I don`t see much point or a screw by screw thread, so Ill skip the first 1 1/2 hours of the build and show the basic frame built ( no threadlock )
I`m really impressed with the quality of the carbon plates. They are very strong, nicely cut, couldn`t be happier ...................
The landing gear however ......................
That may look like 4 points of contact, but its only three, under the center screw it is not attached to the skid. This means that all the weight is going to be put on just 10mm or carbon I predict they break almost instantly.
Here`s a close up of the frame though and the fixings, really nice
There is a plate that screws on the bottom plate. I have plans for that rear opening and with the top plate being identical I mounted the bottom plate on the top so the Naza was on the COG instead of a useless big hole.
This left the opening below :
As you can see I installed spacers, this is so I could mount the KK power board, but have the board lower so my cables could easily be routed under it as well.
I had a chap called Paul ( madoldgit ) on RCGroups make some stickers to go with my RCTimer motors. The motors have turned up so both went on :
I hope these motors work out, the pancake style in my opinion look really cool
UHF Rx and GPS went on as well as the Naza :
ESC`s turned up !!!!!!! Finally !!!!!!!!!
So I could finally wire the motors up, finally get the directions right, finally solder the power board up and finally start the motors up for the first time
ESC`s in, I tried to get them as neat and subtle as I could.
The front :
Underneath you can see for its size there is still not a lot of room to play with. Then fixing everything down needs a fair bit of thinking to avoid the moving parts so it is still foldable.
A quick system check to make sure everything was running the right way and then I could get the props on
Flying weight with 4S 5000mah lipo is 2.4kg
Still the battery tray missing :(But apart from that, its ready to rock n roll
Last edited by Coyote on Sun Jan 05, 2014 1:12 pm; edited 5 times in total
Coyote Forum Admin
Posts : 275 Reputation : 5 Join date : 2010-11-07 Age : 45 Location : Redcar
Subject: Re: Coyote`s Tarot FY680 Sun Jan 05, 2014 12:56 pm
This reply is sort of a note for myself more than anything.
I had the timer set to count up and just did mild flying waiting for the lipo alarm to go off and land to see how long my 5000mah 4S would give me.
Instead, no alarm went off, but out of the blue my Hex landed all by itself with no input from me. I immediately though bugger I`ve killed the lipo because I had low voltage protection turned off. As it turned out when I got back it was in fact on, so it had landed itself.
The values were :
Total flight time before auto land : 7:20 On landing 37% of lipo still remained Cells were 3.8 3.77 3.78 3.8 Charger put 2845ma back in leaving 1155ma available
2845 gave 7 mins 20 ( 440 seconds ) so 6.5ma per second 1155 left means an additional 2mins 57 seconds ( 177 seconds )
So in theory 10 mins 17 flight time leaving 20% of a 5000mah 4S
So I still had 0.1v to loose from each cell so I could drop my low voltage value by 0.4v I have reprogrammed this for the 0.4v and will try again, with lipo alarm still on and see how much longer I get while still saving 20% of the lipo`s capacity.
Adding the second lipo will not exactly double it of course, but I would think 15 mins is no problem.
Coyote Forum Admin
Posts : 275 Reputation : 5 Join date : 2010-11-07 Age : 45 Location : Redcar
Subject: Re: Coyote`s Tarot FY680 Sun Jan 05, 2014 12:57 pm
A lot has and is going to change with the Tarot.
Gimbal wise I have been testing one of Marcin`s prototypes for him :
Its fantastic, took me a while to get my head around the PID tuning of the brushless gimbal board but got there eventually :
But I`m not happy with the GoPro footage, the one is old now and so much has moved on since the GoPro 1 was released, so I looked at a better alternative to use.
I decided the Nex 5N was going to be my weapon of choice so got one for a good price second hand off ebay
Of course this is going to need a much bigger gimbal so I went for the Goodluckbuy version :
So that`s the camera and gimbal sorted, the camera arrived, very impressed with it and the footage just taken today indoors, it blows the GoPro away.
