Power supplies for charging

My old "brick" style 12v power supply failed after traveling (squealing caps), and i'd wanted to upgrade to something stronger anyway.

I was tempted to use a 1250w HP one I had in a 1RU server in the shed but that server has another purpose, and besides it's damn noisey!

So I settled on a Corsair VS450 PC power supply, for a few reasons which i've listed at the bottom, but basically: clean 12v rail, reliable, cheap ($54 AUD), I could pick one up from the local PC store

Of course, a few modifications are needed..

Opening it and voiding the warranty you see the 12v rail (yellow wires)

I decided to cap off the 3.3v and 5v rails as I might use them in the future for Arduino/5v projects. The alternative is to desolder these from the PSU board, cross the PS_ON (see below) directly and only have the two 12v rails.. 

So, a bit of shrink wrap as below, before taping:

I then soldered the two 12v lines to create two 12v outputs, directly in to XT60 adapters

Shrink wrap before taping before wrapping again

That basically gives you the two lines:

Because the power supply is for a PC, it needs a switch to enable 'on' mode (PS_ON). Simply shorting the 16th wire in Green (ATX supply V2 standard), you basically turn it on:

And you're done!

This covers my two chargers at full rate with some headroom, 380w and 30a, as the power supply does 408w and 34a

Why I chose the corsair VS450

• Corsair are known for their reliability
• The output is clean and reportedly quite good on the 12v rail specifically
• It's super quiet with a dynamic fan based on heat/draw not feedback from a PC
• The specs covered what I had charger-wise today with some head room at max capacity (408w 34A)
• It was only $54 AUD, going up to 600-800w was > $100 for something good
• I already had one wired to my 3D printer so now had a degree of failover :)
• They had one at the local PC shop I could collect today

Attracted to water

Apologies for the poor tune at the start, two maiden builds
Realacc/x210 (https://goo.gl/uJ0nUi)
ZMX X25 2300kv (https://goo.gl/JyKPoL) 
HQ DPS5x4x3 (https://goo.gl/kkm7NY)
Joos batteries (https://www.instagram.com/p/BN0-ZlKDUY0/)
1080p/60 using EKEN H9R (meh, but better than Xaomi Yi running Waffle as seen at the very start)
Track by @Jukan (Soundcloud)

ESC caught fire

After hitting a circular gate racing on the weekend, my quad tumbled and landed upright.

I went to take off but one of the motors/props was out, so I assumed a busted prop..

Then, it caught on fire - good orange/yellow flames visible from 20 meters, a mate ran over (I was de-goggling and putting glasses back on), picked it up and blew it out - man it stinks..

Advice - don't use cable-ties/zip-ties on your arms to hold ESC in place, it makes them overly rigid and more prone to stripping electronics off the top. This is the second XM20A to fail, I don't think i'll be using those ever again.

And follow me on Instagram here -> @dronerant

3D printed quad shell

Design extraordinaire Perry custom designed this sleek outer shell for the QAV-X/RealaccX210

Yup, that's an 'internal' VTX antenna at the back!

Did I mention all the internals are also 3D printed!

He's calling it the SlipX, and is planning to make it available online for a small fee (i'll link it here when it's up)

Can't wait to try it, one of the big advantages and innovative points is the internalising of the VTX antenna, great move for all-day reliable racing


Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/dronerant/

Xiaomi Yi wedge (4th iteration)

I'm pretty happy with this iteration, 35 degrees, 9.7gm, raised cable-tie mount, fits snug with the camera face-protector .. very happy overall


Printed on the side so the lines of the print go with the maximum stress point, which is front-on crashes of course :)

Only 9.7 grams (0.34 oz)

Xiaomi Yi wedge

Below is a 35 degree Xiaomi Yi wedge a friend and I designed, it's way over engineered.

I printed it as solid just to see, hence why it's 2.5-3x the weight of my other lighter ones which do just fine :)

But this is ridiculously strong!

3D printed Xiaomi Yi faceplate

A few different iterations of a Xiaomi Yi faceplate. This holds in the glass lens-protectors, albeit the glass pops out almost every major crash leaving the glass-frame only

Xiaomi Yi camera wedge, first iteration (learning experience)

Below is the first iteration of a Xiaomi Yi camera mount for a quadcopter/drone, basically a GoPro holder/cradle.

I printed it vertically, which meant it sagged and was weak in terms of peeling away from the quad once cable-tied in.. Not great at all, it did a few flights, worked ok, but eventually peeled away.

Straight after the print.. not inspiring

I lifted the left a little in the design due to the nuts being in the frame, average.. Not the stringy pieces even in the cable-tie holes. Crappy!

Misc things i've 3D printed

Just a few of the things i've printed to date..

Aomway antenna holder/protector

Articulated robot, with ball-joint printed arms/legs:

Bolt and nut:

3D printer, I resisted as long as I could...

I resisted as long as I could, and finally broke and bought a 3D printer when they came under $1k AUD.

