Show us your multi-rotors!!

[HitNRun]

Now i'm dealing with pulsating motors. It just never ends, lol.
My X900 tricopter is almost finished. Just waiting on some radial prop adapters and she's ready to fly!
The KK2 bards are so much easier to deal with than those MultiWii boards hahahahaha!

[HitNRun]

Here's a picture of the X900 Tricopter.
Once my 4000mah 30C lipo gets here from HK, we'll be in business!

Meanwhile, a cute little 1300mah nano-tech that looks lost on that huge tricopter, lol.
Hmm.... "night flying optional" hahahahaha!

[tomapowa]

Calibration of the ESCs is vital to stability (as well as balanced hubs/props of course )...
Meant to ask, what ESCs are you using" I'll only use ESCs with SImonK firmware... fastest and precise, especially for stability of multis. I'd tried many other ESC and they just never cut it. There are ways to flash some existing ESCs with SimonK firmware but they sell SImonK ESC fairly cheaply...

These from HobbyKing are a pretty decent deal, though I never tried them...
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor ... fgodZ2cA3A

These are the ESCs I use:
http://www.rctimer.com/product_876.html

[HitNRun]

It's Carlos's quad. It has one of those "4X25A Quadro ESC blocks". His son's quad has the same one and it runs super smooth. (cough.. with a KK2 board.. cough)
I've calibrated the ESC's a couple of times... (better safe than sorry) and they fire up exactly at the same time and even the start up beeps are perfectly in sync.

I'm thinking it might be a firmware issue..... They have a beta version available that I tried to load to the board with Arduino but there are parameters that must be added, and i'm still new to it so I get lost easily hahahaha. I set it for a quad X configuration... but then it says there are other GPS errors or something... So I just went back to version 2.2 which was working fine up until I tried to throttle up the motors for it's first test run in the garage.

On a happier note.... i've got my tricopter almost ready to maiden. Just waiting on some prop adapters and then i'm golden!
I also built another balsa quadcopter from hobbyking this evening. It was pretty easy and basic as far as putting it together with NO directions, hahaha.
The landing gear on it is a complete joke and will surely break after a couple of less than flawless landings... so i'm going to make my own.

It's got a pretty sweet camera gimbal too.
Still working on that part at the moment.

And yes... I know the landing skids are on sideways, hahahahaha!
Like I said... NO directions were in the box and I have no idea where the kit came from.

Until I looked on hobbyking after the fact.....

[HitNRun]

I'm going to tell Carlos about thse ESC's. I've read a lot in the forums about the SimonK versions being the way to go with quads, but i'm just working with what Carlos hands to me. KInda "making do" with what i've got in front of me for now.... BUT, i'm going to shw these to him since they're so inexpensive, he may very well just grab a handful of them for his quad.

[HitNRun]

I'm about to throw in the towel on that MultiWii Pro board... now it's not responding to anything AGAIN... the only thing it did, was sit overnight... What gives!

I had to walk away from it before I threw the darn thing in my garbage disposal........
I'm about to take the KK2 board out of my tricopter and put it in his quad at this point.

Maybe Carlos would consider a MultiWii Lite? Can I just plug it in and fly? Or do you have to mess around with the program on that one too?

[tomapowa]

Yeh Ben, there's a little setting up to do on the code and configuration. After building my first 450 quad, the others I built were a breeze, simply copied code/setup from one to another, with a few little tweaks here and there due to frame, blades, etc... I also tend to use 10" CF props... much stiffer, less noise, incredible lift and they run very "true". Plastic props tend to wobble in the wind upsetting the gyros/accelerometers... You can tweak this in code but doing so reduced performance and stability, so it's best to reduce vibration wherever you can (blade balancing is key I tell everyone).

In the past, I have had issues with simply running the MultiWii software on a Windows 7 laptop (i7) using Java. Not sure the issue but it does OK on my older XP laptop. Not sure if this is a Java thing or not... I tried everything but a complete OS reload on that Win7 laptop...

[HitNRun]

I ended up trying Carlos's 2nd MultiWii Pro that he had purchased... got the very same result. So it's definitely all about adjusting the settings in the board itself.
But i'm on a tight schedule... he wants something to fly for Saturday, so I threw a KK2.0 (V1.6) and wouldn't ya know it... flies fine!

Not nearly as stable as the MultiWii would ave been... but still decent when using the "self-level" on it.
He'll probably crash it... lol.

Hopefully nobody loses an eye at the gym this weekend, hahahahaha!
I've got my tricopter basically ready... but of course THAT'S giving me problems now as well.

For whatever reason, the front left motor pulses when you throttle up. I tried switching it out with an identical motor but it still does the exact same thing.
Weird... the other two motors throttle up nicely.

I know the video quality is horrid, but maybe you might see something from it's behavior and be able to pinpoint it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY7WQ-a ... e=youtu.be

Carlos has an Ardu Pilot Mega board too. He comes over earlier today.. says... "I have some auto pilot board or something"... I look at it and my jaw fell to the floor. I was like... that's the board Tom loves!!

That one's going in his next quadcopter. He's getting a H.A.L. from hobbyking.
And he ordered a bunch of SimonK flashed ESC's as well.

But he keeps getting the cheapy flexible hobbyking SF props.... so trying to make everything balanced is almost pointless...
Funny.. his son's SK450 quad flies great! Go figure.....

[HitNRun]

And the tricopter is down!
Someone in the forums said, "take it outside and try it... it may just be prop wash that's giving you issues"

Yeah well... nope! I took it up about 4 feet... it did a tight forward loop.. and smashed into the ground and broke off the front left motor mount.
So that's out of commission for awhile...

Looks like it's just gonna be Carlos's quad and his sons quad tomorrow evening.
And our fleet of WL-Toys quadcopters and heli's

[tomapowa]

Aw bummer!... wonder what the problem was... I'm not familiar with the KK boards but do they also have programmable settings like for gain and such? Looks like it possibly was amplifying some vibration... usually this when you see excessive pulsing (unless you have a bad motor and/or ESC which is unlikely).

Crap!... I was hoping to go fly at the gym tomorrow but I have band practice tomorrow evening (was suppose to be Sunday but we moved it because of the pending crappy weather).... maybe next time...