Printed Tri-Quadcopter

by Quad007 | December 14, 2012 | (5) Posted in Projects

The Tri-Quadcopter I designed 3D printed at my school. I still need to order all the components and I am trying to determin what flight controller to use. I like to call it the mini Do-copter because its not a Tri but a quad in a Tri-copter like configuration. It doesn't Tri, it just "Does".


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COMMENTS

gtrguy on December 15, 2012
Looking good, keep going, I'm very interested in your work. Hopefully somone will start answering questions regarding how to control this thing. Seems like you have many degrees of freedom on this thing with four throttles and three servos. I don't think I've seen any firmware for the KK boards that will work with this..
This guy has done it http://youtu.be/_wrCEvWXME8
Your best bet is probably this guy from DIYdrones
http://vimeo.com/41811715
He is using arducopter stuff, so I hope you have some programming buddies...Here is the thread, although I'm sure you've seen these already being as far as you are this project.
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/ducted-fan-quadcopter
Good luck

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Quad007 on December 15, 2012
Thanks for your input. I'm very glad that you like it, I was a little worried people might say its to Impractical.
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ipetepete on December 17, 2012
Hmmm interesting problem. You need a controller that will need to both control multiple servos, and the speed of the motor for stability.

How much programming knowledge do you have? You might have to customize a control board like the Multi-Wii boards. They are open source code using the Arduino stack, but you need to have a good foundation in programming.

Thats where I would start. But then again, I'm a software developer by trade.
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rchacker on December 17, 2012
Nice, looks like a tricopter sans yaw servo. I assume you have lots of room inside for the electrics?
You have one motor in the middle and three on the outside? Looks like it needs really small props, or four ducted fans. Roll and pitch would work as a normal tricopter with the centre motor just assisting with the yaw.
Counter to popular belief the flight controller can be mounted offset from the centre of gravity. Id suggest buying single battery cells so you can distribute the battery weight.

If you could tweak the design and send me one, I'll happily work out the software and electrics.
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Quad007 on December 17, 2012
Have you seen my first video? It has the hole design, battery servos etc. I would be happy to send you one. It weighs about 400 gs w/out the flight controller and some wires. I have some tweaks to reduce weight. The body without any electronics is 230 gs.

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rchacker on December 17, 2012
I'd be using similar hardware as my mini tricopter, I cant really afford to buy four ducted fans and motors at the moment. I reckon I might make a prototype out of foam and balsa first, if I do it the design will be open so I will let you know. You might get a bit of a vortex ring state happening on those outer motors reducing their efficiency. Narrow ducted fans like that also have a higher kV which means a slower throttle response. I'd stick with a proven motor/prop combination and design your body so they are all ducted.

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rchacker on December 17, 2012
How much does it weigh?
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ipetepete on December 17, 2012
Here is another option, don't know if it would work, but you could use a standard KK board to control the motor speed based on its on-board gyros, and connect three separate heli head gyros to control the servos. It would be really tricky to get it stable, having two separate systems at play, but might be the simple route in terms of customization.
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Cyberdactyl on December 17, 2012
You might consider speaking to one or more of four guys, if not for a programming file, then to gathering much more information regarding this configuration.

Lazyzero or pug398 or kapteinkuk or Minsoo Kim at RCGROUPS.

All four know the kk boards like the back of their hands. They could probably take the rear motor and servo segments from Minsoo Kim's V2.9 XXcontrol Y copter hex file and replicate another two with "relatively little" work. The central motor appears it would be a no-brainer reacting to merely throttle. You can find them moving around in the Multirotor category.
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Printed Tri-Quadcopter