Reader Pat’s question and answer continues.  The two previous questions were related to drone lighting and the electric retractable landing gear.

How do you calibrate your motors, or did you mean that you’re throttle calibrating your ESCs?

I must have written somewhere that I had “calibrated the motors” on my large 960mm hexacopter.  Pat’s terminology is better.  I mostly likely was referring to throttle calibration of the ESCs.  The process of throttle calibrating my ESCs was a pain.  As it turned out there was a funky issue between my particular ESC model (Hobby-Wing Pro 40A) and my transmitter, a Taranis XD9.

Tarot 5008/340kv Motor

Typically a throttle calibration would be something like this.  Power up the ESC with the throttle at maximum.  After the ESC beeps, reduce throttle to minimum.  It should only take a few seconds.  But the above mentioned issue caused many of my ESCs to randomly not arm.  It would seem that the distance of the throw was not enough, or that the throttle stick wasn’t going all the way down to -100.  I fixed the throttle stick later but that’s not how I resolved the calibration issue.

After much reading I found that if I set my throttle distances from -89 to +100 and then did the calibration it worked. I would then set the throttle back to -100 to +100 after they were all calibrated.  Then all motors would arm.

Regarding the Tarnanis not going all the way down to -100, the throttle stick would go down but would not stay at -100. It would stay somewhere around -95.  That would mean arming problems as well, plus I would get the Taranis “throttle warning” and would have to move the sticks to be able to do anything.  I had to take apart the Taranis and tweak the throttle screws until it went all the way down.  Then of course my center point calibration with my flight controller went wonky.  So I ended up doing all stick related calibrations for the Taranis and Taranis/SuperX controller over again.

Continuing on with my reader question and answer session today.  The previous question from Pat was regarding drone lighting.  Today’s question is about my electric retractable landing gear for my big 960 hexacopter.

How do you like your new Arris X-3 landing gear. I’m about to pull the trigger on a set, but would love to know how they are treating you.

The Arris Lander-X3 is made for larger multirotor copters, hexacopters and octocopters.  I really like how wide the stance is and how long the feet are.  The width and length gives the copter a very stable platform for takeoff and landing.  It is much more stable than the stock landing gear this Tarot T960 came with.

Arris Lander-X3 box contents

Setup is relatively easy.  The gear can install to the frame of the copter or to two booms.  Because I didn’t want to take apart my frame I went the boom route.  Plus that makes the width a little wider.  There’s a control box which powers the gear and has a button on it to manually engage the gear.  The control box receives a signal from the copter’s receiver to put the gear up or down.

Arris Lander-X3 Control Box

The control box also has outputs for LED lights, but I have not used those as of this point.

Below is a video demonstration of the gear in action.

Issue

I have a small problem which I believe is my own fault. Due to a wiring short during some maintenance I think I may have fried something in the control box. I heard a pop sound and not sure where it came from. The gear now goes up fine during flight but takes several attempts to come down. The issue only happens during flight and not in the shop. Must be slightly related to voltage. I have a new control box on the way ($20) and will replace and report back if that solved the issue.

The quality of the parts seems to be very good.  I’m hoping the box issue will be resolved when the slow boat from China arrives.

Drone LED Lights – Green Front, Red Back

I received a nice email with some comments from Pat at Colour Sky Films.  Pat was very kind, and has been following along with my build logs and flights of my big ship, a 960mm hexacopter drone built on a Tarot T960 frame.  Paul asked some questions as he is building a similar bird.  I thought it would be cool to post those in Q&A form here, and Paul agreed.  Below is Paul’s first question regarding the LED lights on my bird.

What type of LED lights are those I see on your Tarot? I get fooled all the time with the true direction of my craft at a distance, and even fairly close! And also, how did you fix them to the booms?

I also had the same orientation problems.  When looking up at the black air ship it sometimes suddenly appeared to be banking 45 or 90 degrees.  It was an optical illusion.  I decided LED’s would help with orientation.  I found LED light strips at a local hobby shop just down the street from my house.  The strips come in different colors and pieces are sold by the foot.  One side is sticky, just like tape.  I taped them to the booms, but their stickiness isn’t great, so I back that up with some black electrical tape.

Now when the bird is above me I can tell front and back, as I put green on the front two booms and red on the back two.

When I have some time I will probably change the configuration of the LED’s though.  With them mounted on the underside only, I can’t see the LED’s when the bird is at a lower level and a little farther away.  I may wrap the strips around the ends of the booms so the lights can be seen from just about any angle.

5V/12V Dual Step Down Regulator (RMRC-5-12-STEP)

The LED’s run on 12 volts, so I had to get a BEC to step down the 6S battery voltage.  I got the BEC from Ready Made RC and it has a 5 volt and 12 volt output.  I run the LED lights with the 12 volt and my FPV camera and transmitter with the 5 volt output.

While I was at it, I picked up a switch which I could assign to a channel on my transmitter.  This allows me to turn the boom LED lights on and off.  If I don’t need the lights, there’s no need to drain the battery.  I also may want to fly in a more “stealth” mode sometimes.

I also installed some flashing navigation strobes at the end of the front two and rear two booms, to help with orientation as well as making the bird visible to others.  I don’t want someone else crashing into the thing.  Below you can see the unit as it is attached with double sided tape at the end of the boom.  Since they run on 5 volts, and since my ESC’s have a 5 volt BEC which is lifted and not needed for my flight controller, I’m just taking the power from the ESC’s.

Strobon Flashing LEDs from Flytron.com

The navigation strobes are made by Strobon and I got them from Flytron.com.