to be honest i never fully looked into differences between mode 31 i use and this mode 32 for interlock. 31 was made first then 32 added - and i never bothered to alter my setup as it always worked fine since mode 31 was added - ‘motors emergency stop’. the first time i saw any issues with mode 31 is when we got first versions of dshot…
btw i see this frame they have - looks ok to me, but a bit pricey and looks fragile.
but, it may work. will see.
I think that one is discontinued… Or at least out of stock… That was his first frame design.
Edit - I had a bunch of info about using the lady owl for arducopter, but just looked and that’s out of stock too.
If you’re interested in that style frame, let me know and I’ll ask if he’s planning on making any more. I think it would make a great indoor/outdoor arducopter.
i actually found one in stock on the other site - helipal. ordered from there - will see if it will come through.
all other frames they have are on the 20mm stack, i do not like it.
and got this stack to go into it - will see how it will or will not work out.
i think it should fit, and as i will not need a dvr in it, so will simply use a camera directly on the atlatl. if it will fit.
if not, i will find something else to do with it anyway, it will not be a waste.
all that 3d printed stuff - nah, i like carbon fiber better. should be sturdier.
Well, the nylon ducts are kind of nice because they’re soft, and won’t damage anything… But the down side is if you hit something hard, they deflect enough to stop the prop from spinning, then you crash.
The owl frame you got is great. Maybe even better for arducotper, because there’s even room on the side of the frame past the props… I could see mounting a receiver and dipole antenna off the side of the copter.
Plenty of room on top for a GPS. Could probably find room for a little range finder or optical flow on the bottom if you really wanted.
FYI you’re going to have to mount your size FC diagonally.
Post some photos when you build it.
Can’t wait to see more micro arducopters.
i will do lidar on top and lidar on the belly, yep - but will see how all that will fit, if it will.
i wanted to put lidars on the rooster initially but it is not safe now, so will try that 3" frame.
kakute f7 aio would not fit there but a regular one should be fine as is, i hope, and with a matching 4in1 esc it should be a good combo.
i got a set of Brotherhobby Tornado T1 1407 3600KV for it - should be workable on both 3s and 4s power.
will see how it will work out.
I have built a couple of Betaflight quads using the Owl frame. It’s very tight with 3" props. Anything that protrudes beyond 30x30 is a problem if it’s in the plane of the props. So the ESC power pads, the FC that extends on one side, and the VTx MCX connector. Whichever board is in the prop plane is likely to be an issue.
I can’t say for sure that there isn’t some way we are implementing D-Shot that means we are not getting more issues than beta flight boards would. It is pretty new in our code so it isn’t out of the question. It may be worth doing an upgrade to the next release as soon as it becomes available just in case.
I can say it is almost certainly not an issue with the controllers themselves.
I found that a good ground is very important to d-shot. If I did not have a twisted ground with the signal wire on the esc I would get glitches. So the shielded wire is a good idea to try.
i tried to re-solder wires today and re-routed it, and flew it twice after that - did not get a big twitch but saw couple very small ones. i will try to retest tomorrow. it is odd.
i am quite sure until i use a proper shielded cable i cannot be 100% sure if i have an interference or not.
either way betaflight or copter - dshot is just a datastream sent via dma into, well, not an uart, but, essentially, a serial device. only way to have this stream interrupted is either a dma problem, or insufficient rate of pumping stream into dma. go figure. tridge found some race condition he fixed today - i asked him but he did not respond yet, where that problem was relevant, who knows.
esc i have does not have ground pad for signal - but i can solder in an additional wire and twist it around signal wire. or, may be i will find somewhere a piece of a coax cable or something shielded and use that. it is just a royal pain to find, unfortunately, i do not understand why no one online has any 33awg or smaller shielded cables.
thats good to know about the interlock thank you
If you think there is a something going wrong with the D-shot protocol there is a way to know for sure.
If you connect the esc-telemetry you can see CRC errors per esc. If there are a lot of errors there clearly is an issue.
I’ve not flown too many hours with ardu&D-shot. But i did see some errors every flight from all esc’s.
Yep, with new blheli32 esc i will do that. Esc i have now are older blheli_s with no telemetry.
