Lucky coincidence with XK-1 form factor

[f_petrini]

I'm currently building an Oktokopter for FPV (first person view) flying and to shoot aerial photo and video:


Since I want to fly FPV with an on-board camera and RF downlink to video goggles I also want to have a video overlay / on-screen display with various information about the state of the aircraft.
I've been looking for a pre-built OSD but have not found anything that I really like so I started to work on designing a custom PCB for an XS1-L1 processor to go into the PCB module stack on the oktokopter.

Suddenly a silly thought popped into my mind: What if the XK-1 board fits on the Oktokopter? :shock:

Nah, I can't be that lucky... I grabbed an XK-1 board and held it over the oktokopter and I was really surprised to find out that the XK-1 board fits perfectly in the oktokopter:



That saved me hours of work and a fair bit of money... :D
Now I just need to make a much simpler board with video sync separation and video mixing but that's something I can do on a piece of stripboard, no need for a custom PCB for that.

[Folknology]

That's cool what are the motor driver boards you are using on it, off the shelf or your own?

*Update I just located them ESC http://mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/en/BrushlessCtrl
regards
Al

[jason]

F_Petrini your projects never cease to amaze me! I cant wait to see this flying about :-) What payload can it carry weight wise?

[f_petrini]

That's cool what are the motor driver boards you are using on it, off the shelf or your own?

As you noticed I'm using pre-built stuff. I've been wanting to build my own multicopter for some time but eventually realized that I'll never get enough time to build one from scratch. Even though it's not as mucg fun, I decided to buy a Mikrokopter kit instead and improve it with my own extensions...

I will probably replace the flight and navigation controllers with an XMOS powered solution with my own software. I've looked at the existing source code for the Mikrokopter but I don't like what I see, it's a mess. :shock:

F_Petrini your projects never cease to amaze me! I cant wait to see this flying about :-) What payload can it carry weight wise?

Well, I feel the need to put an XMOS processor in as many things I can... :lol:
I don't know the exact payload limit but from what I've seen a 350g camera mount and a 1kg DSLR camera is no problem.

[jason]

My gosh 1.3KG - that is pretty substantial for its size (I think) at least from the photo it feels that way

*holds his 1 litre of apple juice in his hand to get an idea of weight*

PS could you detail a list of standard components in this group http://xcore.com/groups/uav - we were having a discussion about basic components needed to build such a device just the other day! That would be really useful especially if you could give rough idea of price!

PPS: Inspirational video I found (skip to 16sec in or further for actual flight stuff)- would be good if you could make video as smooth as this:

HsFfpTYztxA

[f_petrini]

That kind of video quality is what I'm hoping to achieve.

Here's a video from my second test flight with a camera on-board, using a temporary camera mount without vibration dampening.
I'm using an old point-and-shoot camera with low resolution so the quality is BAD and after the flight I also realized that I didn't switch off the camera image stabilization which makes the quality even worse. The camera is trying to compensate for the engine vibrations but fails miserably.

It was quite windy today and I was testing the Bluetooth downlink during this flight (constantly looking at my laptop) so no fancy flying this time.

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(That's my house behind the trees at 0:34. ;) )

I've started designing the XCore based video overlay and my (second) attempt on separating the video sync signals works really well. I get a rock stable video overlay generated by an XK-1.
I tried building my own circuit for separating the sync signals (using a comparator) but my attempt failed and caused a lot of jitter. I now use a standard LM1881 sync separator.
The €2 cost of the LM1881 was easily worth it compared to messing about with my own solution. :lol:

I've got nothing to show yet but I'll create a project once I have something more interesting to show than a static test pattern...

[Woody]

That's Cool!

[jason]

Thanks for the video update! Great to see how things like this progress - eg here it is without dampening etc as you stated, and then we can visually see how it gets better and better! :-)

[Jerry]

Cool stuff!

What was the maximum altitude the 'copter reached in your video?

[f_petrini]

The maximum altitude in this video was 100 meters.

Today I added high intensity LED strips on four of the arms, two red stripes on the front arms and two blue on the left/right center arms. The stripes are controlled by the flight controller so I can make the them blink in different patterns. Looks REALLY cool in the dark. :lol:

I also received my video transmitter and video goggles (Fat Shark) today. I've not had time to mount it to the kopter but I tested the transmitter and goggles. They are really nice with a big and sharp image.