This is cool as sugar! I have to ask though, how many end mills did you go through milling G10 fiberglass and carbon fiber‽
I've heard the dust from carbon fiber is second to asbestos for inhaling.
Building a custom octocopter from scratch with no prior hardware experience
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Re: Building a custom octocopter from scratch with no prior hardware experience
#52Love it, great to explore and learn, and I like the mixed background too of cybersec and robotics (all the way to CNC), just like myself, I think these two new fields will make a new industry, similar to OT cyber but more niche.
Which also means great people can go beyond what’s their school was about, so a CS major doing CNC isn’t “weird” or different, I remember when applying for jobs in systems in aerospace industry and get rejected despite having a systems background too, with feedback of “they are looking for people with education only in aerospace”, which is idiotic thing to consider.
So good luck OP, start exploring hacking mavlink or similar protocols which is what im working on.
Re: Building a custom octocopter from scratch with no prior hardware experience
#53Why not just say from scratch instead of no prior experience, is it to brag
"from scratch" and "no prior experience" have very little in common.
Re: Building a custom octocopter from scratch with no prior hardware experience
#54I love everything about this. Well done! but missed opportunity to name it R_of_L-copter.
Re: Building a custom octocopter from scratch with no prior hardware experience
#55Re: Building a custom octocopter from scratch with no prior hardware experience
#56Amazing: I'm watching lots of homemade builds atm. I've got a question: why CNC milling and not just FDM 3D printed parts? TFA doesn't talk much about it except saying she went to a machine shop. > 2. CNC milling forms out of G-10 fiberglass (arms) and 5mm carbon fiber (body) TFA also says this: > The solution for this is to 3D print a 0-tolerance assembly jig to hold the arms in perfect position while the center of…
For "copter" style drones, 3D printing is basically a "noob" meme at this point; everyone thinks it's a good idea, tries it, and realizes that it's actually really hard and doesn't work.
Copter-style drones are exposed to vibration across a huge frequency range in every axis, and it's almost impossible to avoid really nasty resonance issues using generally-printable FDM filaments and "standard" design techniques; it's a lot easier to just use super-stiff carbon fiber and CNC it.
For planes, like what you linked, 3D printing is more "plausible" than for copters but also not really practical; you can 3D print a good plane, but plastic lacks the durability and favorable weight characteristics of foam - plastic planes tend to be "one time crashed" while foam is easy to repair, restore, and rebuild.
Re: Building a custom octocopter from scratch with no prior hardware experience
#57If I were to get a dirt cheap Chinese drone, would that be more likely to use RL or MCP? What’s the “standard”?
PID is more than enough to keep level. FPV relies on manual flight, but you can get Ardupilot for autonomous missions. There's no need for RL, nothing to gain here; level flight and following waypoints is a solved issue already. And frankly as a pilot, I'd rather not see any completely autonomous drones with no oversight in the sky - that's one incident away in which blame cannot be put solely on the operator from ge…
As a researcher in the autonomous robotics space, there is a lot to gain in RL over PIDs and manual flight.
The delta between what is possible with current autonomous flight missions and manual FPV style flight is by having a brain on board that can dynamically adapt to a changing environment. There are a finite amount of PID profiles for each steadystate solution that a researcher can preprepare for. But RL allows an overarching heuristic to transiently alter the PIDs depending on the changing environment.
We use PIDs because analyzing robotics platforms as seeking a steadystate dramatically simplifies the math needed to where its computationally possible for us to solve for a situation.
We use RL in systems that have continuously changing environments with transient solution spaces that are easier to model in hyperspace with a RL model.
Take for example platforms that have tiltrotors. They ideally have a minimum of 3 PID profiles for flying. One when it best fits a multirotor profile. A second when it is transitioning from multirotor to fixed wing flight, and a third for when fixed wing flight is established. What happens when the researcher has a need to fly in the transition state, or subconfigurations of the states? How many PID profiles are you looking to think of and train for? This is where RL has dividends.
Re: Building a custom octocopter from scratch with no prior hardware experience
#58Super cooool
Re: Building a custom octocopter from scratch with no prior hardware experience
#59Something I've wondered for octocopters - could using a ring instead of arms be beneficial for weight? 6.28r < 8r, but then again the arm radius is usually less than the full circle, and some components want to be centrally located, etc. I could imagine holding the central components in tension via light filaments (carbon fiber, nylon, etc) in tension, vs having to have rigid structure, but the small factor between 6.28 and 8 and maybe makes it not worth it.
Re: Building a custom octocopter from scratch with no prior hardware experience
#60Something I've wondered for octocopters - could using a ring instead of arms be beneficial for weight? 6.28r < 8r, but then again the arm radius is usually less than the full circle, and some components want to be centrally located, etc. I could imagine holding the central components in tension via light filaments (carbon fiber, nylon, etc) in tension, vs having to have rigid structure, but the small factor between 6…
consider "tiled" hexagons, like honycomb.
large schedule 40 or 80 tubing sliced into rings would be pretty quick source material, starting with duct tape and zipties until you find a good arrangment then get into the glue and screws.