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Arrest that rear end! posted:Did a bit of carpark FPV last night The rgb strip on the ground is a nice touch. Also sunlight outside and dark (ish) inside makes me see how clearly important it is to have a decent camera that doesn't i.e. crush blacks into nothing or white the hell out when you point at a window briefly 
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Aug 1, 2015 02:10
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Arrest that rear end! posted:Did a bit of carpark FPV last night Videos like this need to be set to the Wipeout XL soundtrack.
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Aug 1, 2015 03:34
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Hobbyking is having their beer lifting competition again this year, with 250, 500 and unlimited classes. I'm considering doing a 250 build since that would be the most economical. What do you think would be the best options for just a pure hover (for 10 seconds, so battery efficiency does not loving matter). im thinking an x8 build on a simple a frame as possible - possibly just a cheap piece of wood (scrap bamboo flooring?) cut in an X or a boxed X shape, some 2300 kv motors that can handle 4s and 6045 blades (they've been doing 6 inch and cobra 2300kv motors on the black bolt xbr..)Elendil004 posted:Good thing the FAA has no actual way to follow up on reports like that. well, they've been sending them the spooky letters as always, but yeah. I dont think they've even made any contact about the two dudes that have shot down aircraft (per their definition) in the past few months its still a really poor form from a bunch of assholes who happened to have filed their paperwork earlier moron izzard fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Aug 1, 2015 |
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Aug 1, 2015 03:52
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That server power supply arrived, so I made some quick modifications for my needs. Perhaps not the prettiest, but certainly functional. I set it to 13.25 volts. It would put out 13.5, but if I stopped a charge pulling 90 watts, it would trip something internally. I think it must jump just high enough in output voltage to trip an over voltage. I don't expect to be trying to pull 250 watts out of the charger to need 13.5+ anyways.
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Aug 1, 2015 04:09
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A Yolo Wizard posted:Hobbyking is having their beer lifting competition again this year, with 250, 500 and unlimited classes. I'm considering doing a 250 build since that would be the most economical. What do you think would be the best options for just a pure hover (for 10 seconds, so battery efficiency does not loving matter). im thinking an x8 build on a simple a frame as possible - possibly just a cheap piece of wood (scrap bamboo flooring?) cut in an X or a boxed X shape, some 2300 kv motors that can handle 4s and 6045 blades (they've been doing 6 inch and cobra 2300kv motors on the black bolt xbr..) Yup sounds good. A super light X frame with big motors would be best. I'd go for 2208 or 2212 2000KV on 4S with 6x4.5 or 6x4.5 bullnose props on top. You could even go up to 6s for some extra power. Another, more relaxed video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpNK1JkN994
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Aug 1, 2015 12:13
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Kentucky father blows a drone out of the sky that was hovering over his sunbathing daughter http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/30/william-merideth-arrested-after-shooting-down-1800/ edit: also there's a $75k reward to catch a drone user who hampered CA firefighting http://www.engadget.com/2015/07/30/reward-to-catch-drone-pilots-hinder-firefight/ Nostalgia4Butts fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Aug 2, 2015 |
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Aug 2, 2015 02:52
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Also this is the top story on CNN for reasons, I guess http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/01/us/drone-airliner-jfk/index.html quote:Drones that fly too close to commercial flights pose a serious threat to the larger aircraft, Phil Derner of NYCaviation.com told CNN affiliate WPIX.  flying these close to airports IS dumb but c'mon. 400 feet?
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Aug 2, 2015 03:47
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"YOU CAN USE A 3D PRINTER AND MAKE DRONES OUT OF EXPLOSIVES!!!" I wonder what it's like to wake up in the morning and be that willfully ignorant.
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Aug 2, 2015 05:30
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Finally getting some decent results with my Talon & mapping setup: This is about 100 acres mapped in less than 10 minutes. It's taken me 6 months of tinkering to this stage, so this is a rather big milestone. Still some tweaking needed, but everything works now. Also made a snazzy ground station to go with it:  As a reward, I'm now building a Morphite 180 miniquad for some fun flying!
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Aug 2, 2015 06:07
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ImplicitAssembler posted:Finally getting some decent results with my Talon & mapping setup: What elevation are you flying at? What ground sample distance does it result in? that's pretty quick to accumulate 100 acres...
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Aug 2, 2015 06:11
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Kashwashwa posted:What elevation are you flying at? What ground sample distance does it result in? that's pretty quick to accumulate 100 acres... 80 meters and a theoretical resolution of ~3cm/pixel. It was flying too fast today for some reason so normally it would take about 17 minutes to do this area. (it was averaging ~23m/s and should be doing 16m/s!) Also double-checked the area and it's only 80 acres, sorry!