I will need to preview the shots to frame them, but the Nex 5N only outputs HDMI so I bought a converter too :
Then ordered a super thin HDMI cable to go from the camera to the converter.
Updates to follow
Coyote Forum Admin
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Subject: Re: Coyote`s Tarot FY680 Sun Jan 05, 2014 12:58 pm
The HDMI converter is nice, lovely image, so I pulled it part Stripped the box off, then the RCA sockets as I didn't really need them so I just had the board left.
The Goodluckbuy gimbal turned up as well, looked lovely, total pile of pooh though lol It wouldn't balance, the dampers were too soft and the whole thing wobbled like crazy the whole time. I tried a few different ways to get reasonable results but for £140 its rubbish and I would not recommend it at all.
The motors supplied are equally as rubbish, no torque at all and certainly not enough for a Nex camera. I took them off and rewound them myself to higher specs, but still they just can not deliver the power needed even with a perfectly balanced camera, they would move the gimbal as it should in static tests, but as soon as it was in the air the roll motor just couldn't hold on and it failed every single time.
With the Nex on the Hex the camera sits very very low, too low really, so I wanted to extend the legs, I ordered 12mm carbon arms for the Tarot which double up as extended legs being so much longer. I also ordered replacement landing gear to get rid of the naff and weak Tarot stock aluminum offering.
$3.59 and great, easy to fit, original landing skids slide an lock straight in, much much stronger
The long legs were then fitted and I cut 2" off the length because they were a wee bit too long really :
The gimbal + modifications to get it to actually balance, the gimbal though is coming off as soon as I find a decent replacement available
You can also see the stripped down HDMI converter ( for now ) piggybacked on the gimbal controller board as well
Coyote Forum Admin
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Subject: Re: Coyote`s Tarot FY680 Sun Jan 05, 2014 12:59 pm
Goodluckbuy gimbal was an epic fail, its really not much cop, so into my pockets I venture again
This time I have gone for the much more expensive but proven Kamkop aluminum NEU BL gimbal. Weighing in at 234g its not too heavy, very well built and can take a Gopro or a Nex camera by only adjusting the camera base.
Coming in at £200 + for just the gimbal ( no motors / controller ) its far from cheap, I have bought it in anodized black.
I have also bought the new RCTimer 5010 purpose made brushless gimbal motors this gimbal was designed for, the motors have been met with great reviews so it would be rude not to try them out
I have also ordered 10mm carbon tubes to enable my skids to be longer to compensate for the extra height of the Trot now its on stilts as well
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Subject: Re: Coyote`s Tarot FY680 Sun Jan 05, 2014 1:00 pm
Well after a few flights now I really like the setup, I have judders on the roll axis when trying fast forward flight, but Ill get rid of that.
What I am not happy now with is the flight times, she now weighs in at 3.5kg in weight ! The RCTimer 4215`s 650KV motors do lift it, and it seems to fly OK, but my flight times are now down to 6 mins max. What`s noticeable though is the lift off and hover, it now does not lift up at 50% throttle and altitude hold doesn't work very well anymore, this will be down to the motors now being overstressed / under rated for the task.
I`ve been chatting to Hase about motor choices and he is sending me up some T-Motor MT2814`s 770KV to try out instead.
From the numbers we were running we have broken it down like this :
Weight of frame = 3.407kg Max thrust required = 1156g ( Each motor ) ESC`s max rating = 30 Amps Hover thrust required will be around = 578g each motor
With that in mind, 10x3.8 props on 4S gives : 50% throttle - 4.1 Amps - 550g of thrust 65% throttle - 6.8 Amps - 770g of thrust 100% throttle - 20 amps - 1440g of thrust
So at just over 50% throttle I should have enough thrust to hover at say 5 amps per motor, that`s great, 20 amps max, good also and 284g more than required thrust per motor at WOT. At around 5 amps hover that should give me a very decent 10 mins flight time per lipo, much better !
