Got in the Flytron Sony NEX shutter control cable a few days ago.  So easy to setup.  I now can flick a switch on my transmitter to capture a still image, OR I can flick the switch the other way to start video rolling.  Here are a couple of captures with default settings, including auto focus, which may not be the best way of doing it.

Following the last post I had to take the hexacopter offline and tear it apart in the shop.  Fortunately I found a way to take the one loose arm off and fix it, without having to tear apart the entire bird.  That would have been a real pain.

When reassembling, I used some slightly different and thicker double sided tape for the SuperX flight controller.  I also was able to clean up some of the wiring.

The first test flight (video highlights below) was quite amazing.   First I was amazed that the thing even flew.  In fairly strong winds it flew very well.

The video above is nearly flawless.  I’ve been working toward this for so long.  I’m thrilled to be at this point in the development of this platform.

Upon examining my flight logs I found that the vibrations this time were the absolute best and lowest I’ve ever achieved.  Perhaps the arm was loosening causing some of the old vibrations or perhaps the thicker and spongier tape holding the flight controller on made the difference?  Perhaps both.

Whatever the reason, the results are fantastic.  All I need to work on now with the build is lowering the gimbal a bit to get the props and arms out of the camera frame.

One other slightly irritating thing I fixed was the landing gear.  One leg was slipping/rotating like arm #5.  That’s all fixed too.  Once again, another possible small source of vibration.

Hope to get more batteries and and FPV system soon.

After a great flight which produced the best video quality yet, I noticed motor #5 was crooked on my big hexacopter.  Having just tweaked the motors and reset them to check their level, I figured maybe I didn’t tighten the motor mount screws tight enough.  Not the case.  The whole arm turned in place.

This is VERY bad.  If that arm twists far enough the rotor would be pointing the wrong direction and the flight controller would try to compensate.  Could mean a huge crash.

So tonight I bit the bullet, grounded the bird, and ripped the arm out.  I had to desolder the ESC and motor, as well as the wire for the LED lights.  What a pain but will be even more of a pain fishing the wires back through and resoldering the seven tiny connections.

I epoxied the arm and will do a small screw in the side to keep it from slipping.   I almost decided to do the other four foldable arms, but that might have meant ripping the WHOLE unit apart.  So I’ll be keeping an eye on the other three foldable arms and hopefully this first one will give me a blueprint on how to do the rest as needed.