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It's been an ambition of mine to construct a Quadrocopter for some 18 months now. Almost a year ago I ordered parts to begin construction only to be thwarted by very limited supply problems and the project never took off (pun intended).
After revisiting the project again this year I was encouraged by the development of the open source project and the immediate availability of components to get me going. Further research provided even more encouragement as this flying device had gained a level of maturity and I could benefit from other peoples efforts by sourcing parts from all over the globe at considerable savings.
With all these advances I just had to get going.
So, just what is a Quadrocopter?
Well this platform has a purpose - aerial photography, so I'm building a dedicated camera platform, something that will fly and hold it's position in a stable hover while I take photographs, be they stills of high definition video.
I could have used a model helicopter as an aerial platform, however I would be putting more effort into flying the machine than the photography, and that's just not what I want for this. I am intending it to be a low altitude aerial platform, something suitable for photographing a single building or area up to about 20 meters altitude. Any higher and I can use the Cularis glider, an excellent platform up to 1000 meters altitude (the limits of my eyesight).
So here we go, after a short wait a box stuffed with small plastic bags and electronic components arrives. Now I haven't been soldering for a few years, but some of these devices are really tiny. The surface mounted components (in particular resistors and Tantalum capacitors) measure just 3mm in length. Suddenly my miniature soldering iron looked positively huge against one of these.
The main circuit board was relatively easy to assemble and was completed in around 4 hours split over two evenings.
Just as the main components were soldered to the board another small package arrived from the Far East containing a bunch of electronic motor speed controllers, brushless motors and speed controller programming card.
The photos show the initial board being constructed and the speed controllers being attached to the motors.
I chose to leave the three most expensive components off the main board for now until I had completed initial testing of the unit. These components are:-
·Triple axis gyroscope. Yep, three axes, X, Y & Z to help stabilise the platform in the hover.
·Triple axis Liner Accelerometer to further help platform stabilisation. This provides for quick though small amounts of correction.
·Compass module. This will lock the yaw (rotation) axis when hovering and also help free me to frame images rather than fly the device.