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Aug 2, 2015 06:17
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MrYenko posted:"YOU CAN USE A 3D PRINTER AND MAKE DRONES OUT OF EXPLOSIVES!!!" They'll just have to get the CIA to keep tabs on who is ordering explosive filament from Hobbyking.
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Aug 2, 2015 12:19
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Any reason why people people are so gung-ho against a GoPro as FPV cam on a drone? Other than cost and DR handling. I keep hearing about latency, but a friend put his on the drone, and when it's recording at 60fps, it's almost not noticeable. It's sure as hell a sharper image than what my 700TVL puts out (I suppose it's because the GoPro is progressive and the 700TVL interlaced).
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Aug 2, 2015 13:50
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Nostalgia4Butts posted:Kentucky father blows a drone out of the sky that was hovering over his sunbathing daughter Glad we are seeing some legal action against the guy who shot the drone. e: http://www.wdrb.com/story/29670583/update-drone-owner-disputes-shooters-story-produces-video-he-claims-shows-flight-path P3's log everything, so the guy was able to pull his logs from his drone and show he was never hovering over anyone's daughter. [quote="Nostalgia4Butts" post="448449240" edit: also there's a $75k reward to catch a drone user who hampered CA firefighting http://www.engadget.com/2015/07/30/reward-to-catch-drone-pilots-hinder-firefight/ [/quote] I am still wicked skeptical of the drones which "blocked" the fire fighting from happening. You're telling me, an entire highways worth of evacuated people, there's not one cell phone shot of a drone in the area? I understand not getting a picture when it's a near miss with a 747, but not in the case of the firefighting. Elendil004 fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Aug 2, 2015 |
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Aug 2, 2015 13:57
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Elendil004 posted:Glad we are seeing some legal action against the guy who shot the drone. Th drones blocked the helicopters out over the woods, not by the highway. This caused the fire to reach the highway though. Not many peoples cell phones have a camera that could capture a drone a mile away.
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Aug 2, 2015 14:12
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Reports are sketchy, nobody in the helo took one? Nobody on the ground from the fire service?
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Aug 2, 2015 14:30
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ImplicitAssembler posted:80 meters and a theoretical resolution of ~3cm/pixel. Still seems pretty dang fast... This is using a quadracoptor you built yourself? over 80 k/h seems insanely fast for one of those, but I admit I know almost nothing about them I'm using an r/c airplane that travels 65 km/h at an altitude of 93m to do aerial mapping. This let's us get about 50 hectares or 120 acres in around 35 minute flights. We are doing a large overlap of photos (around 85%) ending up with about 1500 pictures in one flight. Did you develop your own camera system as well? Does shutter speed change with the UAV speed?
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Aug 2, 2015 14:59
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Elendil004 posted:Reports are sketchy, nobody in the helo took one? Nobody on the ground from the fire service? When I am in the woods surrounded by towering flames or flying a helicopter over a fire, pulling out my cell phone would be one of the last things I do. The firefighters on the ground likely did not even know they were there. Or they are ashamed of the job they did and made it up to shift blame?
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Aug 2, 2015 15:50
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Combat Pretzel posted:Any reason why people people are so gung-ho against a GoPro as FPV cam on a drone? Other than cost and DR handling. I keep hearing about latency, but a friend put his on the drone, and when it's recording at 60fps, it's almost not noticeable. It's sure as hell a sharper image than what my 700TVL puts out (I suppose it's because the GoPro is progressive and the 700TVL interlaced). The latency is noticeable and will cause you to crash, especially if you're racing or doing any kind of proximity stuff, also they have a tendency to stop sending video and if your battery or SD card runs out then you lose video. It would be fine for an AP rig or something, but for mini quads it is really not a good idea.
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Aug 2, 2015 16:00
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Kashwashwa posted:Still seems pretty dang fast... This is using a quadracoptor you built yourself? over 80 k/h seems insanely fast for one of those, but I admit I know almost nothing about them The Talon is a fixed wing, not a quad  I'm using a Canon A4000is, loaded with CHDK. I then have an arduino interpreting the signals from the Pixhawk, so that I can give it various instructions. (mostly shoot and closing the lens when done). Next stage is buying an additional camera and converting it to IR.
