In the last months on the market appear a lot of low cost micro quad , they are very nice toys i like a lot play with it . But the main problem is that the standard electronic is not hackable and i cannot use my radio for control the quad. So i decide to evaluate if was possible interface a quad toy frame with my VRBRAIN.
- The main tets that i doing was the payload and discover that was possible to going in air with a payload of 100 gr. VRBrain in Naked configuration is only 21 gr
- The other problem was how i can manage the motors ? So i doing a bit of retro eng and discover the electronic need to my vrbrain for control the dc motors. I don't use esc for interface the motors of quad
- After solve the electronic problem i start to check the patch to firmware and found how can change the pwm parameter for control the dc motors.
- Other problem was the battery , normally the quad toys use a 1s battery but the standard input voltage is 5volt. So i check the schematics of vrbrain and found a 3volt input , put on the 1s battery a small 3.3volt stabilizer and put the output on the gps output 3.3v .
- After last patch i thought that i'm ready for first fly , but last things was the radio ... fortunately my Jeti receiver work also at 3.3volt so it work , i have only a signal on my radio about low level voltage ... :(
The final result was this : I'm happy to present VR Pico Drones , basically it use standard arducopter32 2.9 on my VRBRAIN and support all standard functionality available in arducopter , stable , acro , loiter , rtl and auto navigation . So this is smallest Arducopter drone available on the planet :) This is only first prototype the wheight is 110 gr. My idea is to doing some optimization on board and have a 85 gr drone capable of 10 minutes of funny fly.
After some days of hard work this is my first fly test . I'm very happy of this first results :) The main target of this development is to use VRBRAIN for learning to fly during winter days in indoor. I play a lot with simulator but fly with a real copter is better. (sorry for audio , is in italian , the next will be in english :)
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Hey Roberto ,
How are you controlling the DC motors?
Hi Peter how you solve the problem of 1s battery on apm 2.5 ? If you use 2s battery and a 5v dc:dc could be possible.
Best Roberto
Here
This is similar but the one i originally seen had 3 pins.
Well done dude.I just done a post with a link to a new quad.They have a module so that you can use your own transmitter.Its done via the trainer plug.No gps though!
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/q-bot-micro-quadcopter-spektrum...
How exactly does it provide power to the speed controllers?Does the vbrain get hot?
If you need a steady 5v, there are single chips on ebay for about 5$ each and shaves weight off converters. Im looking for the link.