DIY H4 home made frame

See the DIY frame in action, no tweeking done on the FC, flown by one of my students who is a complete novice and has no experience with quadcopters.

You might also want to read this article on the CC3D

Well was a bit bored so I decided to make a home made frame and see how it faired compared to buying a Ebay frame. So I went to the local hardware store and purchased a piece of 15mm x 15mm square wood measuring 2 meters in length. The length was a bit overkill, but could not find a shorter length, so i guess the rest will be used to repair the arms, when it eventually breaks. I also purchased a small square plastic box that is used by electricians to mount and combine electrical wires

 

Bought this cheap mounting plate

 

Measured and drilled four holes for the mounting plate used four plastic bolts and fastened the mounting plate with plastic nuts.

 

Mounted 4 plastic bolts at the top of the mount and tighten with a thin plastic screw. The screw will act as a stand-off.

 

Slotted the power distribution board on the mounting plate

 

used 4 plastic stand-offs to fasten the board and drilled four holes at the bottom for the power cables to the ESC´s.

 

Soldered the main power cables to the PDB,There is a small switch under the board which enables the power to be switched on/off. The board worked on its maiden flight but suddenly cut off and i could not reinitiate any 12 volts, i did not test why, but simply resolved the issue by resoldering and connecting the main power cables to one of the + and - from the ESC's, bypassing the on/off switch and making the 12 volts live at all times. This PDB is not sold with a manual so the Internet and common sense was the way i had to go by setting it up.

 

Soldered a JST XH connector to the LED pins, this will deliver 12 volts to the LED light strip that I will mount at a later stage.

 

I then soldered 4 positive and 4 negative wires using each corner and fed the wires through the holes in the housing. These wires will be later hooked up to four ESC's on the quad.

 

The ESC's power cables are now done, was a bit of a hassle as the soldering plates on the PDB are small and close together, make sure to check that your cables are not shorting.

 

Powering the CC3D can be done in two ways, I chose to use a UBEC, I soldered the + and - to the second LED pins/pads. The UBEC will convert the 12v from the PDB to 5v for the CC3D. The second method of powering the CC3D is by using the BEC on the ESC and plugging it directly to one of the motor pins on the CC3D.

 Method 1. using the UBEC, The + and - wire leads from the UBEC

 

 Plug it into motor channel 1, remember to get the polarity right + is the middle rail, - is the bottom rail closest to the edge of the board and the top rail is the signal cable to the ESC.

 

Method 2. Using the BEC from the ESC. Simply power the CC3D using the BEC of the ESC. It plugs into the one of motor channel, giving the CC3D the required 5v.

 

Mounted the CC3D and tightened it down with 4 plastic bolts.

Cut two sleeves and fed the signal cables to the CC3D.

 

 

Mount the cable for the reciever port, this will later connect to the radio reciever.

The cable for the main port, if you are going to be using other units like GPS, telemetry and so on. My setup is not using additional units, so this cable was removed.

  

Solder a female 3.5 mm banana plug on each of the power cables for the ESC's and cover it with shink tube  

 

Drill four holes in each corner of the housing, this will be used to mount the housing on the frame.
At this point you now have a almost ready to fly housing that can be removed on the fly and be used on another unit without too much hassle. Stage 1 done.

Building the frame.

 Cut two pieces of wood mine were 41.5 cm, try to keep the edges as straight as possible.

 

Drill two holes on each shaft, making sure that there is equal space on both sides. The more centered the housing is the better the center of gravity.

 

Using 25mm bolts mount the housing on the frame.

 

Tighten the screws firmly. 

 

To stop the frame from flexing too much, you will need to cut out and mount an adequate plate, using some thin light weight hobby wood. I used som Carbon that i had left over from a hobbyking H4. I cut the frame and drilled the necessary holes and tied it all together. if you don´t have an old frame, find something that is light weight. The length of the plate can be much shorter. Make sure to check the flex on the frame.

 

The top side. 

 

Both bottom flex plates mounted

 

Cut two more pieces of wood, They will make the arms.

 

Again measure an drill two holes, making sure that the arm is bang in the middle. You are going to need a top plate to stabilize the arm.

 

Mount the second arm in the same manor as the first. 

 

Make a flex plate for the top. 

 

Mount four motor mounts and a motor, one on each arm.

 

Connect each ESC to one of the power outlets from the housing, and feed the signal cable from the ESC up though the sleeve in to the housing 

 

Solder a header pin on to the signal cables or you can make your own header pins if you have the required tools

 

Mount the four signal wires from the motors accordingly

 

Mount the cables from the reciever port to the reciever.

 

Had to cut the lid of the housing as the wires stuck to far up. Anyways, not entirely done, the cabling needs to be done properly, for now the unit is ready for testing.