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Aug 2, 2015 18:26
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Elendil004 posted:Glad we are seeing some legal action against the guy who shot the drone. At least one of the ca fire drone stories were near an area with known slope soarers, and another near an rc field. too bad like 5 of these stories came out in like 2 weeks and I can't untangle any of them (or why whoever was coordinating these fire fighting operations weren't aware of those before the conflicts arose)
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Aug 2, 2015 19:38
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I'm not saying there aren't tons of idiots who would fly in the face of an actual active fire (see: the guy close enough to get hit with the hose a while ago), but I'm just skeptical of these reports of drones from everything from 747s to fires to everywhere in between. There's so much to be gained by everyone from the news to the FAA by inflating reports of drones that it's hard to not to take them with a giant grain of salt. Especially after that big report was released about all the sightings from airplanes and most of them were made up or military drones.
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Aug 2, 2015 20:08
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Well, I'm the proud owner of a new Phantom 3 Professional. Now I'm too scared to open the box because the guy at the store said they can't be returned once opened. 
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Aug 2, 2015 22:26
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enraged_camel posted:Well, I'm the proud owner of a new Phantom 3 Professional. Just go for it, it's a great machine.
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Aug 2, 2015 23:15
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enraged_camel posted:Well, I'm the proud owner of a new Phantom 3 Professional. This is why you buy from b&h photo
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Aug 2, 2015 23:44
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Yep, B&H is awesome between free returns and no tax (at least to my state). I had to return 2 P3Ps before I got one that didn't have a bizarro hardware issue. DJI would have taken 6-8 weeks to repair it.
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Aug 3, 2015 00:12
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A Yolo Wizard posted:This is why you buy from b&h photo I would have, but I'm going on vacation this week and couldn't risk shipping delays. 
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Aug 3, 2015 01:23
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Even though there are no pictures of the drones impeding firefighting operations I'm not really skeptical. A lot of drone owners would just think OMG AMAZING FOOTAGE ALL THE YOUTUBE LIKES and go and film a forest fire. There is no shortage of idiots in this world and some of those idiots own drones.
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Aug 3, 2015 02:11
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I'm slowly piecing together a fpv vehicle to zip around in, and I'm currently shopping for the video rx/tx and camera. It looks like a lot of racers are using some sort of immersionRC radio and a PZ0420M camera. Are there other setups i should be looking into? Any goggle recommendations? I'm leery of the built-in receivers, but if they work well it may not be such a big problem. I am hoping to get into racing or situations where there are multiple quads flying around, should I worry about getting radio gear that can operate in multiple channels? That said, I can hold off on the goggles for a bit though because I impulse bought a Quanum kit a while ago. While I figure the longer I can hold off on buying something, the better the gear ends up being but it would be silly to hold off on the goggles and then have to update the rest of the fpv gear later to take advantage of better resolution or whatever down the road. This hobby does seem to be moving pretty quick, every time I check into stuff there is a bunch of neat new stuff out. Delta-Wye fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 03:59
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I got one of these, and apparently you can take the housing off to lighten it up. I didn't, because  , but I'm very happy with the image quality.
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Aug 3, 2015 04:21
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ImplicitAssembler posted:
Can you share some more info about your ground station setup?
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Aug 3, 2015 04:34
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So close to finishing. Just need to cut the slots for the vTX and GPS, then glue it all together. Seems to balance perfectly with two 5000mAh LiPos in there, which was the big thing I was worried about. Hoping to be able to take everything out on Thursday to test and calibrate the electronics before its maiden flight. This is my first build from the ground up; is there anything glaringly wrong I should redo or improve? Also, does anyone have a decent printable pre-flight checklist they don't mind sharing? I want to get in the habit of doing something like that before every flight so I don't have any dumb whoops moments with this thing.   
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Aug 3, 2015 06:02
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ickna posted:Can you share some more info about your ground station setup? It's more or less based on this setup: http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/my-diy-ground-control-station Main differences: I used DeWalt Tough system cases:  Small one is about $50, medium is $60. This allowed me to fit a 14" Panasonic Toughbook screen, which is usable outdoors. The FPV screen is a 7" basic screen which will probably be replaced by something nicer (but same size). The only thing is that the lid is not very deep, but as I needed a medium size anyway for carrying all the other stuff and it had a much deeper lid, I took swapped the lids around. This allowed me to install the laptop motherboard in the lid. The panels was initially cut from dollar tree foam and then fiberglassed with some carbon fiber support. Over the winter I may re-do these, but I'll make a proper mold and do a full vacuum carbon version instead, as it's not as nice as I would have liked. I also put an external power-jack, so I can either connect the AC-DC transformer straight into the case or use the 12v plug at the back of my truck for additional power. Further down the line I'll add external SMA connectors for the various antennas, so that I can mount them externally (either on the roof of the truck or on a tripod.) Main battery is a 8Ah SLA battery. It may get replaced by a Li-Ion battery down the road, but it's cheap and it's safe. (If a little heavy). I just plug it into the power supply when I get home and it'll charge it up overnight. No need to monitor cells, etc and it's really nice just to have a self contained unit. The laptop is ancient and not very efficient, so it uses about 3A when working and will be replaced by one of those thin-ITX Atom setups. http://www.geekbuying.com/item/VOYO...lue-345830.html I don't need any real processing power and don't need any real storage either, so something like that would be ideal.
