Tricopter Progress

Spontaneous Projects is a chronicle of all of my projects, a reference for me, and a way to prevent others from making the same mistakes. 

So, last week I ordered $330 worth of RC equipment from HobbyKing's Australian warehouse to build a Tricopter, with the intention of using it as a mobile filming platform.

At the moment I'm only partway through the build, having only completed parts of the electronics, as the Flight Controller mainboard arrived with an out-of-whack y-gyro which prevents it from powering up properly. It did allow me to test the transmitter/receiver components, and I was able to test the motors independently, but the full build will have to wait until the board gets replaced - hopefully under warranty, but I'll buy another one if need be.

I found the following sites invaluable in the planning of this project, and the component selection:
http://www.averticalview.com/files/tricopter_build.pdf
http://rcexplorer.se/projects/2011/09/the-tricopter-v2-5/
The latter also links to some interesting First Person View transmitters which may be applied further in the future, once I have the money to build such a setup.

I ordered all the components to build a quadcopter, but the plan is to start with a tri, with some spare parts, and only make a quad if it won't lift a set of ay-up lights and some filming equipment.

Parts list:

Parts list -- you only need 1 pack of MM servo leads (10cm), and for a quad I recommend another 10 pack of bullet connectors. 

In addition to this parts list a 12V power supply is required, I happen to have one, and the charger uses clips, so the exact power supply is not important. The KK2 FC board has an in-built battery tone as I understand it, so the battery monitor isn't required, although I will likely use it to monitor batter state prior to flights as it has a 4 state indicator, rather than the 2 state of the FC. Likewise the UBEC is probably surplus, as a few extra wires could power the receiver off a speed controller.

The basic wiring diagram is shown below, in hindsight I'd use the x60 connectors on all 12v connections in order to allow changes of components, and bullets on all of the motor connections.

I'll go through the exact input and output connections in a later post when I can check them, as well as a few pictures of the build.