MWC Quadcopter – Cramming in the ESCs
These photos show the frame starting to come together. The bottom of the CF plate shows each of the four ESCs are held in place by 2mm cable ties. There's not a lot of room left on the top of the board after the ESCs and power distribution cable is laid down. On top of this will come the three leads from each motor to plug into the ESC. If you were thinking of using any gauge wire heavier than 20AWG, you might want to think again because even just space will become an issue.
The next plate above is prepared with nylon mounts to host both the MWC control board and above that will be another quad frame plate that is likely to host my GoPro camera. I haven't decided yet whether to put the camera up on the top plate or out in front on an extended arm. Up top under a dome would be better balanced and protected, but out on the arm might have a better view clear of the props. Undoubtedly I'll end up trying both but seeing as I don't have the extended arm, and it costs more money, I'll see how it goes up top first.
QuadCopter SCARAB – Motor Mount Retainer
These photos show the retaining screw cut to 7mm and how it penetrates one quadrant of the 12mm aluminium tube divided up by the motor mount. Cut to the right length, it doesn't intrude far enough to cause concern with rubbing on the wire from the ESC to the motor which is routed internally along the tube.
QuadCopter SCARAB 12 – Assembly part 2
The frame looks well laid out, light weight and just plain good looking. 20AWG is used to connect to the 2213N 800Kv Brushless Motors with just enough left hanging out the end to connect the four speed controllers ( TURNIGY Plush 12amp (2A BEC) BESC ). The only thing I'm unsure about so far is the sorta sharp edges of the aluminium booms and how that might rub against the wires.
SCARAB 12 – Quad-X EURO Build – Motor Mounts
I'm going to try using 1.5mm cable ties on the motor mounts. Seemed to work fine on the Tricopter and in the event of a crash, there might be some give before things get bent.
Connecting the BMP085 Baro to the MultiWiicopter Paris V4
The BMP085 Barometric Pressure sensor is mounted on the bottom side of the Paris V4 board. Orientation of the BMP085 is not important but vibration is always an enemy so I used double sided foam tape to mount it. There are four points from the BMP085 that must be connected, VCC, GND, SDA and SCL. In this case they're connected to the LV I2C pads on the bottom side of board to the same points that the BMA180 Acceleromter is connected to on the top
Yellow wire is SCL. White wire is SDA. Red VCC and Black GND.
Paris MultiWiiCopter V4.0 board
Hooking up the components of the Paris MultiWiiCopter V4.0 board is a pretty straightforward job so if I can offer any advice, take your time and make sure not to miss any pins like I did. After making a concerted effort to have neat wiring and solder joints between the Arduino Pro Mini, the Wii Motion Plus, the BMA180 accelerometer and the BMP085 Pressure sensor, I found I wasn't getting any output from the sensors in the MultiWiiConf software. After deconstructing the board sensor by sensor, I found pins A4 and A5 from the Arduino board to the Paris board had been missed so effectively they weren't connected to anything. Now those particular pins are pretty important (well I guess most pins on the Arduino are pretty important to connect) as they take the input from the sensors! They're labelled as SDA and SCL and carry all the important stuff from the gyro, accel and baro sensor as input to the Arduino.
If you're familiar with the layout of an Arduino, you can see in the photo below the two pads in question missing any connecting pins. After soldering up these pins, everything worked fine.
*August 2011- Some more info on hooking up the baro sensor (http://fangin.com/blog/2011/07/26/connecting-the-bmp085-baro-to-paris-v4/)
*9th October 2011 - Added two pictures to show the connection between the BMA180 SDI Pin (#7) to the SDA connection on the Paris board.
*23rd December 2012 - Added a picture showing that I soldered the DC Bus closed. The advantage of leaving it open is to prevent noise entering the CPU and sensor section, the downside is a seperate uBEC is required to power the ESC / Servo side.
Troubleshooting the new V4 board by connecting the output of the new WMP into the old (known working board).
