[Closed] quadrocopter - who's got one ?

Hmmmm. We have a slightly bigger one as a project at the office. It was a bit out of that budget though (it contains a GPS enabled autopilot system and a load of other bits).

Have you had a look at Hobbyking's website? my ads here >>>> seem to now be picking up on them.

I had the Hubsan X4. It was a great little toy, had plenty of fun flying it about the house and back garden until one of the dogs decided they were going to try and eat it once I'd crashed it 😀

I have got this, build from bits from Hobbyking.
Just perfect for mounting gopro under.

[url= http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8098/8519357528_f4dc4d9619.jp g" target="_blank">http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8098/8519357528_f4dc4d9619.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/83246699@N00/8519357528/ ]PC257796[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/83246699@N00/ ]msh_sco[/url], on Flickr

@ Mikkel,
if not too personel a question - how much did that cost to build??

roughly 100 pounds, all from hobbyking UK.
biggest cost is the motors and speed controlers which is around a tenner each.
but if you don't have a transmitter you need to add that as well ofcourse.

noooooooooo

that hobbyking site is bad news.

cheers guys

I got a little Hubsan Quadcopter from ModelZone for £45. You can get it cheaper online. It was quite good fun until a colleague crashed it and bust a motor. Now waiting for replacements.

It's a tiny wee thing. About the size of the palm of you hand.

this filmed from mine (tweaked to look like nightvision)

OK, can someone tell me how you get those things to follow you down a hill or trail without crashing and without the camera ending up pointing in a totally wrong direction?!

I saw a long DH trail filmed on one of those, surely too far for one person with a controller to see where it was going.

Live feedback from the on board camera? Some sort of laser tracking? I know you can get GPS auto return for them so it'll just hover in the same place if it loses contact with the transmitter but I'd be interested to know how the hell you stop it crashing into trees when following riders down a trail.

crazy-legs, you need FPV for that. Look up "Team Blacksheep" on youtube for some good examples of this.

Essentialy you are sticking a small camera next to the GoPro and piping the output from that over radio to a pair of goggles you wear whilst you steer. It means about 350 quid extra on your build though.

Mikkel, I recognise the frame you've got, but do you have a list of the other bits in your build? I might be able to sneak a hundred under the radar at home...

live feed from a camera often to a pair og goggles
Look up FPV flying

this is the parts used in mine

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=24723
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=29353
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=29050
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=25890
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=29048
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=25457
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=25458

cheers mikkel - very helpful.
The price is rising for the lads b'day though.

Lads birthday, so thats the excuse your using?

It's a good excuse and if it works...

Mikkel, cheers for those links. I've got a spare Rx at work that I can plumb into it and a Contour that something like that should lift.

this thread is a wallet basher......good job i cant fnd the wallet.

I'm currently building up this x525 framed quad. I'm building it slowly with a couple of being bought each month.

[img] [/img]
Total cost of this build will be around £150, and should be able to lift my slr. But it will ultimately be 'upgraded' to a custom framed octocopter.

this thread is a wallet basher......good job i cant fnd the wallet.

I've been sort of half-heartedly looking at quadcopters for a while but not really knowing the kit and stuff to buy. That and the fact that I certainly don't *need* one.
But it's getting ever more complex as I find out the requirements and cost for on-board video!

great.. another thing I [s]need[/s] want...
🙂

there goes at least an hour of internet time looking for a fpv quadcopter that will carry a gopro/contour without breaking the bank.

There are some out there, but they will be expensive. As I mentioned above, TBS make a dedicated FPV quad designed around carrying a GoPro that is, well, not extorionate. If I had the spare cash...

The thing is, I am crap at flying an R/C plane and am wondering if FPV would make it any easier. Or if a quad would be easier. The last one we had at work suffered an ESC failure and sort of crashed. A bit. From height...

Thinking more of the budget end - £50 ish
as a present of the youth

Anyone got one & care to drop in a review.

How good are they outdoors & how easy to fly?