I have found thin coax cable and will resolder all today using it to feed in signal. There is also new bug fix in master to fix dshot racing condition, will see if that will do any good.
You’re right, I forgot the -32 and -S difference.
Otherwise you might even be able to check it post flight by using the passthrough and BL-heli-suite if you don’t have enough uarts.
thx for the tip, i will check it out.
i did not read much of the owl forum yet on rcgroups - is there any consensus, pros vs cons on upward or downward motor mount ways?
i have a feel with a downward mount props should end up a bit lower than a mid stack in the center, so boards should be out of the way.
the one cons of a downward mount will be, obviously, an issue to start if you land into a grassy spot… but, will see. if it is the only way to get props out of the way - it may not be much of a choice i think.
I built one Owl with motors facing up, one with motors facing down. It didn’t seem to make a noticeable difference to flight characteristics.
As a practical matter I found it was far easier to work on the quad if everything is mounted on one plate (the top one). If you have the motors on the bottom plate you’ll have the stack on the bottom plate too, but the VTX antenna, receiver antennas, and LiPo leads are likely on the top plate (assuming battery on top). Overall this wasn’t pretty, and the two plates were tied together with various wires which had to be unzipped every time I wanted to separate the plates to make a change/repair. With the motors facing down and a top mounted battery, everything can be on the top plate and it’s simple to unscrew and remove the bottom plate completely. Much easier to work on, and cleaner cabling in my experience.
This probably depends on the motors, but I found on my builds the props were roughly centered between the two plates so it didn’t really make any difference in grass landings whether the motors were top mounted or bottom.
Overall I found the Owl much better than a traditional open frame quad in this respect - I landed in long grass all the time and spent far less time untangling grass from motors than I did with an open frame quad.
a quick update on the rooster - dshot bug had nothing to do with twitching - it was indeed an issue with signal interference. it was quite a shock for me as i am not used to see such an effect having this signal wire just about of 2" long - but - after unsoldering and replacing it with a piece of 33awg coax cable i found in the garage - from the useless wifi dongle antenna - i replaced it on all corners and had a first clean flight after that - tested all modes, all fine.
one only issue now - that delicate balance of copper tapes under gps got disrupted and i no longer get old perfection of 16-19 sats locked in - tried to redo it several times after that but only got to the top of 16 sats now, but, it flies ok so i will keep it as is for now as i am tired of dealing with it.
actually, looking at the log now - it did not have a single gps glitch now, even when model was going 27 m/s (not sure why it is the limit, i would think it should have been faster) - at 75 deg angle - no gps glitches. i guess it is a good sign. at max brake angle it would drop gps from 16 to 13, then recover.
only issue i observed was an unprovoked rotation of yaw during long fast loop flying in the circle.
next model will have all wires shielded, no exceptions. it is a royal pain to deal with this copper tape.
Well done Paul,ive built a 7" quad was 5" but up it imhaving a couple of niggley little issues but will keep just working away at it,its all part of the fun,bet you had a big smile when it flew well today
yep, it felt good.
one part i really want to figure out how to do is to fit those small models with a simplistic 1 axis gimbal, as it is very difficult to deal with a camera as it can go up to 75deg pitch during max speed forward. and when at loiter - horizontal - you do not really see the ground of where you are.
i found one possible gimbal but it is unable to hold and stabilize spilt2 camera and there is no descriptions for it at all.
Sorry cant help but that is a good project going forward
You won’t find anything off the shelf for this size copter. I built a gimbal from scratch for my 250 size quad w/ a storm32 board and some motors and aluminum… It works great! But for the little 150mm copter, that’s not an option… Just the PCB for the storm32 is too big.
For your 250ish size copter, you could build one… The motors are 1806 size, if I remember correctly. (smallest gimbal motors I could find a couple years ago).
For the microcopters, maybe just an old fashioned servo gimbal would do what you want… It’s not 100% smooth, and not fast enough to get rid of little shakes. But, it will keep the camera level.
I used a servo gimbal on an older 250 size quad a few years ago. Arducopter can control it w/out anything extra. Although, that was w/ an auav board, which is a traditional px4 style flight controller. I don’t know if the mount stuff is working in chibios… plus you’ll have to find free ports for it.