Author Andrei
10/09/2019

Another drone project I've found on Instructables and made by mr_fid. A relativity simple multicopter, built using 3mm plywood and using the very common and cheap A2212 motor with 30 Amp brushless controller. Propellers are 1045 the flight controller is the simple KK2.1.5. Powered by a 3000mAh 3 cell lipo the whole model cost around £100.

The flight controller (which is the heart of the drone) takes in the 4 channels from the receiver and works out what power to give to each motor. The transmitter is set up for a plane so the 4 channels are throttle, rudder, elevator and aileron. And the 4 channels do the following. So, let’s look at the Quad/Hex/Oct. The first (and most obvious) thing to say is that the number of motors in each case is EVEN!

And this is important but more important is that half of the motors will turn clockwise and the other half anticlockwise, and just as important is that the motors alternate around the frame. This is where the difference is between a tricopter where the yaw is controlled by the servo and a quad/hex/oct where the yaw is controlled by changing the speed of the motors. So what does that mean??? It’s very simple let’s consider a quadcopter, two motors will go clockwise and two will go anticlockwise.

If you wish to make the model spin on its axis (Yaw) then you increase the speed of the clockwise motors and at the same time decrease the speed of the Anticlockwise motors, by doing this you have maintained the overall power of the motors and hence not changed altitude BUT crucially you now have a turning force because two motors are spinning quicker than the others.

Is possible to get a 5 motor multicopter working, and after a bit of adjustment you can get it to fly very well. However its not perfect and never will be. The simple answer is unless you are building a tricopter make sure you have an even number of motors. See the full tutorial here to see how to make it.

Apart this post, if you have your own project and you need good quality PCBs, consider using the services of JLCPCB.com which will offer you quite good services, I use their services a lot of my PCBs.

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