For no more than 40 quid you can get one of these [url= http://www.google.co.uk/shopping/product/3206259911707845701?q=hubsan&hl=en&sqi=2&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.43148975,d.d2k&biw=1680&bih=894&sa=X&ei=CA8xUfH4KOqw0AXUn4GICA&ved=0CFAQ8wIwAA ]Hubsan Quadcopter[/url]

This might look like a toy (which it is) but is remarkably well built & spare parts are cheap & readily available. The supplied control is pre set up but fully configurable & can be operated in two modes. Novice or expert.

See the thread I posted [url= http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/40-quids-worth-of-gyro-stabilised-cat-annoyance ]here[/url]

Far too good a toy for the kids & I quickly confiscated it as my lad was having too much fun 😉 Gyro stabilised & a total hoot to fly around the inside of the house. How do they build these things & ship them half way around the world for the money ?

D

I may just have bought one of those Hubsan Quadcopters. By accident obviously.
Sort of tripped over the computer and ended up on Amazon... As you do.

Damn! Seen this on my youtube subscriptions. Want one even more!

Those hubsans look good to practice with though

A mate has a quadcopter, & filmed another mate [url=

RIVI.[/url]

You can just see 'the pilot' to the left of the screen at 2mins 19 or so.

I built this a few years ago:
[img] [/img]

(Note carbon cover!)
But a warning, potentially dangerous if you use an old transmitter that pick up something, and turns all four motors on 100% when you've got your face next to it. It shot up about 100m, stopped, dropped like a stone onto the house roof, and into the front garden, never to fly again. I've got a small Hubsan x4 now, much safer.

I've got a little Hubsan. It's awesome.

Just for the fun of it - here's my toy:

[url= http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5180/5596452826_a08aea325a_z.jp g" target="_blank">http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5180/5596452826_a08aea325a_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/cycleologist/5596452826/ ]Mikrokopter Hexa XL 1[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/cycleologist/ ]Ben Cooper[/url], on Flickr

😉

Ben,
Looks good. The bowl looks like the one I used for a mould to make my cover, see above!

99p from Poundstretchers 😉

(The official Mikrokopter one costs €25)

Mine was from Wilko, so not the same after all!

wanted to go fly mine, and now i cant find my transmitter 🙁

I've been tempted by a quadcopter for a while for some alpine singletrack filming. I want one for a gopro or maybe with enough power to lift my Nikon P7100 large compact. I thought the cost was a lot until I saw this:

http://quadcopters.co.uk/dji-phantom-ready-to-fly-quadcopter-570-p.asp

However, since reading this thread it seems one can be built for far less. Is it difficult? Can you buy kits to assemble? Can any of them be folded up and put in a back pack? Sorry for the hijack!

Yes, lots of bits available.
Good info here:
[url= http://www.rcgroups.com/aircraft-electric-multirotors-790/ ]RC Groups, warning: you'll spend money[/url]

they are going to take over the world, check out this ted talk....

I got one of those DJI Phantoms, mainly because I was in a bit of a rush, had no idea how to fly a Quadcopter and thought the "return to home" function would be handy if it all went horribly wrong.

Used it a couple of times now for filming with the GoPro. Very, very easy to fly, but I need to do some work on isolating the camera from the frame, as the "jello" effect was quite noticeable.

They are quite a few tips online on how to do this, but I haven't got around to it yet.

The "return to home" function works perfectly too!

You get about 10 minutes flying time on each fully charged battery, but depending on where you buy it from, you get a second battery for free.

[url= http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8079/8419696200_94d3266f07.jp g" target="_blank">http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8079/8419696200_94d3266f07.jp g"/> [/img][/url]

The end of this flight went horribly wrong (not a quadrocopter)!

Return to home sounds like a sensible function to have when carrying expensive cameras.

wheelz: I was looking at the DJI Phantom but when you add in the camera and the FPV add-on, it's still the thick end of £1000. 🙁

Otherwise it looks a great bit of kit, something dead easy and off the shelf.

return to home does not help much when the plane is lying in bits on the ground somewhere Ebygomm....
GPS locator is what is needed 🙂

All this talk of flying FPV - bear in mind that it's actually illegal to fly FPV in this country (without a primary pilot who has visual contact with the aircraft and ready to take control if your camera link fails).

