The Stealth Cometh...

[arturios]

Well, this is going to be my first sub 250 build. Thanks to Tupoar and his confounded 3D printer, I will be building a FPV quad. The quad is a 220 printed frame from the Rock Lobster prototype designed by... Tupoar. This is the Stealth Lobster (thanks JT).

I intend to document the build as I go along. So without much ado, here I go:

Frame: RCD-1 Lobster (Stealth)
FC: CC3D
ESCs: Emax 12a Simon Series
Motors: ZMR 1804-2400KV
Rx: FrSky D4R-II 4ch (PPM)

Video
FPV Cam: Sony CCD 700TVL (2.8mm)
Rec Camera: Mobius (Wide Angle)
vTx: Eachine 32ch

Batteries: 1300mAh (ideal but will have to experiment with).

For starters, whilst still waiting for some standoffs from the United States of China, I have temporarily put the frame together to get a visual on where all the components will sit in the frame. Here are some photos to wet your appetite.

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More later...

[arturios]

Yesterday, I actually started the build.

PDB mounted on bottom plate with nylon 4x M3 nylon screws and 8 x nylon nuts. The 4 x pillars were made up of 6mm spacers & 2mm nuts. The metal screws are 12mm length, so they are long enough to go through the middle plate and lock onto the upper spacers for the top plate :





Initial construct for the FC mount on the Middle plate:





The USB port on the CC3D needed clearance with this construction. Then decided to use the FC mount plate with bobbins resulting in the FC sitting too high and would result in the motor cables grazing the bottom of the top plate - no no no! So reverted to just using the screw & nut hard mount as I had originally planned. No harm in trying things, be prepared to adjust accordingly
:


Mounted the ESCs and legs, orientation previously sorted with trusty Los servo tester, and soldered. Cable tied to keep in place.





Realised I only had IP65 White LEDs in my bin of bits that would fit. I also have some RGB LEDs but they are too long by 5cm to fit on the LED bumpers which are only 5cm long. For now both back and front are white LEDs but will change them at a later date to blue at front and red back. The cables are long enough to allow for modification due to the PDB being at the bottom and would be rather stressful to to strip the quad down just to resolder.



Happy with the soldering as I';ve changed the crappy maplin point tip to a flat tip. I learned to solder with a flat tip years ago, less time with the tip on components.





Bottom part completed, vTx power soldered on, bolted down, connected all servos to FC and connected battery - BOOM, sizzle, sizzle!!!

Nope! [emoji28] ESCs sang like a good';un!




By this point, I had been at it for a while and thought it would be a good time to stop and have another session connecting the FrSky Rx, the VTx & camera board. I have two cameras, one CMOS and the other Sony CCD that I had originally bought for the Build. The CMOS came with the 32ch Eachine vTx.

CMOS for now to test:

[arturios]

We have FPV:


Using this vTx kit:
http://m.banggood.com/Eachine-700TVL-13-Cmos-FPV-110-Degree-Camera-w32CH-Transmission-p-965760.html

Did a quick test, went outside to set range - check. Tried to walk back in with goggles on  - missus had to intervene. I can see why people get nausea. Will get used to it especially sitting still.

Image on monitor a bit fisheyed. Due to either the 110deg lens, or the fresnel lens needs adjusting or a bit of both. I';ll tinker a bit later.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[JT]

 Looking good art You will like FPV it';s much more fun..... And  for getting your cool ramones T shirt in  ::)

[arturios]

Looking good art You will like FPV it';s much more fun..... And  for getting your cool ramones T shirt in  ::)

Thanks JT Looking forward to it ::)

[arturios]

GRRRR 

My woes started when I accidentally reversed polarity on one of my Emax 12a ESCs and needless to say, magic smoke appeared. I bought another from BG, it worked the first time, programmed it using the Emax programmer to correspond with the other three ESCs, connected to OpenPilot and... stutter, stutter, stutter   

Hooked up with Tupoar later that day for a bit of trouble shooting, using a spare motor and came to the conclusion it was the ESC. Emailed BG and sent them a copy of this video:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rok4pe2hyw4222l/2015-05-13%2016.18.22.mp4?dl=0

They promptly sent me another (gawd bless ';em), which arrived today. First thing I did was to program the ESC to the same settings as the other three like so:

1 = 1, 2= 3, 3= 3, 4= 1, 5= 1, 6= 4, 7= 1
(sorry for the numerics but i';m a little tired now and can';t be bothered to write the actual values)

All good so far, till I connected the lipo and servo tester to get the correct rotation and.... stutter, stutter... yep you got it!

This led me to rethink the settings value as I had only one to change on the new replacement ESC. Item 3 was originally ';A'; (which so happens to be 10 on the programmer), so I changed that back to ';A'; and boom - motor spun up. All good so far. So I decided to test the first ESC I thought was faulty and reprogram it with the same settings as the new one - it worked. Spent the next few hours lazily rebuilding the quad (pork scratchings and cider during the intervals). Got the Tx out and tested only to find that only three motors spun rapidly, whilst the troublesome fourth motor was rather erratic and was out of sync with the others.

