all assuming that you have a good magnetic field calibration code.

First off, braided shield will do nothing for you. EMF shielding does almost nothing to stop magnetic field lines. Second, the high frequency field is not the problem for the magnetometer if that's what you're concerned about. The field from the motor wires is a completely reversing sinusoidal form, so it has no net effect on the magnetometer. It's just noise. What you really need to concern yourself with is static fields. Those come mostly from the DC power wires, and the battery itself. You can't do much about the battery, but twisting the DC power wires helps a lot.

I worked on this stuff for so long, because the yaw of my heli with Arducopter was so bad, I assumed it was the mag field. Turns out it was just that the yaw control code was rubbish until I fixed it in June. Then the GPS position hold was no good, and that was largely due to the MedaiTek GPS which just didn't work well. With the Ublox, much better.

But in the meantime, we tried everything to block mag fields. What you really need to be looking at is MuMetal. It blocks magnetic fields. We tried all sorts of things using MuMetal foil under the board, etc. But the only time we could block mag fields from affecting the compass heading, we also blocked earth's magnetic field. So that doesn't work either.

At the end of the day, there's a reason why DJI place the GPS and Mag on a puck up on a stick.

Another part of this is the calibration code in your program. We used to have just the simple static calibration. Same as everyone else. But then developed an in-flight calibration that works much better. It actually uses the power of a PC to do it. You fly around, it collects data, then after you land you have the PC calculate the offsets. Upload and save them, done. Seems to work much better.

The reason you need to do it in-flight, is that it takes into account all the fields going on in your airframe. You don't get that with a ground based calibration.

Now as for this wiring stuff... I work at a wire manufacturer. I've been looking to see if there is an opening for a product for this market, but haven't really seen anything. Unfortunately, I can't produce high strand count, silicone insulated wire, we mostly do industrial. But if I could get spools of the stuff, I could run it through a cabler, do shielding, braiding, custom jacketing, etc. But as I say, I just haven't really seen any need or demand.

My Wookong-m is getting IMU data lost (white LED flashing), would you recommend twisting the motor leads as well as the battery leads to help reduce interference?
My GPS Hold, Att. Hold, home lock and return to home seem to be working fine.
 

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