Creation Factory

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

New quadcopter taking shape

One evening at a time and this new drone begins to get closer to completion. Motors installed and thread locked. Power distribution board and flight controller also installed. The next step will be to install the reprogrammed ESCs (I will check for SimonK updates), wire things together, and make a support for the battery (I'm thinking about using some folded threaded rods as a kind of cage for holding it, or something similar).

New drone, old parts

With all the changes and upgrades I performed on my current quadcopter, I realized I had about enough spare parts to build another one. The only missing thing was the frame, but this is where the fun part goes. With this I had the opportunity to build a frame from scratch after buying 1m of aluminum rod, and a 1.5 mm sheet of the same material. This resulted in a 177 gr frame, which is not too bad.

Ground Control Station

With the model aircraft hobby scaling beyond line of sight, control equipment also grows more complex and sophisticated these days. To the point where we no longer designate it of transmitter, but refer to it as "Ground Control Station".

Gathering with fellow pilots and Multicopter improvements

Most of the time I have been a lone rider in this hobby, having started from scratch on my own, since the traditional helicopters back in 2009. I would occasionally go to local air fields and try to mix in with seasoned RC airplane and helicopter pilots. But the environment would not always be too friendly, with the fixed wing guys not enjoying much the flying grass cutters.

Going higher with the flyer

After very conservative steps with this model aviation hobby, I decided to get closer to the trends, and do some updates/improvements on my quadcopter while still being careful with the budget.

Powerwheels RC conversion

I soon noticed my 20 month daughter affinity to vehicles. I wanted to give her one where she could sit and enjoy the ride, but currently most powered vehicles for infants require they are able to reach the throttle pedal and properly handle the steering wheel. So I figured out the best way would be to go remote controlled. As I already had done previous projects involving RC gear, it would be piece of cake to turn a regular electric car into a large scale RC car where a small kid could sit inside.