HT X-0 QuadFan
Hey all!
I'm pleased to announce my current project: the Hot Turkey X-0 QuadFan. I'm trying to develop, from the ground up, a quadcopter that is based on electric ducted fans (EDFs) rather than rotors, and uses the Parallax Propeller as the primary flight computer.This is a multi-phase project with many different, specific goals. I hope to use this thread as a means of documenting my work, and gaining valuable insight from the community, which I hope to contribute to. Please feel free to provide feedback! Currently I am about 1/3 of the way through the first phase. First phase goals consist of the following:
1. Develop quad-EDF aircraft that can hover autonomously (does not need to hold exact position).
2. Develop simulation of aircraft dynamics combined with flight computer model that accurately predicts the dynamic response of the aircraft.
Here's a picture of the bird as she is today.
I chose the H shaped frame configuration over the common X shape because of future plans. In the next post I will be going over the hardware in greater detail.
I'm pleased to announce my current project: the Hot Turkey X-0 QuadFan. I'm trying to develop, from the ground up, a quadcopter that is based on electric ducted fans (EDFs) rather than rotors, and uses the Parallax Propeller as the primary flight computer.This is a multi-phase project with many different, specific goals. I hope to use this thread as a means of documenting my work, and gaining valuable insight from the community, which I hope to contribute to. Please feel free to provide feedback! Currently I am about 1/3 of the way through the first phase. First phase goals consist of the following:
1. Develop quad-EDF aircraft that can hover autonomously (does not need to hold exact position).
2. Develop simulation of aircraft dynamics combined with flight computer model that accurately predicts the dynamic response of the aircraft.
Here's a picture of the bird as she is today.
I chose the H shaped frame configuration over the common X shape because of future plans. In the next post I will be going over the hardware in greater detail.
Comments
I had already been playing around with the propeller for a year or so and I was having trouble finding the time to take the above RC airplane to a field. I then decided that it would be fun to try to take all of the hardware (ESCs, EDFs, and batteries) and turn them into a quadcopter. I bought another of the above RC airplanes to complete the set of the following:
4 : 60mm electric ducted fans
4 : 40amp electric speed controllers
2 : 2200mAh 3S 20C LiPo batteries
Still being a beginner to microprocessors, sensors, and microprocessor programming; I elected to use modules from the parallax website, which luckily all have sample code that I was able to analyze and learn from and even copy directly. For stability, I am using a 3-axis rate gyro, and a 3-axis accelerometer. An essential part of this project is to be able to record the sensor readings and the calculated PWM signals to the ESCs so that I can compare and adjust the mathematical model in the simulations (more on that in the next post). Therefore, I have an Xbee that sends the data to an Xbee that is connected to my laptop. The laptop runs a python script that receives the data and records it in a text file.
If I have learned anything from this project, it is that proto boards are an evil bastion of stress sent from the devil himself to destroy my prototyping dreams. The gyro, accel, and xbee are wired to a quickstart proto board, which sits on top of a quickstart board. During the soldering of the gyro, I guess I held the soldering iron on the pad too long and overheated the gyro module. It still sits there as a cold reminder of my distaste towards the proto board soldering process. Here's a picture of the wiring.
If anyone has any feedback, insults, or tips regarding my proto boarding skills, I would love to hear them. This post is getting kind of long soooo...to be continued.