Hoverfly XY-8 Build, Rev4, Hoverfly

[SMP]

THe motor mounts will be available separately in the shop. They'll be black anodized.

I'll look into making a heli that will fit into a roller bag. It's highly unlikely it would go in with the camera mount, props, and landing gear attached but if those pieces could be easily attached and detached then I don't think a 5D is entirely out of the question.

Bart

Thanks Kloner, that's good to know! Aye Bart, we're based in Qatar and travel throughout the Middle East. Rules change here constantly as I'm sure you know. Thus the ability to carry on versus checking vs shipping makes the ENTIRE process easier from screening to customs, to logistics etc etc. Agree; gimbals, props, landing gear etc on a quick release system would be great. I too like the ESC's out in the airflow and I think this concept dovetails perfectly with what Boris and those other chaps are doing with plug-n-play type arms ultimately. Flight controls, we're Wookong folks for ease of simplicity.

Have been following this build for some time. Looking forward to seeing where this ends up!!

Steven

 

[Droider]

Like the sounds of a pro platform that fits in hand luggage!

Bring it on Bart

 

[Bartman]

Like the sounds of a pro platform that fits in hand luggage!

Bring it on Bart

you guys can't send me to bed with these kinds of ambitious ideas going in my head! how am i supposed to sleep?!?!

i have an idea to make the frame fit in the bag that will be simple enough to build and for people to use. I can also make my camera mount quickly removable. I just need to develop a landing gear idea that will come off easily and fit in with the other parts without it being a project unto itself. Many landing gear ideas have already come and gone, you'll see in pics tonight that I'm still using Droidworx landing gear at the moment.

 

[Bartman]

everything seems to have survived last night's excitement. a new harness is ready to go with 3 cell power tapped from cells 1, 2, and 3. it's going directly to the flight control and also through a voltage regulator for 6V power to the receiver. i haven't pulled any other power for the LED's, just want to keep it simple and get the first flights out of the way before experimenting with other stuff.

this is my first build with the pancake style TIger motors and the Tiger 30A ESC's so there's some proof-of-concept stuff to put behind me before I can start final tweaking. the camera mount is also a significant revision from the last version so that has some testing to do also.

first flight in a little bit if I can get the firmware to check out.

by the way, it was asked in another thread if you can program the ESC's all at the same time via the HF PRO and apparently you can. I was able to set the timing on all eight ESC's using the HF PRO as the go between.

onward and upward.
Bart

 

[Droider]

Please translate.... from American English to English real life English! What is sleep.. apparently we cannot afford to sleep according to our government we all have to work more to allow the peeps who ripped the world off to drink G&T's all day long!

Crack on Bart!

Your audience awaits!

Dave

 

[SleepyC]

according to our government we all have to work more to allow the peeps who ripped the world off to drink G&T's all day long!

Crack on Bart!

Your audience awaits!

Dave

Man you know the truth!! US, Europe, it's all the same!

Bart, can't wait to hear the reports!

 

[Webheadfred]

........by the way, it was asked in another thread if you can program the ESC's all at the same time via the HF PRO and apparently you can. I was able to set the timing on all eight ESC's using the HF PRO as the go between.

This is really good to hear. I asked this earlier and suspected it could but haven't tested it. I may just have to try now.

On another note... Commercial international pilot? I'm 30yrs ATC.. Cool stuff...

 

[Bartman]

This is really good to hear. I asked this earlier and suspected it could but haven't tested it. I may just have to try now.

On another note... Commercial international pilot? I'm 30yrs ATC.. Cool stuff...

30 yrs? wow. where do you work? Tower? local approach? center?


on another note, if you buy zip ties by the thousands, you may have a multi-rotor problem.



a box arrived yesterday with 2, 1000 pc bags of zip ties. oh my! :shame:

 

[Bartman]

As for the time I spent trying to get the helicopter ready to be flown, have you ever had one of those days when nothing goes right and you think someone set you up and is video taping you as you're pulling out your hair? Apparently there's an issue with Opto ESC's and the Hoverfly PRO. I didn't know this until this evening when I went looking for information that might explain what's been going on. If I unplug everything from the PRO board it will behave normally, I can connect it to the HoverCLIENT, update firmware, make it sing "City of New Orleans", you name it, it's happy to do it (almost ). Anyway, once you plug the ESC's back in and the receiver wires, it stops cooperating and behaves as if it's been witness to a weird sort of battery malfunction when it may have been overvolted against its will. Well, since it actually may have been overvolted against its will, i figured the other odd behavior was due to the overvoltage I may have exposed it to.

