- fits into a backpack
- can fly for >15mins (min >10mins)
- has autonomous waypoint flight
- return to home function
- can carry a mobius or gopro including brushless gimbal
The ingredients are:
- DJI Phantom 2 / Vision replacement shell and landing gear
- 4 DJI E300 motors
- these motors are very well made. Perfectly balanced. No vibrations. I run them with below props on 4S. Only slightly warm after >10min flights. A bit warmer but not hot when pushed around at high (75 to 100%) throttle. They are relatively cheap, good quality and easily available.
- set of DJI E300 propellers (or rotors as they like to call them now)
- very nice design, perfectly balanced. I have >10 props and I couldn't detect any imbalance at all. Nice!! The self-tightening is a good feature. No fear that a prop will come loose in flight. It also ticks the backpack requirements. It takes literally 10 seconds to take all 4 props off. These props are very thin at the tips, almost translucent. But surprisingly I couldn't find any negative effects in flights. Very durable. Survive a fair bit of bending and crashing.
- full kit: http://www.buildyourowndrone.co.uk/dji-e300-tuned-propulsion-system-quadcopter.html £87, or 2x CW, 2x CCW, + props = 4*£21+ 2*£11 = £106, no-brainer.
- Shell, motors, and propellers are the only DJI items, the rest is a wild mix:
- 1 Hobbywing quattro ESC 20A
- I like the simplicity of a 4 in 1 ESC. No messy wiring, no power disrtribution board needed. The DJI E300 set includes ESCs with a nice coaxial power cable to minimise magnetic fields, but I don't like the lower fixed PWM range (1120-1920 usec). They would require to change RC transmittor throttle range, I'd rather calibrate the ESCs to match my Taranis.
- I stripped the heatsink off it. At hover the Franken Phantom pulls 13A, so 3.25A per motor, i.e. the 20A ESC is not even getting tickled. only 40g without the metal heatsink and bottom plastic cover.
- 3DR Pixhawk
- I bought the original, not a clone. I'm fed up with clones. Some of my APM clones died or had components fail. One APM behaved erratic in flight. The original Pixhawk is a bit more expensive compared to a clone, but it is 100% tested and has a warranty. I was very positively surprised as it comes with a 3DR power module included!! USB cable, SD card, all other cables etc.... http://www.buildyourowndrone.co.uk/3dr-pixhawk.html
- 3DR GPS+compass module
- same here, no more clones and crap GPS signal. This is a huuuuuuge improvement over cheapo clone GPS modules I used before. It picks up GPS signal indoors (upstairs under roof) and enables rock solid Loiter and waypoint flights. http://www.buildyourowndrone.co.uk/3dr-ublox-gps-with-compass-lea-6h.html
- Walkera G-2D, 2 axis brushless gimbal
- people are raving about the DJI zenmuse. I never used one, but for me it is way too expensive. There are loads of cheapo gopro gimbals around. Or one could build a DIY one with an alexmos board. After a long search I decided to go for the Walkera. It is really light. Only 136 g including the controller! (zenmuse H3-2D is 230g) I got a Walkera G-2D for approx £60 on ebay. After using it a for a bit now, I like it. It has the occasional jolt at large tilt angles, the chinglish manual is hilarious but completely useless, tuning it is a nightmare (no USB/bluetooth, just silly button press sequences and mini screws, I gave up and left the default settings) but for £60!?! It performs very well. Well enough with a Mobius (not exactly balanced), perfectly with a gopro. Not a glitch in 'normal' flight conditions.
- Mobius to GoPro conversion case
- Sony SuperHAD 600TVL
- The mobius will be on the gimbal, the Sony CCD is for FPV and fixed to the copter shell.
- MinimOSD 1.0
- so I can have APM telemetry displayed on my FPV feed
- FVP 3 channel switch
- to switch between analogue CCD and Mobius/gopro
- http://www.hobbyking.co.uk/hobbyking/store/__29651__Hobbyking_3_Channel_FPV_Video_Switcher.html
- ImmersionRC 600mW 5.8GHz video transmitter
- I used Boscam transmitters before, so I wanted to try this one
- DC stepdown converter to power transmitter, FPV camera, and the gimbal with constant 12V
- OpenLRSng miniRX UHF receiver
- Bluetooth module for configuration and pre-flight setup.
- http://www.unmannedtechshop.co.uk/bluetooth-module.html
- I plan to use the serial bridge of OpenLRSng for long range telemetry at some point, but haven't figured it out yet.
- Last not least:
- I have a couple of Zippy compact 4S 4000mAh (weight 370g) lipo batteries
- I recently ordered two hobbyking multistar 10C lipos. Also 4S 4Ah. They are lighter (325g). Only done two flights so far, but I'm happy. Enough power, done 15mins slow flying using ~75% capacity.
The ESC settings I use. Note: timing low
ESC and motor instllation. ESC is glued into bottom of shell with a little bit of space below.
FPV camera installed in body shell. I used a soldering iron to make a hole for it.
Gimbal and Battery will hang off the bottom on this piece of stripwood. The stripwood is attached to the phantom shell with double sided 3M soft tape and cable ties. The mounting and weight of the battery will add additional vibration isolation for the camera. The other nice feature is that the camera will not have props in the field of view as it does in the stock Phantom.
Top view with GPS, Pixhawk and OpenLRSng UHF receiver installed. The Bluetooth module sits in the front right arm (left in this photo)
No medals for beauty here. It looks very DIY with the stripwood and external battery, but no props in view even in very fast forward flight! Also very easy to move battery around to shift the COG to the middle / centre of lift.
