Work-in-progress

I’m stuck right now because the PCB I bought doesn’t fit on my frame (round peg, square hole problem) so I ordered another one and am waiting for it to arrive (and my local postman is a fucking idiot who can’t figure out “16th floor” means “put it in the mail slot for 1600”). We decided to assemble the motor system so we could figure out what direction the props were spinning in — you need 2 to spin clockwise and the other 2 to spin counter-clockwise.

We soldered the ESC to the motor, plugged the receiver into the ESC, and used some alligator clips to connect the battery to the ESC. Then we turned on a transmitter for the first time! It was super exciting when, minutes later, we had a motor spinning!

The problem was that the motors were (mostly) all spinning the same direction, which was bad because we thought we’d crossed enough wires to have half spin the other direction. We starred at them for a long while. Russ had 1 motor that was spinning counter-clockwise, and we couldn’t figure out how it was different from another one that was wired identically, but was spinning clockwise. Until I noticed that one of the two ESCs was upside down (it’s just a bundle of wires and micro-controller wrapped in black electrical tape…). Russ unsoldered it, and re-did it right side up and it spun counter-clockwise! He’d accidentally done one of his correctly!

Unfortunately, I’d accidentally done none of mine correctly, so I spent some time right it all.

Hoping my PCB comes in soon so I can assemble the brains of the copter!

(Using terms possibly wrong: every writer/blogger I read says “PCB” and I didn’t know what that stood for. It’s “printed circuit board”. Which is correct…but not nearly specific enough. In this context, the PCB is a “power distribution board” and should be initialismed “PDB”. But no one does, that I can see.)

I like typing, and I hope you like reading, so I’m going to write a bit about a new hobby for the winter – First Person View drone racing.

The hobby, for me, starts a lot earlier than actually racing with actual FPV. About a month ago Russ asked if I wanted to get into this. The price seemed right (like all hobbies, the price was a lie), so why not. We started from this article, which outlines all of the things you need to build a really inexpensive drone from parts. Which is why I’m writing about it here, because it involves building things!

The price started at $250ish USD, as the article says. We got the parts shipped from Banggood, no problem. I told Russ that I needed to focus on the ring first, as without the ring my wedding was going to end up a disaster and that took priority! We got started on this while waiting for the ring investment to bake. 🙂

The article pretty much outlines the parts you start with, so go read it rather than me writing it all down in summary again.

A pile of parts. My first task was to figure out what bits I needed first, and what I needed last, because I need to get this pile organized before I can start.

Russ and I set out the bits in a draft circuit, like this.

The battery connects to the power distribution board (aka a PCB). The ESC (electronic speed control) connects to the PCB for power, and the flight controller for instructions. The ESC connects on the other side to the motor. The flight controller connects on the other side to the receiver, which gets instructions from the transmitter (not shown).

You need 1 battery, 1 PCB, 4 ESCs, 4 motors, 1 flight controller and 1 receiver. Oh, and a frame. And tools to put it all together.

We assembled and re-assembled the frame a few times. Because the base is made of 2 layers, sometimes I needed to get a screwdriver into that thin area between them, so I had to take it all apart again. It’s a lot of screws to take the base plate off!

When we had our little panic moment with the ring, the drone was left like this. I’d screwed the flight controller into a little bed so it wasn’t directly touching the frame (something about vibration control) and had screwed one of the motors onto one of the legs.

I still need to figure out exactly where my PCB is going, because the more I look at it, the more it doesn’t fit at all in this frame. Some minor futzing around is necessary.

Russ and I are each building our own planes, so by the time we’re done we’ll have one each to go fly around. 🙂

The last thing to mention, and the part about the price being a lie, is that I needed to buy a transmitter. So I could control the thing. Turns out the transmitter of best use was $170, and the receiver component was $70! Almost doubling the cost of the rest of the parts!

Building things is wicked fun! I’m stoked to sit and solder things together to build a little plane! 😀