The little beast now has fpv kit on board consisting of
I will be using this video rx for the groundstation.
Mini H Quad – New FC
So my H Quad just got a new flight controller, a CC3D board from banggood
I de-soldered the headers on the rx and the CC3D board and changed them for the right angles ones you can see.
De-soldering these was a complete pain but the method I came upon was this:
You’ll need a decent pair of mini side cutters such as these
You’ll also need to fix the pcb down so it doesn’t move about.
Step 1: Cut the pins in half to reduce the thermal mass.
Step 2: Try and work your cutters between the black plastic portion to separate the pins in to individual parts, this will make it easier later.
Step 3: Cut the solder pads as close to the pcb as you can.
Step 4: Apply some flux to the bottom connections and use solder wick to remove as much solder as possible.
Step 5: Now take a sewing pin or a single header pin held between the jaws of some pliers and using your soldering iron heat the pin in the pliers and the pad in order to push the pin you’re trying to remove out.
Next time I do this procedure I’ll try and take some pictures to illustrate better.
Then is was a case of running the openpilot s/w and configuring the airframe and a quick flight to verify it.
Monday morning hard drive woes
What a start to Monday.
Last week we had a drive fail in a disk array, no problem slap in the spare from the shelf and we’re good to go screwed damn drive gave error and was no good, ok box has a hot spare in it, hmm that’s showing as unconfigured bad lalalalalala
Spent Thursday afternoon and all day Friday going back and forth with IBM support and finally on Friday afternoon they agree to send out 3 disks.
Get to work this morning and the disks had already been delivered so by half 9 both bad disks in the array were changed, cold spare on the shelf and faulty drives at the gatehouse to be picked up tomorrow.
Then I noticed that the Thecus NAS is screaming at me with red lights and that has a failed disk in it too 
coupled with the imminent death of my laptop hard drive last week and the non functioning replacement I’m going back to bed.
Mini H Quad – Update 1
I’ve just replaced the nasty round red aluminium standoff’s with some shorter black hex ones.
Mini H Quad – She flies
Last few little bits were done this morning and first test flight not so good as she wanted to flip over.
You can probably guess the cause if I tell you it wasn’t props, yes that’s correct I’d connected my motors up wrong well I had basically reversed the connector so 2, 3 & 4 were swapped.
After this issue had been sorted she took to the sky and although she needs some trimming and PID adjustment she fly’s ok.
Final flying weight with a 1500mah battery is 444g
Video coming soon.
Mini H Quad – Build log 5
Here she is
Not quite finished as I still need to terminate the connection loom into a connector and also hook up the receiver to the flight controller although this is easy enough as I already have that cable ready made.
Mini H Quad – Build log 4
Bottom plate is now fully wired.
Each arm is connected with 2 short screw and 2 long ones, the short ones go through one 5mm spacer and the long ones point upwards with a 5mm on the bottom and another on the top with an m3 nut to hold them in place.
This means that the bottom plate is a sub assembly and can be taken off the quad to be worked on if needs be.
At the front is a small 6 way black connector and there is a small plug in wire harness to connect to the flight controller on the 2nd plate.
Just waiting for some more 5mm spacers to finish of the last arm and then the bottom can be mated to the top and the flight controller wired before first testing.
Mini H Quad – Build log 3
A few bits and pieces done today on the quad but I’m running out of bits I can do until my micro power distribution board and other bits and pieces including some liquid electrical tape.
I’ve removed the motor connection wires from 2 of the ESC’s and shortened the motor wires and soldered these direct to the ESC pads, I then tested which way this combination of wires made the motors turn by connecting the signal lead up to channel 3, throttle, on my 6 channel flysky receiver.
Both ESC’s have been wired up the same so that’s the 2 anti colockwise ones done and after I tested them I then removed the gnd and positive leads from the servo connector and de-soldered them from the PCB to save a bit of weight and make the wiring tidier.
Mini H Quad – Build log 2
Ok a bit more progress made on the mini H.
I returned home from holiday to a small box containing motors, esc’s and props.
I’ve rebuilt the frame using some nylon spacers so that there is room between the bottom 2 plates for a micro power distribution board.
The esc will be attached to the arms with heat shrink and the motor leads will be soldered directly to the esc pads to reduce the amount of wire.
At the moment I’m using my witespy quads Multi Pro 2 flight controller and it’s been secured in place with some foam pads but in the future I intend to use one of their Flip32+ FC’s
The good thing about this FC is that it has plenty of connections available and as you can see in the pic I have my Bluetooth module installed so that I can configure MultiWii from my android phone, I’ve temporarily powered the FC using one of my esc hooked up to a flight battery and it all connected ok.
Mini H Quad – build log 1
A few months ago I got started in the hobby of RC multi rotors and specifically quad copters.
My first quad was based on a 3d printed design downloaded from thingiverse and modified through several iterations.
This quad is big and heavy and gives me about 5 minutes flight time from a 2200mah lipo pack so I decided to go for something smaller and more manoeuvrable with the ability to easily add FPV gear to it.
To meet these goals I’ve decided to build a small 250 H quad based on a carbon fibre frame from Banggood so let’s get to it.
Parts List:
Frame – Banggood ZMR250 carbon fibre alternative Banggood ZMR250 glass fibre
Motors, Esc’s & Props – This combo package from myrcmart.com but any similar sized motor, esc etc… can be used
RC Receiver – Any suitable 6 channel receiver that matches your TX
Battery – 1400mah + I’m using these from hobbyking
Flight Controller – At the moment I’m going to use the FC from my other quad which is a Multiwii Pro 2.0 from witespyquads but I intend to eventually put one of their Flip 32+ FC’s on this quad which is equivalent to a Full Naze 32
That’s all for now hopefully the frame will be delivered this week and I can get that build and take some pictures whilst waiting for the other parts to be delivered.
Frame arrived today.