I then reprogrammed all the other ESCs to the troublesome one to see if this would help - nope, same as!!! 

So, the problem is not actually with the motor or ESC (I also used a spare motor to test), the issue is with the firmware. the original ESCs came from Tupoar and have had one version of firmware which so happens not to be the same as the stock on the replacements. So until I can get the firmware updated to the identical one on the other three, the Lobster is a bit of a lame duck at the moment. I dont have the setup to flash ESCs.

All is not lost, as I have my AP rig which is coming along quite nicely ::)

[quadfather]

...
This led me to rethink the settings value as I had only one to change on the new replacement ESC. Item 3 was originally ';A'; (which so happens to be 10 on the programmer), so I changed that back to ';A'; and boom - motor spun up. All good so far. So I decided to test the first ESC I thought was faulty and reprogram it with the same settings as the new one - it worked. Spent the next few hours lazily rebuilding the quad (pork scratchings and cider during the intervals). Got the Tx out and tested only to find that only three motors spun rapidly, whilst the troublesome fourth motor was rather erratic and was out of sync with the others.

I then reprogrammed all the other ESCs to the troublesome one to see if this would help - nope, same as!!! 

So, the problem is not actually with the motor or ESC (I also used a spare motor to test), the issue is with the firmware. the original ESCs came from Tupoar and have had one version of firmware which so happens not to be the same as the stock on the replacements. So until I can get the firmware updated to the identical one on the other three, the Lobster is a bit of a lame duck at the moment. I dont have the setup to flash ESCs.

All is not lost, as I have my AP rig which is coming along quite nicely ::)

I was gonna say that';s a very low start force.  But you have sussed it yourself.

Regarding firmware updates, I';m not aware of a way to flash EMAX firmwares to these ESCs.  I have sent an email to EMAX some time ago asking if an official firmware is available but never received a response.  Your post prompted me to send another.   

I have a number of these 12A ESCs and also find that they don';t quite match.  For example, throttle calibration routinely fails if done through the flight controller (Naze or CC3D), and even if done through the RX directly they still don';t match perfectly, i.e. starting up within 20 us of each other.  Not something I ever experienced with Afros.

You have the option to flash BLHeli to these ESCs.  That would actually give you OneShot if not much else, but at least you';d know that you have the same firmware on all ESCs.

[arturios]

I was gonna say that';s a very low start force.  But you have sussed it yourself.

Regarding firmware updates, I';m not aware of a way to flash EMAX firmwares to these ESCs.  I have sent an email to EMAX some time ago asking if an official firmware is available but never received a response.  Your post prompted me to send another.   

I would love to know how you get on but I think the lesson here is to move away from Silab SimonWannabe to something more reliable/predictable. I need to brush up on my nonexistent firmware updating skills.

I have a number of these 12A ESCs and also find that they don';t quite match.  For example, throttle calibration routinely fails if done through the flight controller (Naze or CC3D), and even if done through the RX directly they still don';t match perfectly, i.e. starting up within 20 us of each other.  Not something I ever experienced with Afros.

I have a set of 4 x 20A SimonSeries and they annoy the hell out of me. With Afros, when I lost one, I simply bought another and they all synced nicely. Indicating that theres a serious compatibility issue and one cannot rely on simply replacing ';a'; component, all have to be replaced 

You have the option to flash BLHeli to these ESCs.  That would actually give you OneShot if not much else, but at least you';d know that you have the same firmware on all ESCs.

As I said above, lack of firmware updating knowledge and tools, or else all my emax stock would already be sitting pretty on SK or BLHeli. I like things to work. What';s the point of buying something, only to engineer it for the manufacturer? I';d rather buy something else from the off. Nevertheless, I have these, will persevere and will succeed in getting the lobster in the air.  ::)

[quadfather]

I would love to know how you get on but I think the lesson here is to move away from Silab SimonWannabe to something more reliable/predictable. I need to brush up on my nonexistent firmware updating skills.

I';ll do a post if I ever get a response.  I imagine that a few people are interested to know.

As I said above, lack of firmware updating knowledge and tools, or else all my emax stock would already be sitting pretty on SK or BLHeli. I like things to work. What';s the point of buying something, only to engineer it for the manufacturer? I';d rather buy something else from the off. Nevertheless, I have these, will persevere and will succeed in getting the lobster in the air.  ::)

Gerry has done a nice tutorial for flashing BLHeli to SiLabs ESCs here.  All you need is an Arduino.  Most of them will work, he used a Nano in his guide which you can pick up for a couple of quid on eBay or BG.  If you can part with your ESCs for a couple of days at some point I';d be happy to flash them for you.

Anyway,  she';s a beaut!  I';m looking forward to the maiden video.

[arturios]

Cheers Quadfather. I have looked at Gerry';s tutorial a while back, will have to have a look at it again. I do have an arduino uno though. ::)

Let me get back to london (long weekend with the inlaws), and I might just take up your offer to help flash these ESCs.

[tupoar]

Bro, I can also help you when I get back. I have an uno ready to roll and can take you through the process.

[arturios]

See you when you get back bro