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Aug 3, 2015 07:28
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Thanks for the writeup and link. I've got a 7ah SLA battery, and I'm building out my ground station in a small rolling rack-mount road case. I'm using a Raspberry Pi 2 instead of a laptop because it is tiny, super cheap and has very low power consumption, pulling around an amp under heavy load and with two wifi dongles. For comparison, my 7" screen and video RX pull an amp and a half together. It is also small and light enough that I can send it up the 16' telescoping mast with my 5.8ghz video RX to get better sight lines to my quad and better wifi coverage. I've currently set my Pi up as a wifi AP on one of the dongles, which I can use then use to VNC or SSH in with my ipad or phone. Otherwise I use the composite out to the second input of my 7" screen and a small wireless keyboard/trackpad. I'm currently working replacing the 7" screen with a 19" LED monitor that will fit perfectly in the front of the rack, and run off a the battery using a DC-DC converter. Composite from the RX will be piped through a converter into HDMI/DVI. I have some ideas that I'm working out to roll my own light bridge and telemetry system using this setup. The ground station would use my second wifi dongle, which has a RP-SMA connector and a high-gain antenna to talk to a second Pi on the aircraft. The second Pi would run software to write a text telemetry stream and GPS coordinates over an SSH connection to the ground station, and control the camera pan/tilt servos hooked into my micro maestro servo controller. It would also be able to send stills or an h264 stream from the 5MP HD camera over the wifi link to a thumb drive in the base station Pi. The Pi has hardware h264/mp4 encoders and decoders so it should be pretty easy on the CPU and power consumption. In a more mature form, I'd like to use some servos with another micro maestro on the ground station Pi to slew a yagi for the second wifi dongle and the video RX to get more distance. It could possibly be paired with two vertically polarized rubber ducks in a diversity setup.
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Aug 3, 2015 10:23
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Elendil004 posted:I'm not saying there aren't tons of idiots who would fly in the face of an actual active fire (see: the guy close enough to get hit with the hose a while ago), but I'm just skeptical of these reports of drones from everything from 747s to fires to everywhere in between. The great anti-drone cabal is indeed subtle. There's no way it could be people who bought one of these as a toy and don't know the rules. A Yolo Wizard posted:At least one of the ca fire drone stories were near an area with known slope soarers, and another near an rc field. too bad like 5 of these stories came out in like 2 weeks and I can't untangle any of them (or why whoever was coordinating these fire fighting operations weren't aware of those before the conflicts arose) Wouldn't someone at an RC field know about the TFRs that almost invariably appear when significant fire fighting is underway? Or maybe the people who knew just stayed home since they knew they couldn't and shouldn't fly.
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Aug 3, 2015 14:05
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I bought myself a Hubsan X4 over the weekend to see if I'd like having a bigger one and to practice. Spent Sunday bonking around the hallway learning the absolute basics (thank god it came with a prop protector). These things are a lot of fun! And a lot harder to pilot than I would have guessed.
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Aug 3, 2015 14:37
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How does everyone protect the SMA connectors of their video transmitters, so that it doesn't get torn off every few crashes? Simply zip-tie the connector?
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Aug 3, 2015 16:33
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Combat Pretzel posted:How does everyone protect the SMA connectors of their video transmitters, so that it doesn't get torn off every few crashes? Simply zip-tie the connector? Personally either with through hole bulkhead mounting in the frame or using an extension cable; there is a small amount of loss associated with extensions but not much (I saw IBCrazy quote it as about half a dB).
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Aug 3, 2015 22:04
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I suppose I'll go with the extension cable. I managed to solder the connector back, but it won't survive another rip-off. It already tore off the part of the copper traces where it was soldered on. Through-hole is out, that Emax frame of mine has a lot of useless cut-outs, leaving not much material to drill an actual useful hole into it (at least not in a practical place). Thanks!
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Aug 3, 2015 22:17
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Anybody with some advice on BEC as a part of the ESC vs. stand-alone. I am trying to piece together a 250 for my first quadcopter build and read through some of Oscar Liang's blog on parts. I was going to get the Afro 12A MIni with built-in BEC, but they're on backorder at Hobbyking EU, and who the gently caress knows when they'll be back in stock. So I thought about getting some other ESC, that are OPTO, and I don't really see any downside to this, besides having to buy a separate UBEC?
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Aug 3, 2015 22:23
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