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Odette posted:I have a problem with my FPV setup. I'm not quite sure why this is happening. Yeah that sure looks like the camera resetting/power cycling. It looks like a brownout/shutoff because the picture goes dead (not distorted or static or 'broken') then when it wakes up it does a whole startup auto-white balance/brightness adjust thing. Bad power (e: which could be excessive noise or crappy voltage regulation like mentioned), bad connector, bad wiring are the usual suspects for something like this. Especially in a high vibration & high noise environment like a multicopter. It's also possible than the camera itself is dying or otherwise freaking out because of an internal malfunction but it's much less likely, at least so far as we can tell from what we know. The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Feb 19, 2015 |
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Feb 19, 2015 17:15
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ImplicitAssembler posted:Why not just pull 12v straight from the LC filter? Nerobro posted:that step up regulator is introducing a lot of noise. I'd power the camera straight off the LC filter. That will also help get rid of ground noise that could be coming from the transmitter. You two mean power the camera in parallel with the video transmitter from the LC filter? I thought of doing that, but the camera has a very small voltage range. I tested the camera just now from a benchtop DC supply; 11V and it blacked out. Bad camera? I thought these things could go to ~10V at least. I think I'll just order one of these 5-17V PZ0420 cameras and power it straight from the LC filter. Mister Sinewave posted:Yeah that sure looks like the camera resetting/power cycling. It looks like a brownout/shutoff because the picture goes dead (not distorted or static or 'broken') then when it wakes up it does a whole startup auto-white balance/brightness adjust thing. Prior to this, I had static issues that stemmed from lovely wiring & a loose connector. They have since been replaced and tested, so these are definitely not a factor. This hobby is a pain in the rear end, but I'm learning a lot!
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Feb 19, 2015 20:30
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Put the step up power supply before your entire VTX setup. Kick it up to 12v, then go to the LC filter, then feed the VTX and camera. That will give you the cleanest power.
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Feb 19, 2015 21:21
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If the camera wants 12v exactly and doesn't like being fed from battery for that reason (and people use this setup without issue) then it might be your battery in a way. Some batteries are better at it than others but all batteries can and do "sag" their voltage momentarily when called upon to dump a lot of current. Like motors. If your battery is sagging too much under load it is possible that the input to the regulator drops under minimum and the regulator (briefly) stops outputting 12v. It could happen, nothing more. If other people with identical hardware don't have problems then try a different battery with a higher discharge rating. Alternately adding a nice fat capacitor to counteract the voltage sag (if it is the culprit) might help but I'd only suggest trying that if you're familiar with the idea.
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Feb 19, 2015 21:27
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putting hte boost regulator in front of the VTX will solve the sag problem too.
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Feb 19, 2015 21:45
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What's the exact boost regulator the OP is using? If it can take being hooked up to the battery direct then for sure that's where it should go.
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Feb 19, 2015 22:24
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Mister Sinewave posted:What's the exact boost regulator the OP is using? If it can take being hooked up to the battery direct then for sure that's where it should go. This one from RMRC. Voltage range is 2.5 to 12V so it won't be a good idea to hook it up to the battery. I don't really want to re-wire too much so I think I'll just get one of these 5-17V cameras, and power it directly from the battery via LC filter. This way, I only have to re-wire one part of my setup rather than 3-4 separate things. I just hope the bloody camera can handle a bit of voltage sag. I hope it's not the batteries, they're a combo of 3S Zippy/nanotech 40/45C 1300mAh batteries.
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Feb 19, 2015 23:33
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It's impossible to tell for sure over the internet but if you have a camera that is extremely picky about wanting  12V and it's being fed from 3S -> 5V regulator -> 12V boost converter from 5V -> Camera, that's pretty ugly and could very well be causing the camera brownouts (which it appears it is doing).Moving to a 5-17V camera (or even to a 5V only camera so you can use the VTX's 5V out) so you don't have to rewire everything sounds reasonable.
