The Tricopter Build and Flights

The setup

I have now made the whole thing except a few unnecessary but useful add ons like osd. Here is my whole setup for the tricopter.

Frame/FC:  rcexplorer tricopter v3.5 (integrated naze32 and pdb) (tricopter v4 link)

Motors/ESC's/servo/props:   rcexplorer tricopter electronics kit

Battery:   Zippy 4000mah 4s1p 20c (I'm hopefully going to get a better battery later)

Transmitter:   FrSky taranis x9d plus

Receiver:  FrSky x8r receiver (I'm going to get the x4r-sb)

FPV camera:   foxeer hs1177 fpv camera

Video transmitter:   immersionrc 25mw raceband vtx

Video Receiver:   fatshark 32ch vrx

FPV goggles:   fatshark dominator hd2 

FPV antennas:   Immersionrc 5.8gHz spironet rhcp antennas

Later I am also going to get a refurbished gopro hero 4 black hopefully and maybe a gimbal if I can afford it because I know even a cheap gimbal sub £50 will be better than no gimbal at all.
Also I want to get the x4r-sb as it is obviously lighter and since I am using sbus I have no need for 8  pwm channels but i got the  x8r as it came with the transmitter and it was the only one in stock.
Another thing I want to upgrade is my receiving antenna for the vrx, I'm probably going to get the immersionrc mini patch antenna which only has a 45 degree beam width but and distance will be very good and maybe buy another receiver and make it diversity.
Finally I will hopefully get the micro minimosd with kv team mod and all sorts of telemetry but that will come later.

The build

The build was quite easy, only annoying thing was a solder pad come off (due to my soldering) so I soldered the wire to the next pad and it works perfectly. Only other problem was that 2 of the resistors were switched because a certain batch of FC's so I switched them which was annoying as they were smd resistors (explained here). 

I also got telemetry on my transmitter working by using soft serial ports instead of the UART ports with which I'm already using both. the naze32 is also receiving the rssi value and of course vbat. 

for now I am using 2 Overlander 2s 3200mah batteries from 2010 in series which work very well but i've already ordered the zippy's.

its not the cleanest build in the world but it works,and to prove that the next section is about its flights

The Flights

The first flight I did was with my orange tx/rx as I didn't have the FrSky equipment at the time. I hovered a bit and just cruised LOS. It flew well and that made me very very happy after putting hours of work into it (I expected it to explode into a fireball or something). I have some video footage on board and from outside but the on board camera was this  really  old thing which wasn't very good, especially as I had to mount it sideways then flip it which made the video really narrow.

I was mainly flying line of  sight but when I got my FPV gear I tried some FPV. since  it was my first time it took a while to get used to it but after a while  I was getting the  hang of it but I still couldn't do any aerobatics :(. 

On one attempt at flying the grass was too high (I need bigger landing gear) so my dad held it up. in that attempt I  guess I was flying near a wasps nest as they started coming  out and attacking it! 

Tricopter Electronics Kit Review

Tricopter Electronics Kit Review

I have bought the Tricopter, electronics kit  and the naze32 and PDB from RCexplorer.

This is what the electronics kit includes, 3 pairs of props, 3 motors, 3 ESC's 3 wire extensions and a servo (also some  stickers for the ESC's). I also got some  other things like the naze32 and PDB in the same box, it was very well packed and nothing had any faults.

The Motors are BE2217 1300KV Motors manufactured by DYS. I found there was no play in the bearings and  had

no flaws to it at all. For a detailed description, click on the link above

The ESC's are LittleBee 30A ESC's which came with heat shrink which wasn't fitted so you could solder the extensions to them

The final piece of electronic gear is the servo, it is the Blue Bird – BMS-210DMH Servo. It is metal geared and is a very robust but accurate servo.

The props are the final thing in the kit, there is 1 pair of props for each motor so it comes with spares. One of the pairs is a clockwise spinning prop which is for the front left corner which helps the handling a lot They obviously need balancing but not much. I didn't need to use much tape at all to balance all of them.

I think the kit is great as it provides all you need to start, but the only thing I would like is an extension for the servo

Introduction

My Aerial Photography Project

Hi, my name is Kiran and this is my blog about my project on aerial photography. My plan is to 

build a multi-rotor, put fpv on it and then make videos or photos to make money for a school 

cricket tour I'm going on.

For my multi-rotor, I am using a Tricopter by david Windestål. I have bought most of the kit from

him, the Tricopter, the Electronics kit and the Naze32 and Power distribution frame built in the frames. all i need to get now is the fpv gear, battery and camera.

I am going to record videos with a go-pro and edit them  for some money hopefully since  aerial videos are harder to get.