RC Multirotors 101:Building and Setup with

APM Mission Planner

Speaker: Aaron Buma

www.AaronBuma.com

www.BellinghamAerialMedia.com

aaron@bellinghamaerialmedia.com

Aaron BumaPersonal: AaronBuma.com

Business: BellinghamAerialMedia.com

Contact: aaron@BellinghamAerialMedia.comTwitter: @AaronDBuma

LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/pub/AaronBuma

Agenda

• A little history

• Overview of parts

• How to put together

• Resources – Parts and Community

• Questions

• APM Mission Planner Walkthrough

Multirotors – Quick History

• First one 1923 …. A little better in 1956 ….

• Development on multirotors started early late 90’s and early 2000’s?

• Increasing Market growth – DJI (about a billion dollar value), 3D Robotics

Multirotors - Parts

• Frames

• Power Distribution Board or Harness

• Electronic Speed Controllers

• Motors

• Propellers

• Batteries

• BEC and Voltage Regulators

• Flight Controller

• Transmitter and Receive

Multirotors – Frame Configurations

• X or H format

• Has 4 or 8 motors

• Redundancy on with 8, but at a loss of efficiency

• Simplest to build and manage

• Front cameras can have propellers or propeller shadows in-view (DJI Phantom)

Multirotors – Frame Configurations

• Y - format

• Has 3 or 6 motors

• Redundancy on with 6, but at a loss of efficiency

• More complex than X setup, due to rear rotor(s) requirement to rotate to turn

• Clearer front-facing view for cameras

Multirotors – Frame Configurations

• Hexa and Octo formats

• Flat layout, Hexarotor has 6 or 12 motors, Octorotor has 8 or 16 motors (heavy lifting!)

• Redundancy inherent to design, most Flight controllers handle motor loss well.

• Complexity not too bad, all motors are stationary and most FC’s have 6 or 8 outputs

• Cameras are mounted below main section

Frames – Planning the build

• Purpose of multirotor: Aerial Photography? Park fun? Endurance record flight times?

• How redundant should it be?

• Size: micro or full-size?

• Folding frame or not?

• Case available?

Power Distribution Board or Harness

• Transfers power from the battery to the motors, flight controller, camera etc

• Basic PDBs – solder wires, or bullet connectors, to them, the have not voltage regulators or Battery Elimination Circuits (BEC)

• Fancy PDBs – starting to see them online, they have 12v output and built in BECs

• Integrated PDB – Some frames (ex: TBS Discovery) have PDB’s built in

Electronic Speed Controllers (ESC)

• Required for brushless motors

• Has 3 wires, two for power (connected to PDB) and a servo wire (3 smaller wires) that connect to flight controller

• ESCs control the RPMs for which the motor spins

• Amperage ratings - Check propeller and motor setup Amp requirements

Electronic Speed Controllers (ESC) - Continued

• Firmwares – Allow for various tweaks and settings

• SimonK – most performant, ESC’s with this pre-flashed on them are available

• Mostly flash-able

• DJI’s are locked (E300, E600, E800 tuned ESC/Motor sets)

• Tuning/Setup –

• Programming Cards - ~$20-30

• With Tx/Rx – Tone and beep based menu

• Individually vs All-At-Once

• Throttle Range setup required

Motors

• Kv rating

• Higher Kv - meant for and most efficient with: smaller and higher speed propellers

• 2600kv with 5” props

• Lower Kv – meant for and most efficient with: larger and slower speed propellers

• 300 Kv with 20” props

• Propeller diameter, pitch and design play a factor in picking the motor

• “Pancake” – Larger diameter, most efficient at a slower more powerful spin

Motors

Propellers

• ABS

• Pros: Inexpensive ($2/$3 each), durable, easy to balance

• Cons: Flexible, twice the weight as carbon fiber (in my personal experience)

• Carbon Composite

• Pros: Cheaper than straight Carbon Fiber (CF), lighter than ABS

• Cons: A middle-ground between ABS and CF with middle-ground on cost, performance and durability

• Carbon Fiber

• Pros: Stiff and light – most efficient

• Cons: EXPENSIVE – A set (1 CC and 1 CW) Tmotor ~$40-$$$

Propellers - Continued

• Balancing

• Wear and tear, ‘jello’ in pictures/video, efficiency cost

• Cheaper Props usually means more balancing required

• Balance blades AND shaft hub

• My balancer: Du-Bro

Batteries – Lipo’s

DO-NOT’s

• Don’t charge over 4.2 (extreme danger)

• Don’t discharge (fly) or charge until battery is at room temp after either

• Don’t discharge lower than ~3.3v (this damages the battery)

• Don’t keep a ‘puffy’ lipo around (extreme danger)

DO’s

• DO USE A FIREPROOF LIPO BAG, or metal ammo can, fire proof safe etc.

• DO charge with a lipo charger, USB ones overcharge and puff your lipos

• DO Follow the instructions on how to charge a lipo with said charger

• DO Keep sand on hand, water will not put it out.

