H4 Alien 680 Quadcopter during initial build…

I’m getting so discouraged on this rebuild that I took a break from it. The Alien H4 680 quadcopter is built and flying, but the vibrations are so bad I can’t get any decent video. I’ve spent DAYS, not kidding, balancing motors and props. Motor #3 vibrates so bad that it almost tickles your hand when close enough. I can see the landing leg under motor #3 shaking badly.

I’m now thinking that this motor is damaged. Perhaps the post is bent, or the bearings are compromised, or both. Now I’m faced with whether to pull it apart and try to replace the parts, or just buy another motor and see how that works.

I’m also not totally in love with this frame. The “K” shape of the bird makes great sense in getting the camera forward and the props out of the field of vision, but it doesn’t handle as well as I want it to. Maybe I’m too used to flying my bigger hexacopter, or perhaps the MiniX flight controller just isn’t as good as the SuperX.

Next steps?

I will either pull apart the motor and try to see if there’s obvious damage, and or buy a new motor. The problem is this stuff comes on the slow boat from China, so it will be another month before I can get to testing if I can’t find a USA dealer.

Here’s a fun glam shot of my recently rebuilt, post-crash Alien H4 680mm quadcopter drone.

Alien 680 Quadcopter

The post-crash rebuilt is 98% done. I’m back to tweaking the GoPro and gimbal setup. The remaining 2% is confirming that the landing gear actually works, since it failed once in a recent flight. Also some of the tube mounts are not the exact right one so waiting for replacements on those on the slow boat from China.

I’ve just completed the repair of my now formerly broken Arris CM3000 Pro 3-axis gimbal.  The CM3000 Pro is a 32 bit 3-axis gimbal for GoPro cameras.

There were a few broken pieces which were not that easy to replace due to the wiring for the pitch motor and the pitch sensor.  There’s some carbon fiber framing in the shape of an “L” which goes from the pitch motor to the roll motor.  Both sides of that framing were broken.  I ordered CM3000 replacement parts from Hobby-Wing, but the whole L piece came as an assembly, glued together.  Otherwise I would have just replaced the sides which were broken.

The broken gimbal:

Broken Gimbal

I had to unsolder the four tiny connections to the sensor located under the camera:

Then had to unsolder the three connections on the main board for the pitch sensor in order to unthread the wires from the old broken L arm.

Also, all the plastic screws which held the protective box for the SimpleBGC gimbal controller were broken, so had to replace those.

Repair complete.  Still need to test out the gimbal and make sure it works.

Then it is on to rebuilding the Alien H4 680 quadcopter.