Construction

Discussions and questions about the Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter
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AndyGFLees
Beginner
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2013 8:28 pm

Construction

Post by AndyGFLees »

Hi,

I have been having great difficulty getting my Crazyflie to remain stable with no Yaw/Roll input from my PS3 controller. It seems to me that to greatly assist with the accuracy of the Yaw/Role before any trim adjustments on the controller software, accurate placement of the motor mounts along the pcb arms is essential - any discrepancy of the distances of the vertical axes of the motors from the centre of the Crazyflie must mean more trim adjustments are initially required.

As such I have been trying to ensure that my motor mounts are exactly the same distances along the pcb arms by looking at the text along the arms. The letter "i" in the word "Crazyflie" lines up with the end of my motor mounts on arms M1,2 and 3 but the mount only reaches to the middle of the letter "e" on the M3 arm.

My questions:

1. Am I overly concerned about this and it would make very little difference anyway?
2. Are the words "Crazyflie" printed at exactly the same places on each arm?

Thanks,
Fucitol
Beginner
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed May 08, 2013 7:49 am

Re: Construction

Post by Fucitol »

Placing of the battery can make a huge difference and that is what I normally use for stabilization. I haven't tried the trim adjustments though, what do these actually do? Counter imbalance by setting the axis to a certain amount of input?

I would expect that motor placement also effects the stability, just as finding the right propellors do.
AndyGFLees
Beginner
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2013 8:28 pm

Re: Construction

Post by AndyGFLees »

Fucitol,

Yes the battery positioning did occur to me early on but I thought that this could only be a matter of judgment. What is really needed is a set of precision scales that can measure the weight at four different points on it's weighing surface - does anyone know if such a device exists?

Thanks,
foosel
Expert
Posts: 175
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 9:59 pm
Location: Obertshausen, Germany
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Re: Construction

Post by foosel »

For me the motor mounts all reach up to the "i". Battery is fixed with velcro, taking care to place it in the middle. While the CF is drifting quite badly when using a game controller it's close to perfectly stable with no input when using the R/C transmitter.

I think (from my personal experience, YMMV) that "noisy" control input (no deadzone around 0) has a much bigger impact on flight stability than any physical discrepancies (and those can be trimmed away easily).
Image
Also: AR.Drone 2.0 (RC-enabled thanks to self-soldered MiruMod) and Hubsan X4 H107
rmirwin2
Member
Posts: 51
Joined: Mon May 13, 2013 6:06 pm

Re: Construction

Post by rmirwin2 »

I agree with foosel. Adding deadzone e. Even a slight dent in the motor case can affect motor performance in a big way.
Rich
VGer's v1.7.1 frame, 10DOF Crazyflie, Wireless Xbox360 Controller, Virtual Machine on VMware/Windows 7
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