Option 2 is using 12x3.8 props 50% throttle - 6.6 Amps - 810g of thrust 65% throttle - 10.5 Amps - 1060g of thrust 100% throttle - 29 amps - 1950g of thrust
This means at under 50% throttle I have enough thrust for hover, brilliant ! Slightly more amps used though, 29 amps which is still OK for ESC`s and 794g more per motor than required at WOT.
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Subject: Re: Coyote`s Tarot FY680 Sun Jan 05, 2014 1:01 pm
Not happy with the results my quest continued
I fitted the Quanum Telemetry and the Vtx to the legs to get better separation between them and the UHF receiver and GPS receiver
Th Vtx now has Bignose LHCP antennas on it to help get me better separation at FPV meets.
I fitted upgraded motor mounts that buy me a bit more length on the arms and allow much easier removing / replacing of the motors and neater cabling too. RCTimer 12x3.8 props are my weapon of choice with the Hex now.
I also decided to hang my lipo under the frame now as apposed to on top of it. I believe the lower CG it has now helps it with a more steady hover. I bought an extra lipo base so I could leave the one on top so I can run two lipos if I so wish.
I have installed and am really happy with the Tarot 2D brushless gimbal for the Gopro 3
The only problem now being that even though before putting it on I replaced the short spacers with some Tarot Hexacopter spacer that were longer, the arms and props are still in the shot. I will be adding another set of the spacers to drop it even more, but I think they will still show. I have ordered longer 12mm tubes to then push the gimbal out front further which will then fix this problem ( I hope )
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Subject: Re: Coyote`s Tarot FY680 Sun Jan 05, 2014 1:04 pm
Here are the first two flights in its new configuration :
Maiden :
Testing my Tarot gimbal for the first time.
No stabilization used, raw footage, no gimbal tuning. This is how it is, straight out of the box !
I tried hovering still, to prove the dampening was good - It was I tried jockeying the sticks to throw the gimbal or initiate a wobble - It did neither I tried fast forward flight which has previously made the roll axis shudder - It held rock solid I tried fast forward flight yaw turns which has made the other gimbals loose their horizon - It kept the horizon perfectly level throughout
I am very impressed
High wind test :
Very windy this morning, but tried the gimbal anyway to see how it copes in very high winds and at full speed forward flight.
Not 100% perfect, but if you could see the Hex struggling fighting the wind I thought the footage was going to be terrible at best. Instead I was happily surprised instead
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Subject: Re: Coyote`s Tarot FY680 Sun Jan 05, 2014 1:05 pm
The evolution continues
The Vtx was moved down to on the leg, this was handy that it was away from the receiver, but in fact did not pay off at all. Every time the Hex was at 90 degrees to me I would get a bad picture from the carbon leg blocking the transmission.
So I did this
This is a Bignose13 LHCP Skew with a nice long tail and no SMA. I then got some spare alloy tubing and cut it to length, threaded the tail through the alloy tube and made off the end with a 90 degree SMA. The result is a Skew that now sits way above the frame, which clears absolutely everything.
I have flown a few times now with it and I am very happy with the results, no matter how low, what angle, how far away, perfect picture all the time
The camera is now fixed to the front brace of the Tarot gimbal, its a better position for flying but it does pick up some vibrations. I might revisit this very soon and improve that some more. I had a problem with my first gimbal board, the tilt started playing up but this is the new board fitted and working fine again
The next change was taking Chainlink UHF off the Hex, with the noise on the Hex from the cameras I was getting less range than ever before. I have now swapped it out for the FrSky X8R receiver to connect to my Taranis
You may notice a few other additions there. This is so I can connect a cell meter to my receiver. It should be a one plug affair, but right now that`s a no go Instead I have to connect the cell sensor to a vario, a vario I on`t need nor will use on a the Hex, then the vario plugs into a FrSky Hub, this then plugs into the receiver to send the cell data to the Taranis as telemetry. Mental ? Yes really, you have to buy two products you don`t need or want to get the only gadget you want to work to actually work ! The next gen cell sensor will apparently just plug into the X8R smart port so I can ditch all the rest of it, cant wait !
Anyway, here is the Cell Sensor, cool little display