Code 42

I was going through a local hobby shop, and to my delight, I found that they had a F450 Frame on sale. They said it's the last one in their current stock (but they said more stock is on the way). I'm still waiting for the F550 frame I ordered from eBay. Although the F450 wasn't exactly the one I was looking for, I decided to buy it and give it a try also. For those who aren't familiar, the F550 is a Hexacopter frame, while the F450 is a Quadcopter frame. The F450 Fame I found The F450 I bought didn't have the DJI branding, so I'm guessing it's a clone. But I can say, it's quite a good quality one.

It's been another few weeks, and I'm back to building my quad. Since I recently got my transmitter, it was time to start building the electronics of the quad. The AeroQuad project ( link ) is based on an Arduino for the flight control. It basically uses a 3-axis Gyro and a 3-axis Accelerometer for the flight sensing (other sensors such as Magnetometers and Barometers are also supported, but optional: more info ). To connect these sensors, AeroQuad offers a 'shield' for the Arduino ( What is a 'shield'? ). The sensors need to be bought separately. There are 2 shields, AeroQuad Shield v2.0 ( link ) for Arduino Mega and AeroQuad Shield v1.9 ( link ) for Arduino Duemilanove. Since I already had an Arduino Mega, I ordered the 2.0 shield. With the normal shipping method, it took about 3 weeks to arrive. The shield kit included the following, AeroQuad Shield v2.0 Kit The shield PCB The Logic Level Converter 2 resistors (15K and 7.5K) ULN2003 IC 3 LEDs ...

It's been over 2 months since I posted the first post on building a quadcopter ( link ). You would've thought that I must have completed the build by now. But actually, I couldn't do much. Mainly because that my transmitter shipment got late. As you remember, I ordered a HK-T6Av2 from HobbyKing ( link ) (Actually, a friend ordered it for me as a gift). It was shipped on 21st March. Usually takes less than a month to arrive. But since I didn't receive it until 25th April, I made a complaint to HobbyKing. They said they'd start an investigation on it. On 11th May, the Hong Kong Post mail tracking reported that the parcel was returned to sender. Why was it returned? no one knows... Anyway, I contacted HobbyKing again and they said they can arrange it to be resent once it reaches their warehouse. The parcel reached them on 25th May and it was re-shipped on 31st. It finally arrived about a week ago.... So, here it is... It's finally arrived... I have to sa...

Note: This is the start of the 'My Projects' section. This is where I post about the projects that I personally do. You can track my progress, my decisions and their outcomes for the problems I face and of course failures (sort of...). So, I hope you enjoy this as much as I do and please leave comments. Ever since I started building model aircrafts I wanted to build a Quadcopter (a.k.a. Quadrotor). I was fascinated by their agility, their simple design and control but need of a complicated stabilization system. The only thing that delayed me to build one is the relatively high cost for the components. But finally I found an opensource quadcopter project named AeroQuad ( link ) which was just within my budget. So, I started gathering my resources... The first thing I needed was a good Transmitter/Receiver pair, which turned out to be a problem because a good pair costs a lot. A quad will need at least a 4-Channel one. That's a bare minimum, so a 6-Channel one would be th...