The official help Tjomp with his new quad thread.

[jperkosk]

When almost 20 years ago I arrived to a factory here in Mexico (without speaking a word of Spanish, I might add) as an engineering manager freshly imported from the US, the following definition was presented to me:

an expert (noun):
a moron that arrived from far, far away place.


Not sure if I qualify in this case, but in my expert opinion the quad looks very nice, just needs a small test flight to determine if it's flyable, that's all

[copterboy]

The fish are going to love it Any plans to put a hook a line on it?

[Tomstoy2]

Well, cabling looks like shit, but that don't matter worth a damn. Truth is, these things are nothing but an evolving build with flights in between.

Dial in about 40% expo into your radio for the first few flights, tame that bad boy down some, give yourself some training wheels. Later, once you get used to it you can dial some of it out to your liking.

Good luck, buddy! We expect to see a vid of the maiden, ( and pics of the fishing trip, too ).

[Tjomp]

Success !

Had a busy day today but managed to sneak in a quick maiden flight. Sorry, but no videos or pictures. I'll make it up to you guys later.
It's very windy today but decided to give it a try anyway. No expo dialed in though. Just can't stand how expo feels on the sticks. I quickly learned that the massive lift those propellers create have a flipside. The wind caught it even at ground level and it tipped backwards. I managed to counter and bring it up into a good old school hover. Felt Just like flying a heli. I Had to work with the sticks to counter the wind. Not the best day to maiden both the quad and myself as I've never flown one before. The quad have a slight clockwise drift on the rudder, so I got a feeling for how easy it is to loose orientation with this thing. Brought it down and gave it another try. This time with selflevel mode activated. Got some cyclic wag and I obviously need to tune the gains on the KK.

Overall, I am very pleased with my uneventful maiden. The thing flied on the first try and I was capable of handling it the first time around.

Now some questions. Any tips or links to info on tuning the KK ? I've found some setup videos but none that really explain the details that is needed to tune it properly.

I got a strange issue with the motors. At spool up, especially if I spool up slowly, one or more motors may decide to stop. What I have done in those cases, is to spool down and try again. When all motors have reached some speed, it's all fine and I can take off. I haven't investigated this yet but got a hunch that I need to select a different timing on the ESCs. The problem is that I currently can't test out that theory as several parameters including timing can only be programmed with a programming card which I don't have. (yet)

[Tjomp]

I will answer my own querstion about tuning the KK. As Dave pointed out, Steveis have a different firmware for the KK I will have a look at. Following the link he gave me, I found a 36 page well written manual that appears to cover all I need to know. Now I just need to figure out how to get the Steveis firmware into the KK.

[jperkosk]

TJ, it feels more like the throttle signal range calibration on ECSs being a bit off and needs to be redone. No clue how to do it on KK2, though

[Tomstoy2]

Congrats!!!

First flights, what a knee knocker.

For orientation, order up some SuperBright LED's. These puppy's you can see from 1/2 mile away!

If I remember right, the new kk2 firmware will allow you to do tjhrottle calibration all at once.
I still prefer to do each esc cal one at a time though.
Could be motor timing, too. You don't want low setting. Medium usually works well, but a stutter or starting issue could mean you need to raise timing is redoing the esc cal doesn't take care of it.

I never use a card. I look up the beeps on line and just do it that way.

[CyprusDave]

Yeah, the Stevis manual is pretty good, and when you figure out how to get his firmware loaded, you'll find it's better too. You need to connect the KK2 to your computer, then you need some software on the computer to send the new firmware to the KK2. The flash tool software, you can get here, along with how to use it:
http://lazyzero.de/en/modellbau/kkmulticopterflashtool

There's also details there about the cable connection you need (a USB ISP programmer). Sounds complicated, but not really.

Also, I've attached another document that explains P, I and D values in general, and how they relate to the KK2. This is probably the most understandable explanation I have found

[Tjomp]

Mission accomplished!

I am now with the boys from work on our yearly fishing trip. There is too much water in the river so fishing conditions sucks. That have given me more time to dial in my quad and get you guys the video I´ve been promising you.
I got the 12$ gimbal mounted and that one works just like… well a 12$ gimbal. My Olympus camera is too wide to fit in the gimbal. I screwed off right side covers of the camera and managed to squeeze it in there. Gimbal is flimsy and shakes but will have to do for now.

I have also spent some time dialling in the KK. Thanks to the excellent links supplied by Dave, I got it working quite all right. There is still some wag in self level mode that I haven´t manage to get completely rid of but I´ll just leave it until I can upgrade the KK to Stevis firmware. The USB programmer needed, have been ordered.

With no further ado. Here is my first Aerial video, showing where we are fly-fishing for salmon.

PS: This river is the final resting place of my late Beam E4.

PPS : The video have been edited with YouTube´s anti shake filter.

Aerial video of our fishingspot (2 min 31 sec)

[jperkosk]

1. Really nice spot
2. Give up on YT stabilization, it blurs the video to a point of giving me nausea in some places.
3. Install free Real Player and use their trimmer to trim out inevitably boring static grass scenes before and after each flight.
4. Not bad at all for the first shot at AV

[sutty]

I'm liking it Tomas. As we discussed a short while ago, great looking place to fish, and good piece of filming of your buddies Spey casting. See, I've learned something.

Pity about the anti shake being required, but like you said, it was a $12 gimbal. All useful stuff in the learning curve.

I can't believe that you just invented it all out of thin air with a little research and in such a short time frame. My trials and tribulations with one that is supposedly almost RTF make me feel embarrassed. Great job.

It's the future. That's why I lag behind Tom by about 4 years. I live in the past, whilst he ground breaks for me. lol.

Cheers

Sutty

[Tomstoy2]

That's me! a pioneer of worthless, money draining bullshit!

[CyprusDave]

Originally Posted by sutty

I can't believe that you just invented it all out of thin air with a little research and in such a short time frame. My trials and tribulations with one that is supposedly almost RTF make me feel embarrassed. Great job.

Yes indeed, lots of credit to Tomas for the great job in so short a time. But don't be too hard on yourself, the KK2.0 is a simpler board, no advanced features to get in the way

Also he had another advantage - no indecipherable instructions to follow

Tomas, the accelerometers that are used in self-level are maybe a bit more sensitive to vibration that the gyros, so the wag in self-level might be due to vibration.

[Tjomp]

Thanks guys. It could have been more than the props I got wrong. I am happy with how things worked out. Specially that Dave was right about the 390KV motors. I did a very non scientific test of the lift the motors generate. I held the quad firmly above my head and gave full throttle. Can´t give a number but the lift is massive. Maybe I should find a way to measure this.

Originally Posted by CyprusDave

Tomas, the accelerometers that are used in self-level are maybe a bit more sensitive to vibration that the gyros, so the wag in self-level might be due to vibration.

Thats a very good point. I´ve done nothing special regarding vibrations. I just mounted the KK witht the same doublesided tape I´ve been using for tail gyros and FBL controllers. There is much I can do to test that out.

[CyprusDave]

If it hovers between 40% and 60% throttle, ideally at 50%, that's all the lift testing you need to do

Unbalanced props is the most usual cause of excessive vibration. Mounting the KK2 on the same tape as gyros etc is usually more than good enough.