Whilst i've mostly printed drone/quadcopter parts and the odd toy/thing for the kids, showing cousins and others how they work and triggering ideas in others, is a great thing

I chose the Wombot Exilis which for $980 AUD is awesome value. It's semi hobby-ist, but no soldering, no complexity, just initial alignment and then adjusting every 40 hours of printing they suggest.

It came like this:

Some of the parts are 3D printed, see below -it's actually cracked straight out of the box.. Apparently now they are injection moulded to avoid this, I should really contact them to replace

"standard" 1 button/wheel interface, works well once you use it

I had to change the filament and it got stuck, so un-screwed the extruder as below and cleaned it out. Now i'm using an old sparkler wire with padding on the end to push the filament through once heated, which means I don't need to disassemble as below :)

Update on drone defence/offense

Just a small update, there's been a few articles now about companies whom are reversing the RF control signals to hijack the control of the quads, it's a good approach, fits nice with the DMCA i'm sure, but still leaves many questions.

Once the attacker (defender) takes control, do they take over? or just signal to crash land?
Can they simply spam disarm packets out, like a de-auth in 802.11 but to disarm? Simply toggle all aux switches randomly to confuse the original pilot?

Drones over jails/prisons, those would likely be interactively-flown Phantoms or other builds, some which they have 'deauth' 'crash packets' for, others they don't. But it offers a reasonable level of prevention.

This works ok, but doesn't for those with a pre-configured flight path, which is really what those with an armed drone would do, something pressure-cooker style would likely have a pre-configured flight path, so the offender could get away and it would autonomously fly to its intended target, that would be hard to disarm or take down, aside from EMP/GPS jamming techniques, which I can't imagine would become a commodity attack for the obvious negative side effects against legitimate users of those services - heh, targeted EMP attack devices becoming common, that wont be fun for our digital and connected world...

Press here:

Hackers take control of drones mid-flight

HV batteries and their weight

I've tried a few batteries, but have enjoyed the HV Turnigy Bolts. They rated well in semi-scientific tests by others, and they've done me well.. They do puff, but they do deliver.

4S 1300mah versus the 1000, I naturally prefer the 1300, but the weight saving in the 1000's is worth it for racing.. but that's where the puffing happens :)

78.2gm versus 59gm

Tiny whoop, for winter!

I got myself a tiny whoop, inductrix (from here), whatever you want to call it .. awesome fun, kids love it, great for winter or super windy days!

Later I got myself some 201mah batteries from Nemos

Quick morning session

A quick morning session

TCR210
Cobra 2204/2300
BeeRotorF3
Xiaomi Yi running Waffle @ 35mb/s

Gate crasher (TCR210 racing)

The TCR210 racing with a Xiaomi Yi (running Waffle) 

Realacc X210 build (QAV-X clone)

I was looking for an X frame, and came across the Realacc X210 - which turned out is a QAV-X clone.. I really need to donate some cash to Lumenier!

I already had Emax 2205/2300 "red-bottom" motors and 30A ESCs (DYS XM30A) wired up to an Alien clone (Martian 1, a horrible thing) which was half built as the FC failed and I never went back to it - avoid the Skyline32 with OSD, basically the OSD switch to disable the UART didn't work... So you couldn't progress it, junk basically.

Anyway I grabbed these motors and ESCs off and put them on the X, after adjusting (extending) the ESC -> PDB wires (as I cut them super short for the Martian build), I got to this point (note the shorter now-desoldered wires to the right):

I used the built in PDB (which i'll talk about later) as below (5v and 12v wires soldered on here):

I had an SP F3 FC laying around, which I hadn't used one before but I quite like it so far. No OSD and not as neat as the BeeRotor, but it's what I had and it's highly rated by friends

FC placed on top (with wired buzzer) and a poor USB orientation I ended up changing later.

Next was the receiver. This is quite a tight build, and the Frsky X4R-SB just wouldn't fit in with the pins. So I desoldered them (like the XSR minus the mini-port), and ended up with this:

I used the Foxeer Arrow for the first time, which has a built-in voltage read-out OSD, single wire, nice and simple.. It's really all I need for racing, and meant I didn't need a fancy FC or additional OSD layer in this tight build

However I ended up getting really weird camera footage. Everything was fine on my 12v 3S test battery at home, but in the field using a 4S it looked like the world was melting. Ah, this is a bad cap or regulator experience I thought, of course! So I bypassed the 12v regulator on the PDB and wired it straight to the PDB. Yes there's some motor noise, but it's actually not bad.

Finished product, with 3D printed Xaomi Yi faceplate/holder:

Another shot of the finished product, with Joos batteries (my new favourite)

A good mate and 3D designer extraordinaire (!!) made up this VTX mount (top right), which is awesome. He's reiterating the design a bit to lower the height (you hit gates at times), and will refine it, but it's awesome and saves a lot of space on the build.

The VTX channel changer is nice and accessible:

Overall to date i've only flown LOS due to some config issues I had and the video issue, but i'll update this blog or others once I get it tuned in and running well. Hopefully this is my new favourite build