Here is a video of me testing my latest DIY home built mini quadcopter at a local indoor flying meetup. This quadcopter is built entirely out of wood and cowered using Oracover. It is strong and lightweight, designed for fast and agile LOS flying outdoors.
Here I am testing my homebuilt gimbal om my new APM quadcopter. It is a two axes gimbal based on the same Martinez Open Source gimbal controller and the same Quanum 2208 gimbal motors as the first APM quadcopter. I am not happy with how mush of the propellers that are visible in the video. Maybe a solution could be to extend the gimbal and landing gear further down. During this flight I used my 13-inch propellers that I cut down to about 11.5 inches.
There is still a lot of tuning to be done. In the video I fly with propellers that are a little to small (10 inch), this results in sluggish yaw behavior. The 13 inch propellers in the images where to large, they caused the copter to be a little unstable and fly strange due to the low RPM. Currently the camera is hard-mounted, but this copter will carry a gimbal when it is complete. I do have problems with “altitude hold mode” on the APM. Maybe this is because I fly with wrong sized propellers, or there is wind blowing on the sensor.
I am building a new quadcopter frame for my Ardupilot. Hopefully the frame will be lighter and a lot more agile. I went with a more traditional frame-design this time as you can see in the images. This quad will use the same motors and ESCs as my previus APM quad. The GoPro gimbal will be mounted underneath the main plate, and it will be easily detachable if I want to fly without a camera. There will also be possible to attach other things such as a hard-mounted camera or an FPV-module.
Version 2 of my FPV Quadcopter Racing Simulator adds soundeffects. I have also placed a number of gates around the world to fly trough, and added more trees and grass and flowers to make the world more interesting. In this video I fly using an xbox360 controller, but it should work with any controller, including real “RC simulator transmitters”.
Download version 2 here and try it for yourself (requires decent gaming grade graphics card): FPV racing quadcopter simulator download page
This time i try to chase after my new small 260 size quad, and an airplane. Parts of the video is in slow motion.
In this video I am testing a new gimbal design again. This time I have mounted the gimbal to the fuselage using silicon hoses to reduce motor vibrations. This did remove almost all vibrations. To the APM quadcopter page: APM quadcopter page
This video shows a full autonomous flight with my APM quadcopter. The flight starts with a takeoff up to 20 meters, then the quadcopter flies through 10 “spline” waypoints before returning to the launch position for an autonomous landing.
A new compilation video shot from my home built APM quadcopter. In this video I am testing a new gimbal design again. It is not perfect, there are still some vibrations. I think I need to mount the gimbal to the fuselage with some sort of rubber dampeners. The silicone hoses between the frame and the fuselage are not enough.