SO I tried another PRO board and it did the same thing. I reinstalled and uninstalled the USB driver a hundred times (starting to recognize the afternoon I've had?), changed out the USB cable a half dozen times, re-started the computer a dozen or so times yet the boards still wouldn't cooperate unless everything was unplugged. I still don't fully understand why I had the problem even though I now know there is a compatibility issue with the Tiger 30A Opto ESC's (which are likely a close relative to the Hobbywing Platinum Pro 30A Opto ESC's).

Hoverfly suggested signal boosters on two of the ESC ports so I'll order them and wait to see if they help the problem. THe Tiger 40A ESC's aren't an Opto model so they might fix the problem also but I'm reluctant to go that route. Lot's to do still though so I've got to start checking off boxes if this thing's going to be ready in time.

Bart

 

[Webheadfred]

Hey Bart. Started in '83 in USAF at MacDill working approach. Miami Center 87-2000, West Palm Beach approach 2000-2006 and now a operational supervisor at Knoxville approach and tower since mid 2006. I love moving planes. Working the Center was best though... Good stuff. Can retire but they kick me out in 2016 so I'll probably wait till then unless.... I get the dang multi paying off!

 

[Bartman]

very cool Fred, it's a small world, we may have chatted a few times when you were in s. florida.

 

[kloner]

this behaviour you see on the hoverfly board when you plug in esc's is what i just went through diagnosing on the cinestar 8...... the really obvious part was mine fluctuated voltage differently in different weather. Cold was one thing, warm was another. Then to top it off, in the middle of this mess i had a zephyr motor throw a magnet and boom, same behaviour. i still gotta go out and test my theory, but mine had 3 motor bolts in the 8 motors that were touching and otherwise delaminating the glue holding down the stator and created a short. volts would move .5 volt to 3 volts sitting still.

mine happened with hoverfly pro (two different boards) and castle ice 75. it made 1 of the controllers, ironicaly one of the three motors with the short blew up. The board is with hoverfly now. I wish i'd have heard about this sooner to save you some time.

the only thing that stopped me was the hoverfly board eventualy stopped running the motors past 1/4 throttle. we plugged in a naza toa few motors and it worked fine, bought a wookong and it ran again, but at this point before finding the wires shorted, it flew like a total POS..... then the v1-v3 warnings and v3 was all i tried

 

[kloner]

http://www.multirotorforums.com/showthread.php?9085-Wobbling-cs8

 

[Bartman]

Steve,

This is the explanation I got from Hoverfly about my problem. Apparently it has something to do with the Opto ESC's, not necessarily the Opto feature, just how they're wired and what that does when they don't have power.

The same two wires that connect the USB to the Microprocessor are also used to communicate to the two motors circled on the tech note. The circuitry inside the ESC must be driving the two lines to ground when not powered causing the com failure. The signal booster is really just a transistor. These devices have infinite impedance (resistance) on the input side so they electronically isolate the two systems (microprocessor and ESC).

thanks for the tip though on the motors and screws. it's crazy how odd stuff can just derail your day.

 

[kloner]

I'm sure that's happening too. Building my heavy lifter with plush and pray this doesn't get me on that build

my big symptom hoverfly problem/zephyr thing was a swinging main voltage. the zephyr had a magnet laying on the stator shorting it there. like up and down 3 volts.

the shorted out motor bolts came to me on this cinestar like they were with a diagnosis of a wobbly crappy ride, i mean horrible!!!! 3 motors had motor wire strikes with motor bolts, like to where when you look at it, the epoxy used to hold the winding wires down is torn and pushed up and the face of the bolt is in heat shrink

know how when you buy a flight controller and they recomend something you pray your not the r&d test pilot....... I feel like i'm the first guy. last episode was $600 from this controller and now a week later the firmware is discouraged from using.

 

[Bartman]

Just came in from a flight, did 5 minutes with two 6000mah 6S packs and the camera mount and a T2i running. After a 5 minute flight, the charger replaced 3100 mah of 12000. It's flying well although I have to go through the tuning and trimming process again now that I'm flying it with a load.

The design max-hover weight is 22 pounds total so I'll be working up to that and logging battery consumption along the way. So far, so good. Pics to follow and video once it's tidied up and tuned a little bit.

Bart

 

[Mactadpole]

That's excellent Bart! So you should safely get ~15 minute flights with a little more than 80% left in the batteries if I did the math right. Can wait to see some pics and video.

 

[SleepyC]

Congrats that sounds great!

 

[workshop]

Great news.... Looking forward to seeing your mAh/min measured values.

Oh... I share your wire tie addiction... :-(

Jeff

 

[Aerovideo]

Please forgive my ignorance, I've been following this thread with some interest waiting to see exactly what an xy8 configuration is. Do you have any photos of your final finished setup?