Open Pilot CC3D

WOW, what a board this is, totally amazed at the simplicity in configuration and the flying ability, this leaves the KK2 standing. Was hearing quite a lot about the Open Pilot CC3D flight controller, so I decided to order one off Ebay. The one I puchased was a rip off version, backengineered off the original and reproduced at halv the cost. I tend to refrain from buying expensive stuff like FC's on Ebay, because one never know what you might get. But in this case the FC was very cheap, so if did turn out to be useless, then what the heck. The CC3D I purchased cost 11 dollars from this supplier.

Shipping was very fast, took around 10 days and all was good to go. I was planning on changing my Cruis AIOP ver2.0, seeing as i have never been able to PID tune it properly. Mounting the FC was simple. The hardest bit about it was converting the mounting holes, the Crius is much wider 50mm x 50mm compared to 35x35mm for the CC3D. I saw a very cheap mounting plate at under 2 dollars, it fits the 50x50mm on the bottom plate, has vibration pads, the top plate is smaller and fits the 35x35mm of the CC3D, The Talon frame which i was mounting it on has only mounting holes for a 50x50mm mount, but seeing as i intitially thought that the CC3D was just for testing fun I refrained from purchasing more accessories. I ended up building a wooden mount and after that was done, the board was mounted and ready in under 10 minutes.

 

The CC3D form factorcompared to the Crius.

The software Open Pilot GSC for configuring the flight controller is one of best flight controller software I have seen, simple, clean, user friendly, well designed and very informative, very difficult to get anything wrong, everthing from the automatic flashing of the firmware, quad setup, motor calibration and radio setup, took about 15 minutes, I won´t  get into how it is all done, but this guy has done a whole series on the CC3D, watch all 8 series and you will have all the infomation you require to set it up. Despite the software setup being simple, it still gives you the ability to dig down into tweeking at a more advanced level. Like I said am no expert so initially I stuck with the more simple. The quad flew with the default PID values. I then followed this youtube tutorial on in air PID tuning and this was PID tuned in a breeze.

My flying skills have picked up some what after using the selflevel of the KK2, so thinking that i was in selflevel/Stabilize mode, I lifted off, what i did not know was that i actually had reveresed my channel five and was flying in rate/manual/acro mode and wow it was almost tuned in, Prior to this i had never flown in rate/manual/acro mode before, but with this board it was a breeze, very responsive and was just cool to fly. So if you have been stuck the KK2 for a while, this board could take you to the next level, the KK2 was fun to fly, but now it is soon time for real action. You can of coarse buy this board from some official sites, and i would suggest that you buy it from hobbyking or another certified retailer.
Open Pilot have stopped manufactering and selling the cc3d board, so you will mainly just find clones on the net, these clones are of varying quality. Mine died after a couple of days and greenshop333 was very quick to offer a refund, so would not hesitate to use him again for the same board and hopefully the next will be of better quality.

 Very neat compared to my other builds, four motor wires and a power cable. from a UBEC. You can buy a casing for more protection.

 I have connected my 3dr telemetry to the board through the main port, so no need for an USB cable. The cable is supplied with the CC3D .

I used the main port on the right, as it is  configured pr. default for telemtry at the baudrate of 57600. The Pinouts are as shown below.

On the back of the 3dr there is a set of equivelent pinouts. 

Connect 5v/VCC from the CC3D to the 3dr.

Connect GND to GND

Connect TX on the CC3D to RX on the 3dr

Connect RX on the CC3D to the TX on the 3dr

It should  work without the need of configuring the 3dr radio, but you might run into some issues.

I initially followed this tutorial  to setup the 3dr, but this did not work, It suggests to change the Mavlink to Raw Data. When i changed it back to Mavlink and saved I got the connection. You are able to change the baudrate if need be, using the 3dr software. When you connect the CC3D software using the 3dr radio, it can take 30-40 seconds before it fully initiates the software. So be a bit patient.

 

 Connection to the radio is done through the receiver port, with a supplied cable, no need for soldering. Its a simple as plug in both ends, Does however require to read the online manual to get the corret ports. The software will confirm if you got it all right and reversing of the channels is also done through the software. The software is very illustrative and easy to use.

Pros: Very very cheap, compared to the KK2.

Small form factor gives you more space usually where it is always cramped.

Cabling is done neatly, with the 3 provided cables.

Software is illustrative and simple more tweeking available compared to the KK2.

Very responsive and fun to fly.

Has autolevel function for beginners.

Can mount a 3dr unit for cableless configuration.

Can mount a bluetooth radio for cableless config.

Can mount a GPS to show long/lat on FPV screen.

Ratittude mode: Rattitude mode will give you more response as you feed stick input in; when you return the stick to Center, you're back in attitude mode. 

PID tuning is very easy on this board.

Cons: Board size, have to convert from a lager form factor 50mm to 35mm if you are not running on a 250 frame size.

Configuration requires a PC compared to the KK2.

Only basic support for GPS for OSD displaying long/lat though its big brother CC3D revo does support all these functions.

No altitude hold or mission planning.