Another UAV quad

[bigMouse]

Funnily enough I have one of these on order from goodluckbuy, gonna try it in a Quanum Venture.

Has yours arrived yet ?

Had it about six months, just not got around to using it!
Also got a new apm2.6 looking for a frame...

[bigMouse]

This is the pixhawk mounted on the new deck, but not fully connected yet! The buzzer is hidden underneath the plate, Shortened the leads on the GPS/Mag and twisted them, to look neater and help reject rfi

[bigMouse]

This is the starboard side showing the data downlink (laid in position)

Space between the deck and the lower deck will be increased to accomodate the FPV cam, vTx etc

2.4 Rx on the rear end also has a pwm to cppm converter strapped to it..

[bigMouse]

Here is the PSU/voltage/current sensor board, Soldered it to the PDB via short cables, also shrink wrapped the bare board, this obviously helps prevent shorts but also secures the sensor cable/psu plug.

[bigMouse]

This is the buzzer hidden away directly underneath the pixHawk.

So far the standard of soldering has been excellent but the button connections (in view top right) soldering is terrible and the leads are left unsupported, will fix that later...

[bigMouse]

Added a semi rigid Gopro mounting, Pinched the old Pixim Seawolf camera off the H quad, ready to start connecting up...

[Ant]

Looks great - how does the pixhawk fly ? Is it very similar to set up as the apm ?


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[bigMouse]

Haven't flown the pixHawk yet other than a simple hover, but suspect little difference in performance (at the moment) from the apm.

I'd say that the code is what generally makes the performance difference, as does the sensors, which are very up to date and sensitive, even on the later apm's 2.0 series.

Last time I fiddled with the firmware source code was back in ver 2.7 which I had modified quite a bit to suit my needs! then a big gap to the present, Now using ver 3.X  There are a few obvious differences in set up but still quite familiar to any previous apm user, Mission planner remains the same style but many of the cli commands are now replaced with press this, press that!

Think FW ver2.8 was the turning point where the code started to demand better vibration suppression of the flight controller, and better interference suppression. Think the performance will now continually diverge between apm and pixHawk, apm is struggling to hold (and process) the increasing features, while pixHawk has finally got rid of arduino style coding (which I believe was a limiting and a serious drawback from day one    , although wonders was done with it) and the more memory and 32 bit processor has quite a bit of futureproof built in.

I've already found a few quirks with the code, some misleading instructions on diydrones, and some Pixhawk features totally non described. Guess the old manual was just so wrong that you had to find out how it worked yourself, so at least now the current online help pages are 100% better than that.

The pixHawk uses a beep and flash system to tell of various maladies or events, to understand them all, and then remember them is quite impossible, but guess that so long as you learn the more essential ones, and forget the remaining flashes and beeps, obviously use a check sheet for those times

I'll note the various oddities I come across, maybe post them sometime...

[Tecnic]

What they need now is a self tune routine for loiter/rth and waypoint nav
At the moment the self tune for flight is fantsastic but still leaves sometimes wobbly/wavy loiter

[bigMouse]

Latest additions:

Changed the crap turnigy Multistar esc's for good ones and flashed them with simonK fw. (Threw the multistar (excuse for an ESC) ones in the bin!)

Telemetry, and vTx added, need to be wired up next, maximum additional weight say 10 grams.

Side pylons carry the vtx one side and the UHF telem dipole the other side, this gives good spacing of all the antennas. The holes in the arms are not for lightening, that is pure bullshit!

Finished weight, less battery is 1260 grams, is 4S capable.

[MrBen]

Certainly a lot of love and thought going into it!

[Ant]

Looks cool - have you managed to fly it yet ?


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[bigMouse]

Yes but nothing much, needed to more or less double all pids to get some stability, ok for real testing now, just waiting for no wind, no rain. Have now made up the telem cables so just need to configure the 3dr radio, and wire up the FPV side of things, normally would do this in a day but have had other things get in the way! Computers and other peoples quad repairs...

[Ant]

On the telemetry side did you have to make up cables because the apm has a different number of pins on the connector to pixhawk ?


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[bigMouse]

The pixhawk is set up for version2 of the 3dr radio, or lets say that the 3dr radio ver2 has leads to fit the pixhawk.

I still have 4  off. version1 3dr radios (which were all standard pins) Don't think a lead exists to connect ver1 radio to the pixHawk (could be wrong of course) so made one up. the leads were mighty thin but managed to produce some reliable crimps.