Zăganu - 02 Somewhere in between

OK, so most of the materials arrived, I'm almost done with the mechanics but way behind with the software and worst of all I'll have to stop for a couple of weeks because a long mountain trip and a longer foreign trip are coming next. But till then, let me put it down with the progress so far.

 You have in the picture above a view over the base plate and an equipped arm. The plate is 2mm thick FR-4 at a hefty 360gr but I plan to loose some weight by drilling some holes between the arms. As you can see it's octo shaped for the final idea but for now only four arms will be on for easier (and cheaper) operation.

 The arms came out at around 40cm long. Since all I could find locally were 9'' GWS tri-blades I chose to mount them closer to the center plate. This gives a welcomed protection to the propellers on forced landing and I guess it also helps with the dynamics of motion a little. The motors are labeled BL FC2835-10T at 830Kv and at aprox 10V they gave around 120W of power. Too bad I couldn't measure the actual thrust as I fear it might not be enough for the total weight but I'll work on that once I'll be back.

 ESC's are HobbyKing's BlueSeries 30 amps model. I am quite amazed with the quality of these little things and I'm talking here about all the electronics involved in the RC business. It's true I can't do any comparison since I'm a newb in the field.

 Together with the essential  parts for the build I also ordered lots of extra gadgets, to many actually if I think back about it. Well, anyway.. time is short and I'll have to talk some other time about them. I'm still missing the batteries and the charger for them but that's the thing I'll take care first once I'm back at work.

This is what's left from a Wii Motion Plus and a Nunchuk after I hacked them. I can't find any possible use for the joystick and the two buttons but I didn't have the heart to cut them off either.. u never know when they might come in handy. The sensors do their job as expected, communication is working alright but I'm having tons of problems with the MCU and it's IDE. No matter how hard I try to blame myself for all the problems I encounter it keeps pointing out that there's something fishy out there and I can only assume it's because of an early silicon revision of the chip but I didn't have time to dig into it too deep. All in all I hope I'll get over it because I'm eager to get things moving sooner, especially now that good weather's coming up.

That's about it for now, have to run finish my pack and get some sleep also..