Batteries - Continued

• “S” rating – Number of cells in the battery

• 3.7v per cell (4.2 fully charged): 4s battery outputs 16.8v fully charged

• Micro quads (ex. Hubsan X4, Cheerson CX10) have 1s, or 1 cell Lipos

• Larger Multirotors have multiple 6s, 8s or even 10s batteries

• Mah rating – Milliamp Hours

• Ex. 4200 Mah – capacity of battery

• “C” rating

• Until Lipo technology improves, it is generally unsafe to charge faster than 1C (or at the capacity-per-hour of the battery)

BEC and Voltage Regulators

• BEC – Battery Elimination Circuit aka Power Filter

• ESC’s and Motors create electronic ‘noise’ that anything in the power circuit feels

• Can cause First Person View (FPV) feeds to be fuzzy when you start your motors

• BEC’s create ‘clean’ power

• Basic Setup: Battery->PDB->BEC->Components

BEC and Voltage Regulators

• Voltage Regulator / Stepper – Outputs a set steady voltage

• Components usually don’t have internal voltage limiters

• Check the voltage requirements

• Avoid releasing the magic blue smoke that makes electronics work

• Voltage examples:

• Gimbal Controller board: 12v

• FPV Cameras: 5v to 12v (camera specific)

• Video Transmitter: 12v

Flight Controller aka “The Brains”

• Combines inputs from pitch, roll, yaw, horizontal and vertical accelerometers, GPS receivers, controller receivers to keep control of the aircraft.

• Is connected to the receiver either a per-channel cables or via SBUS (all the channels on one cable)

• Is powered by BEC/PF component or powered via one of the power connections from a ESC (if that ESC has a BEC built in)

• It’s really FC dependent: DJI has a DJI-specific component (powered off of the PDB), 3DRobotics has one you plug in-line with the battery and PDB

Flight Controllers Simple Comparison

• Locked/Expensive: DJI Naza M Lite, Naza V2, Wookong?

• Plug and play, but no tuning, “DJI dance required”

• Reliability Question: Flyaway, Grounded until locked firmware updates

• Eagle Tree Systems – has plug and play customizable OSD

• ArduoPilot (APM Pilot)

• Open-Source

• Fully Featured

• Fully Configurable

• Full Code Accessibility

• Many Hardware Vendors

Transmitter and Receiver

• Starting out, it’s best to buy a Transmitter/Receiver combo (Tx/Rx). There are a few Tx and Rx types and they only will work with one of similar type.

• Follow the binding instructions included with the set, they are really simple to set up.

• Frequency

• Most common is 2.4GHz and further range and obstacle penetration is required, UHF is used.

• Channels – Use at least a 6 channel Tx/Rx set

• Each of the pitch, roll, yaw, throttle require a channel (that’s 4 so far)

• All flight controllers have multiple flight modes (another channel, now up to 5)

Other Components

• On-Screen-Display (OSD) – used to display telemetry (altitude, gps, voltage, heading ETC).

• Gimbals and Gimbal Controllers

• FPV Systems (Camera, VTX), Goggles and Monitors

• Groundstations (VRx, TV’s)

• Dipole, Cloverleaf, Yagi other antenna types

Basic Tools Needed to Build

• Small set of Phillips and Flathead screw drivers

• Metric and Standard Allen

• Soldering Iron with solder

• “Helping Hands” (Harbor Freight)

• Wire cutters/strippers

• Heat-shrink Tubing (Harbor Freight)

• A lighter or heat gun for the tubing

So how do all these parts go together?

?

Step 1: Frame Assembly

Step 2: Mount Motors

Step 2: ESC’s to Motors• Don’t worry about direction of rotation

• If wrong, swap any two ESC wires to reverse motor direction.

Step 3: Power Harness ( without a PDB)

Step 3: Power Harness (with a PDB)

Step 3: Power Harness ( with frame-based PDB’s)

Step 4: Connect ESCs to Flight Controller

Step 5: Controller RX to FC

Step 6: Connect to FC Software and Calibrate

• Visit manufacturer site to get correct drivers

• Verify controller connectivity

• Update firmware

• Calibrate compass (process varies per FC)

• Calibrate Accelerometers

• Calibrate controller modes/sticks/switches

• Set up initial flight modes

Step 7: Verify Motor Rotation

• Take/keep propellers off!

• Most Flight Controller software will have ability to test rotation of motors to verify that the ESC’s are wired correctly.

• If you can’t verify it via software, you’ll just have to test via throttling up.

Step 8: Test flight/Tune

• In a SAFE area!!!

• Let FC set its GPS location, this can take a while if it hasn’t done it recently

• Verify that it is ready via LED output or tones based on FC

• Do not learn to fly with it in GPS mode! Use it as an aid later, not a crutch from the start!

• Or use a test rig:

Parts and Community Resources

Parts – Online Stores• ReadyMadeRC.com

• GetFPV.com

• GotHeliRC.com

• Amazon.com

• HobbyKing and Banggood

• Non-US based = higher shipping

• YMMV – I hear constant complaints about product and service

Community

• Facebook Group – Quadcopters

• RCGroups.com

• Reddit Subs: Quadcopters, Multirotors, FPV, Multicopter, RadioControl, DIYDrones, MultiCopterBuildsx

WATCH OUT It’s addicting ;)

Any Questions so far?

• Next up: APM Mission Softare walkthrough (sorry, no flying)