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Feb 19, 2015 23:57
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Mister Sinewave posted:It's impossible to tell for sure over the internet but if you have a camera that is extremely picky about wanting I have to agree, the power distribution is pretty loving ugly, my next quad is definitely going to have sane power distribution without any overlap. It's Chinese New Year, so the camera should be here in about two months.  Guess I'll use the wait-time to brush up on my LOS skills. I still get a bit confused when the quad is far away.
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Feb 20, 2015 00:08
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One pf the camera guys at the race on Sunday posted a nice recap video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG4QN8lGy3c
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Feb 20, 2015 03:21
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My DX6i has been full for months... so I just ordered a Turnigy 9xr Pro. A orangeTX module. And a protected 2200mah 3s battery for it. What should I know? Should I swap software off the bat? Any other advice?
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Feb 20, 2015 16:44
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make sure you set your channel order in the radio setup and templates so that it matches your other spektrum gear, otherwise it defaults to the JR AETR standard. Personally I would have got the taranis even if I was going to use an Orange module with it. The Taranis has a SD card slot for additional model memory. Of course you can always upload/download models from the er9x/companion9x software but that's an additional step.
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Feb 20, 2015 19:31
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Just chiming in to say that I love my Taranis. OpenTX is amazing, and I freaking love the telemetry. It's pricey, but well worth it.
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Feb 20, 2015 22:05
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Still cheaper than Spektrum radios, though! The only reason I still have mine is because I can't get the OrangeRX JR module to work perfectly with my horizon hobby bind and fly stuff.
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Feb 21, 2015 03:45
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First launch of my Blade 350 qx3 Quadcopter Drone with Go-pro 3 silver Way easier to control than I expected and super smooth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSICiap9AbM
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Feb 21, 2015 04:35
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porksmash posted:Still cheaper than Spektrum radios, though! The only reason I still have mine is because I can't get the OrangeRX JR module to work perfectly with my horizon hobby bind and fly stuff. apparently some guy figured out how to dismantle the cheapass spektrum throw-ins and use the module from that to make a JR plug-in
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Feb 21, 2015 04:36
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Odette posted:Just chiming in to say that I love my Taranis. OpenTX is amazing, and I freaking love the telemetry. It's pricey, but well worth it. It's objectively The Best Radio. I can spend hours just loving around with OpenTX. Arrest that ass! fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Mar 8, 2015 |
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Feb 21, 2015 22:40
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I finally bought a Taranis (Plus) a few days ago to replace my cheap and nasty starter radio, spent yesterday setting it up with my pixhawk based quad. Seems pretty awesome so far, I'm currently working on getting telemetry from the Pixhawk forwarded to the Taranis via this teensy 3.1 setup. I'd be really keen to be able to use a PC based editor to set up flight modes/mixer settings/sound files etc, but the open-tx site says the firmware included on Taranis isn't designed to work with the OpenTX-companion software... Have you other Taranis owners changed to vanilla OpenTX, or is it possible to get the companion working with the Frsky customized firmware? Are there any downsides to using the "normal" opentx firmware rather than the frsky customized one?
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Feb 22, 2015 13:06
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I just got the one from open-tx. no problems so far
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Feb 22, 2015 15:13
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Thanks, I just put the latest openTx on mine; it plays nicely with some fancy telemetry scripts that were broken with the FrSky version. Now I've got several screens of stat-porn to distract me while flying 
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Feb 22, 2015 15:38
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Cunning Plan posted:Thanks, I just put the latest openTx on mine; it plays nicely with some fancy telemetry scripts that were broken with the FrSky version. Now I've got several screens of stat-porn to distract me while flying Set them up to give voice alerts, and then you can still look where you're flying.
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Feb 22, 2015 16:09
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32MB OF ESRAM posted:I think FPV setups require you to have a clear line of transmission between your tx and rx. Trees and phone poles won't give you a lot of trouble, but the wall of a building might. Do you NEED FPV? If you own the land can you not use a flight controller with a GPS and just program it to fly autonomously around your property taking photos/videos? Or are there people potentially underneath? Is that ardupilot software DRM tied with any specific drone? I'll torrent anything, but rocksmith has taught me to be wary of hardware drm. Similarly, the cheapest fpv package was cheaper than the cheapest gps package. I hope nobody is insulted that I bought a JJRD H9D. But, speaking of their products, I just crashed an H8C and it turns out that their hollow propeller shafts bend really easily and that maybe I should've spent more money short-term than less money longterm. Where do you buy replacement parts for these?