This amazed me:

Been toying with building one...

this is the parts used in mine

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=24723
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=29353
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=29050
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=25890
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=29048
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=25457
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=25458

@Mikkel Did you use an online guide to build up? I'm kinda tempted.

My Hubsan X4 arrived today. 🙂 Dinky little thing but seems pretty well made for £35.

Only had a little play with it so far, got it into a steady(ish) hover but it needs some more work on the trim functions to get it to a truly stable hover. Good fun though, dead easy to fly right from the box - 20 minute charge on the LiPo battery and away you go!

My Hubsan X4 arrived today. Dinky little thing but seems pretty well made for £35.

It is pretty solid except: There is a design flaw with the motors. I've broken 5, yes 5, in two days! If the quadcopter crashes heavily upside down it'll most probably break the motors. The central rod in the motor gets pushed though the feeble plastic base and then it's useless. I've even had this happen with crashes a few inches of the ground.

I've just ordered a full set of replacement motors to get mine back up and running. I do love it. Just wished it was more crash proof. Especially as a novice.

With the Hubsan, make sure you turn the transmitter on first, and connect the battery on the quadrocoper with it level.

[url= http://traxxas.com/support/QR-1-Stabilization-System-Reset-Video ]look here.[/url]

i read various blogs about the controler boards. then settled for one due to its cheap price and lcd screen.
then picked a esc and motor combo which are cheap, it fly on 3cell lipos.

Just realised that you probably ment guides to how to assemble the whole thing. There is some but its very specific to the frames, it is dead simple though. and if wanting to go for the cheap frame i have used, i can easily make a simple guide with some pictures if needed.

This thread is dangerous.. And who ever posted the hobbyking link has a lot to answer for (My other half is going to go mental when my 4 packages from HongKong eventually turn up) 😆

Looks like I'm building a F450 framed FPV explorer! I even bought a Hubsan X4 to train on while all the parts turn up.

Good luck with the build 🙂

OMFG a £100!!

I am so going to build one in the summer for some GoPro action!! Already have a transmitter, receiver and Lipo's!

As above, this thread is dangerous and amazing!

[img] [/img]
quick update on mine - its ready to fly, just needs the battery and transmitter/reciver, oh and the camera mount.
However i'm skint this month so its on hold - i'm hoping to have it flying for Bikefest in June.

JC, you'd better make sure you get the parts list for yours up, that looks very tidy!

here you go:

x525 frame (£13 Ebay)
4x Emax MT2213 motors / 9.5" props, which should give a max thrust of 3.4KG (about £10.50 each Ebay)
4x hobby king 30a ESC's (£6 each ish - Hobbyking)
1x hobby king power octocopter distribution board (£4 - Hobbyking)
1x Hobbyking KK2.0 flight control board (£20 - Hobbyking)

oh and a small Wico sandwich tub covered in carbon fiber vinyl wrap to protect the fight board.

i also have a 200mm landing gear set on order so the SLR can go under it.

The original idea was to route the wiring through the tubing of the frame and mount the esc's on the under side, but there wasnt enough space with the mounting blots. So i've mounted the esc's inside the frame where there is just enough room.

eventualy i'll buy 4 more motor / esc sets and convert it into a octocopter (hense the power board).

Got myself one of these at the weekend [img] http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRv_hj3IcVq2SS0sops2DQVnbC-ZAu2ml9oc_UdMRRK13Euu9dI [/img]
Hard hat needed
Mad as **** in stunt mode esp indoors
Hell 3 times the size of the hubsan
[url= http://icarusmodels.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=34&products_id=2729 ]quadcopter linky[/url]
The light and silly cowling realy help working which way is the front

anyone want to buy the Motors, ESC, Flight controller and power distribution board listed in one of my previous posts?
going to upgrade so its going spare soon.

These look great. Can you get a decent one that would carry a gopro for under £100? Do they come as kits or do you have to buy all the parts separately?

The one i have, and am trying to sell parts for, was used with my gopro.
You can buy kits but they are more expensive than building one from scratch.

stuarty, that looks like a good next step from my Hubsan X4. 🙂

I never even knew these existed until 2mins ago.

