Hi,
does anyone have experience with propeller balancing and/or weight balancing generally?
I can imagine that slight variations in the propeller production can cause to vibrations.
Maybe that could checked during the assembly before the Motor are glued on the CF. If I mount just on propeller at a time on one of the motor and hold this motor with the (unbalanced Propeller) with my fingers maybe it is possible to feel vibrations at running!? Maybe it is possible to write an self test Program (after assembly) to check vibration of each Motor/Propeller with the G-Sensor of the CF .
Furthermore I thing it is important where and how to put the LiPo on the CF. The power consumption of the Motors are probably very different at hovering if the CF is weight unbalanced.
You are correct on every point you mentioned. We have written, and will write some more instructions, on how to maximize the performance: http://wiki.bitcraze.se/projects:crazyf ... erformance.
Getting balanced propellers is a key factor to get good performance but yet we have no good solution other then testing each propeller and sorting them. If you find a good way to balance them please share!
We have also discussed making a test that could measure the vibration of each motor/propeller. Shouldn't be to difficult and I hope you beat us to it
I haven't done this with props before, but for very small spinning tops we would support them by their axis and they would droop to one side. A dot of fingernail polish, on the top, was enough to bring them back into balance. and if it was wrong it wasn't to hard to scrap it off.
using the motion sensor to see if a prop in out of whack is a great idea. You could test which motor was wrong and you would only need to remove and fix that prop then.
As i dont have mine yet someone else will have to test of this works.
I have learned a lot about balancing and found some good videos for larger propeller balancing. http://youtu.be/OXuNnYQO2s4 http://youtu.be/N02NHYrpA0g
But nothing comparable to the CF propeller size.
At this point i have to wait and will try some things if i got my CF and do a video of balancing after success.
To find the perfect center of mass(CoM) of the CF i have a idea that i have to proof, too. (Cords between the Motor and the probeller (first: M1+M3; next: M2+M4) and then balance X and Y axis of the CF on a flat table) we'll see
The self test motor vibration measuring program... sounds like my first CF project First step manually than automatically after an (recognized) crash
I have a couple very small MPU6050 based IMU's from ebay,
I was thinking I could hot glue the spare crazyflie motor to it and use the Multi Wii software GUI to monitor the vibrations and help to balance the props, I'll plug the IMU into a Femtoduino Arduino microcontroler tied to the IMU via I2C
Good idea, the MultiWii android clients look very nice.
We have been thinking about using the Crazyflie itself to do the balancing, but have never gotten around to doing it. The firmware could be modified to run one motor at a time while you are holding the Crazyflie down and then the sensor output could be analyzed.
I had tried to find good balanced propeller with the battery method but without success. It is hard to feel any difference between the propeller.
I find the right place in the CF FW to put in a another selt test function for the propeller balancing mechanism, but a working Plotter in the CF Client would be very helpful to compare the curves.
I had tried to find good balanced propeller with the battery method but without success. It is hard to feel any difference between the propeller.
I find the right place in the CF FW to put in a another selt test function for the propeller balancing mechanism, but a working Plotter in the CF Client would be very helpful to compare the curves.
here is a nice little upgrade of the CF FW to improve the performance of the CF very much!!!
With this propeller balancing self test (at start up), it is possible to find the perfect ONE.
Bad propeller balancing:
Good propeller balancing:
Without propellers:
By the way my Propeller 2 is very close to the optimum of ~0.6 G (compare to Without propellers) in this configuration.
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