Bergen Foldable Hexacopter

[cbergen]

The Harness and "Y" connectors are made from 10 AWG wire, with 5.5mm Bullet connectors for the battery connections.

So far, I'm tickled to death with the 6S packs, extending my flight time considerably. I'm building 2 Octocopters to be Heavy Lifters and will be testing their ultimate load carrying abilities with these 6S packs as well.

This is why the 10AWG wire harness is important, to be able to carry this amount of juice without high resistance/overheating, etc.

[Cletus]

My original FPV ground-station is being retained, but the complex, 900Mhz, tracking antenna array at the top (while it worked quite well) will be changed-out to a very compact 5.8Ghz circular-polarized system (will post pics of that array when done).

[Cletus]

Got wire?

[lperagallo]

Originally Posted by Cletus

Got wire?

Cletus,

With a Jeti radio system you would only have a single wire from the receiver and you could get voice telemetry, like how much battery you have used in both the receiver pack and the main motor packs. You can also get Gps data, altitude etc.

Lou

[Cletus]

I do have voice telemetry from the Eagle Tree system

[lperagallo]

Originally Posted by Cletus

I do have voice telemetry from the Eagle Tree system

Cletus,

Well that's better than what I thought you were going to say........My old voice telemetry used to be when I'd hear, OH Sh$t i'm out of battery!

Lou

[Cletus]

Chris
I will set-up the throttle max and min for each ESC individually, but do I otherwise just use the default settings that come with the ESCs?

[cbergen]

NO!!

Programming items are as follows;

1 Brake, "off" 1 beep

2. battery type, Nimh/nicd 2 beeps

3. cut off mode, soft cut 1 beep

4. cutoff threshold, low 1 beep

5. start mode, normal 1 beep

6. timing, low 1 beep

Now, WHY do we select nicd on step 2? This step is setting the voltage at which the ESC will shut down. If you select Lipo, it will shut down at a higher voltage level. NOT something we want in a multirotor. I would rather exceed the minimums on a battery than shut down the motors in flight.....

The rest are kind of obvious.

BTW, credit where credit is due for this tip is the gang on RCGroups, in their multirotor section.

[fastflyer20]

Very neat project.

In general, I have not had good luck with the Turnigy nano-tech's. The standard Turnigy last much longer and are less expensive. Other fliers at my club have had the same experience. If you do not need the high power, consider a lower C rating for any of the brands.

[Cletus]

Thanks for that ESC setup info Chris! .....My Turnigy programming card works fine with these ESCs so configuring is a snap!

My 900Mhz Diversity Tracking Ground-station has been converted to 5.8Ghz. Checked out the video feed, telemetry, video-switching and camera gimbal .......all good

[RMcCord]

Cletus, you sure have a lot to pack for IRCHA now.

Robert

[Cletus]

I'm hoping to bring the Bergen Hexa
....or maybe I can persuade Chris to let me fly his

[Cletus]

Happy New Year all!

Another video / telemetry test .....Here's a frame grab from the ground-based DVR this morning (a few tweaks still to do):

[Cletus]

Originally Posted by cbergen

NO!!

Programming items are as follows;

1 Brake, "off" 1 beep

2. battery type, Nimh/nicd 2 beeps

3. cut off mode, soft cut 1 beep

4. cutoff threshold, low 1 beep

5. start mode, normal 1 beep

6. timing, low 1 beep

Now, WHY do we select nicd on step 2? This step is setting the voltage at which the ESC will shut down. If you select Lipo, it will shut down at a higher voltage level. NOT something we want in a multirotor. I would rather exceed the minimums on a battery than shut down the motors in flight.....

The rest are kind of obvious.

BTW, credit where credit is due for this tip is the gang on RCGroups, in their multirotor section.

Been thinking about item-2 above and looking over my notes and video. My last heavy-lift hexacopter project, during a long, high-altitude mission we had some erratic rotor operation on return to home (at the end of a mission, I like to hit fail-safe and let Wookong do the return flight and landing) and at least one rotor shut-down resulting in a crash from about 75-feet.
My ESCs were set to their default values. My initial assessment was the probability of a defective ESC or overheating of the ESC, difficult to determine as it took quite a few minutes to recover the craft from the crash-site and the ESCs would have cooled-off sufficiently. But mu spotter did confirm at least one rotor stopped in-flight. My belief now, is the ESCs could have very well been sensing low battery voltage and going into premature shutdown, since I can find nothing wrong with the ESCs on the bench.
Glad that did not happen when we were up 1000-feet and over the houses.
Here's a short video of the dramatic event:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfk9wBQm0vk&feature=share&list=UUw2fWOo8-iEjkzmUknfia7w[/ame]

[cbergen]

Very possible. Especially when you consider that the loaded voltage will be lower than what you may measure on the ground, but the ESC doesn't differentiate. It sees the target voltage, it shuts down.

So by selecting Nicd in the programming of the ESC, we tell the ESC to shut down at a lower voltage level, one it will probably never see in actual use.

[Cletus]

Awesome night-flight capability!
The camera simply cannot capture the brilliance as 108 LEDs provide visibility as well as orientation (White - fore, Blue - aft, Red - port, Green - stbd) ......apart from being very bright and attractive, these LEDs are extremely directional, making them perfect for the role of visual flight-orientation beacons:

[Cletus]

The little white box houses all the video and telemetry equipment (3S 2200mAh pack powers it). Ping-Pong ball makes pefect radome for the 5.8Ghz Clover Leaf Antenna.Overall, I find this aerial platform extremely configurable and versatile .....a flying laboratory of sorts ...lots of room to mount stuff ....and from Chris' test-flight videos, extremely stable and predictable!
I'm building for equal visibility and orientation day or night, hence I dubbed it "Project Equinox"
.............can't wait to fly this thing

[Cletus]

Close-up of the LED arrays

[Skiddz]

What's that pile of red wire in the background?

Oh wait.. never mind.. It's one of Lou's helicopters.

[lperagallo]

Originally Posted by Skiddz

What's that pile of red wire in the background?

Oh wait.. never mind.. It's one of Lou's helicopters.

Nice!
Lou