Obviously being a child, I now want one. How powerful would it need to be to lift a cat?

Anyone got/used one of these Quadshot copters that's both a quadcopter and flying wing?

Fully computer controlled, and can transition between copter and plane mode. Thought it was quite clever having nifty features like altitude detection so it can adjust the rotor control loops for different air densities etc.

Just ordered one of those Twister Quadcopters that stuarty linked to ^^

Got reasonably proficient with the Hubsan X4 so something a bit bigger would be a good next step. Also, I'm off work injured so the internet shopping has started...

Dibs on the hubsan 🙂

[img] [/img]

almost finished - just batteries to go. It's been a bit of a slow 'in the back ground' project, but its getting there.....

what country are you invading ?

My Team Black Sheep discovery is almost finished. A rather long term build project but its getting there. Have all the parts but no time to get it finished.

So I've been flying that Twister thingy around the place a bit. Can get it round the house and I flew it at the indoor BMX track at Manchester the other day (where it was properly ace) and I tried flying it outside this morning but even the gentle breeze cause a few problems and it crashed a couple of times.

And now I accidently appear to have stumbled across some more quadcopter websites. I haven't quite got to the point where I've accidently input my card details but I can see this one getting expensive...

Great fun though - that Twister indoors in a big space with no wind is brilliant. There were a few people stuck their heads round the doors, probably hoping to see some BMXers in action and instead there's some idiot playing with his chopper which must have surprised them a bit.

Got my RTF Phantom a couple of weeks ago- really easy to fly.

Here is a little film;

[url=

With the RTF Phantom, can you just program in a GPS route and it'll track that, and follow pre-set height settings too?

Topper, you bought a TBS Discovery? Good (albeit expensive) choice!

I love it. Although I decked it from altitude a few weeks ago and (only) broke an arm. Have the replacement but no time to repair it at the moment. Go pro mounted on the front I do some filming with it. It gets good footage of the steam trains that run next door to my shop.

http://microdrone.co.uk/index.html

i got one of these for my birthday this year. (its more expensive than i expected actually)

Its TINY!

also, this particular one i found very good!

its hard to fly, but its solid! ive crashed it into concrete in every direction, every way up, poked it out of trees with a long stick (and it hit every branch on the way down) and its still fine. very cool!

not as impressive as some of those other badboys though!

And now this must be done again

[url=

Mangatank- I don't think so . The GPS is just to keep it stopped in one place when you are not actively controlling it . I think there may be an advanced option to allow you to do this, but I think you have to pay for it (haven't read all the bumf yet) . Also, I think you are supposed to keep it line of site, technically...

With the RTF Phantom, can you just program in a GPS route and it'll track that, and follow pre-set height settings too?

Mangatank: no.
For things like that you need this:
http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/

Open source coding for radio controlled craft - they do stuff for single and multi-rotor aircraft. Basically means building your own which is a shame cos the Phantom looks ideal in every other respect - I was looking at getting one for ages having already got a Hubsan, a Twister and a [url= http://ardrone2.parrot.com/ ]Parrot AR Drone[/url]

Initially bought the Hubsan and the Twister as a cheap way of learning to fly quads (the idea being to move on to a Phantom) but I've kind of put off buying it cos of the limitations on route planning - it needs direct input, the GPS is simply there to allow it to hover in one spot and to Return-To-Base (if it goes out of range or the controller dies it climbs to 60ft, returns to the spot it took off from and auto-lands).

I quite fancy getting one but a bit of a slippery slope to start on...
Already spent enough on my wheeled rc's

And I read about someones phantom flying off in the distance never to be seen again 😮

might as well just attach your wallet to a weather balloon if that's going to happen

I think this might be the bottom of the slippery slope.

My brother's work one.

[IMG] [/IMG]

No idea whether this has been posted or not, but worth a look.

Slightly cheaper alternative to the phantom. Supposed to be pretty good.

[url= http://www.modelhelicopters.co.uk/qr-x350-rtf-quadcopter-complete-inc-devo-7-tx-batt-charg.html ]350qx[/url]

Just found the little husban now comes with fpv