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Feb 23, 2015 04:14
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ardupilot / APM is an open source project. There are a variety of 3rd parties selling their flavor of APM and Pixhawk flight controllers (I'm probably still going to buy the 3DR pixhawk FC, but the APM stuff has gotten revisions past the "official" stuff and is super cheap from china / ebay). that JJRD H9D looks nice (as a clone of the syma x5c or whatever) but I hope you're not implying you're going to use that to survey your land.
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Feb 23, 2015 05:18
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Regarding DRM and 3DR products, there was an issue with the Mission Planner GUI not updating non-3DR equipment around the time the witespy clone pixhawks kicked off, but I think this limitation has since been removed. No idea as to the quality of the pixhawk clone boards on banggood etc...
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Feb 23, 2015 10:40
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I was looking at the pixhawk clones over the weekend. They are all so close to the price of the 3dr one (unless they were bundling the gps puck and not telling me), that the only one sorta worth considering was the witespy rtfhawk ($100 instead of $200). He makes some good stuff, but also has had quality control issues and terrible support (and its sold out anyway). Some of the third party ones do have a better power module though.
moron izzard fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Feb 23, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 14:01
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I got burned (literally, the unit started smoking when I plugged in USB) ordering one of the witespy rtfhawks when 3DR were unable to ship outside of the US due to customs issues a while back. Eventually got it refunded and bought one of the 3DR ones instead, but it took forever as witespy wouldn't reply to emails. I think I'd trust a cloned APM, but the pixhawk is a far more complex board. Probably worth getting a genuine Pixhawk IMO, but you can definitely save cash on some of the extra stuff like telemetry radios...
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Feb 23, 2015 18:39
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Yeah, stay way clear of Witespy. I also bought his RTFHawk and it was 2 months of troubleshooting, before I finally gave up and got a 3DR Pixhawk, which just *worked*. There's 0 support and email communication was so slow, that I easily exceeded the 45 day paypal refund limit before I realised it was a lost cause. Now that I know that it was his piece of poo poo that was broken and not me doing anything wrong, I'll try again to get a refund. I was(am?) in the process of designing my own FPV/mapping plane, but iterations were simply too slow, so I just ordered a X-UAV Talon, so I at least can get going on the flying/electronics side of things.
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Feb 23, 2015 19:01
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Got the Gimbal quick swap part from http://dronexpert.nl installed on the Vision+ I fixed for my Boss. It was either try to fix/replace the $700 stock gimbal/camera, or try this $400 part and use the H3-3D that got slightly tweaked, but still works from my P2. Turns out the Gimbal works perfect enough for the P2, and the board from DroneExperts allows the video from the Hero3 to work just fine right through the Vision+ app. The only thing you cannot do is control the camera itself from the app, but its pretty sweet to have full ground station and video FPV from the P2V+ without the V+ camera.
