Evolution Of My Parallax Elev-8 (V2) Quad

GlassKnees

Member
A started out building the basic Elev-8 quadcopter from Parallax. But soon, I wanted more flight modes than the single ACRO mode offered by the stock Hoverfly Open controller. So I replaced the Hoverfly controller with an APM 2.6, added an external GPS/compass and telemetry transceiver.

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I was happy with this configuration; I had the flight modes I wanted: Stabilize, Alt Hold, RTL, Loiter, Circle, Simple Mode, and Auto - the ability to create, upload and fly a waypoint mission. But of course that still wasn't enough. Now I wanted to shoot stabilized video...

So I bought and assembled a Tarot two axis gimbal and a GoPro Hero4 camera. I also added a video transmitter. But I found that I had terrible endurance times with all the stuff I added. I would fly for less than three minutes before the voltage failsafe kicked in and forced a landing. So I replaced the KA 1050 outrunners with Tarot 4006 620 kv motors. So here it is in its latest and last incarnation:

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I get 11:25 endurance time under calm conditions, which is plenty for my purposes. Here is a video of a test flight I made over a lake cove:
 

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