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Feb 24, 2015 00:04
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ImplicitAssembler posted:Yeah, stay way clear of Witespy. I also bought his RTFHawk and it was 2 months of troubleshooting, before I finally gave up and got a 3DR Pixhawk, which just *worked*. Let me know when you start figuring out servo / motor / prop / power choices. When im done with my phantom mods I'm going to do maths and figure out the load (and probably ask rcgroups but still). I bought an ecalc subscription as well. I guess I also need to figure out the gps to get since there are better ones for the same price that 3dr is asking. Also a guy from the local makerspace makes these if you are interested - he says the small one will fit in the talon, and you can put a powershot s100 or a sony a5100 in there. The package I bought also had the wing extensions moron izzard fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 01:37
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A Yolo Wizard posted:Let me know when you start figuring out servo / motor / prop / power choices. When im done with my phantom mods I'm going to do maths and figure out the load (and probably ask rcgroups but still). I bought an ecalc subscription as well. I already have the power-setup: SK3 3548-800kv (Although a guy in the Talon thread on RCG claims that the SK3's are inefficient at low power settings) YEP 80A esc 3A BEC Most likely a 13x6 prop. I have no 17-22g servos, but will most likely go with Hitec 82S in wings and 12g Corono939s in the tail.(Which I do have lying around) Initial power will just be a single 5000mAh 4S, doubling up to 10.000mAh once I get it flying. Pixhawk with 966telemetry, 433TX/RX, and a borrowed 5.8Ghz VTX/VRX (thanks Mashed). I'm a member of the local Makers Lab and already have access to a laser cutter/CNC and like building stuff, so I'll build the tray & gimbal myself and will probably build a custom nose cone for the gimbal + FPV cam. For mapping, I currently got a Canon A4000. The 1-axis tray from DIY drone should fit it fine. Still need to make the cable to hook it up with the Pixhawk.
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Feb 24, 2015 02:02
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Phantom2 ordered! Let's do this!
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Feb 24, 2015 02:11
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ImplicitAssembler posted:I already have the power-setup: The one rcgroups thread I found doing an fpv / mapping build mentioned a cobra 830kv in a 4s build, so that is what I was considering. I didn't really plan on fpv though.
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Feb 24, 2015 02:35
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A Yolo Wizard posted:The one rcgroups thread I found mentioned a cobra 830kv in a 4s build, so that is what I was considering. I didn't really plan on fpv though. Yeah, the FPV is kinda secondary as well. I'm planning to have a plain nosecone for when it's not needed.
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Feb 24, 2015 02:38
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If you are in the market for a clone pixhawk, there's a new one that actually does look kind of good, it's called the Pixhack, and has a damped IMU along with a CNC aluminum casing and more convenient I/O placement. I'll probably pick one up once there is a ublox m8n GPS wired for it, since the I/O uses different connectors than a normal pixhawk. 
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Feb 24, 2015 06:41
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Does it actually come with all the accessories / cabling that would come with a normal pixhawk because the official aliexpress page makes it very unclear (and the rcgroups thread doesn't have anyone that actually has it yet)
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Feb 24, 2015 09:23
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A Yolo Wizard posted:Does it actually come with all the accessories / cabling that would come with a normal pixhawk because the official aliexpress page makes it very unclear (and the rcgroups thread doesn't have anyone that actually has it yet) At infinity hobby it's overpriced, but it seems to come with the stuff you'd expect:  Comes with a PPM encoder, remote buzzer/USB/LED, power module, a decent SD card, and some spare wire looms for converting your existing pixhawk stuff. Not sure if this is the case on aliexpress. Also, people on RCGroups do have it, but in another thread I believe. The main announcement thread is dead.
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Feb 24, 2015 09:40
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Nice idea separating the IMU from the main board too: http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/pixhawk-innovation-from-china Not that I'd had problems with vibration on my setup, but it's still an interesting way of doing things...
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Feb 24, 2015 10:28
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A big reason to isolate the IMU is that it seems like big hits will eventually gently caress your gyroscopes up big time. Also, replacement of the IMU becomes a user service item instead of junking the entire board.
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Feb 24, 2015 10:42
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on the left posted:A big reason to isolate the IMU is that it seems like big hits will eventually gently caress your gyroscopes up big time. Also, replacement of the IMU becomes a user service item instead of junking the entire board. Probably more an issue on the clones, as they have a seemingly high IMU failure rate.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:06
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Well just ordered a bunch of stuff to complete my designed too big frame.  But in a twist I am adding a few arms and making a hexacopter. Ordering 6 of anything at a time gets expensive. It is going to run 6 2206/1950 motors. Initially i'll test it on 3s but plan is to run it on 4s for a massive amount of power. Motors will have to be tilted as the blades will overlap.
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Feb 25, 2015 04:17
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