Dutch Build mostly from scratch

Europe seller

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Thank you, great! Now just wait on the tests from Stijnhof :grin:

Some more updates! To start: Friday morning the postman dropped off the last piece in the powertrain puzzle. The SSS 360kv looks really solid, now I can also do a test to see if the APD controller runs nicely with a low kv in runner (I expect this won’t be an issue considering our tests today).

I also got the chance to run the APD controller for the first time today. Unfortunately it was not the perfect test session I was hoping for since the flightcontroller I was using for communication between laptop and ESC wasn’t showing the current, temperature or voltage live (only ERPM) and the clamp around fluke we had wasn’t working either. So no current measurements unfortunately.

The test setup was 12s with a large 70kv 16pole motor. The startup was surprisingly smooth. We let it run at half throttle for some time with 7nm of load on the motor to generate some heat but the casing only became slightly warm to the touch - this was without the watercooling. I’ll see if I can set up a more conclusive test sometime soon.

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Is this a Matek F405 CRT you are using as fc ? That one does have current sensing, voltage and temperature measurements I think.

Also, I see 3 wires going to the fc : GND, TELE and PWM but nothing going to a transmitter, I assume you are inputting the speed directly on betaflight ?

What electronics box is that?

@Jezza It would be the spelsber tg abs 3023-9 https://www.spelsberg.nl/nc/producte/an/10101301/ they also have the same size in 110mm tall.

@Sliman_O yes it is but the F405 only measures up to 6s through the integrated PDB which isn’t high enough. The ESC should feed what they call ESC telemetry to the flightcontroller through the 3rd line. I was reading all the values out in Betaflight. That could have been the issue (I have heard of BF not reading correct values above 8s but that doesn’t explain temp and current not feeding through), I’ll try hook up a video transmitter and try read through the OSD and hook up a receiver to have it feed to my transmitter. I’ll get it to work, don’t worry :wink:

I never worked above 4-6S with drones, but I saw many youtube builders with 12S running it on betaflight. So I was assuming it could work (with fine tuning) under 12S too. How do you plan using the displayed informations on the OSD once you get them ? I mean, they may be stored on SD card, but what about realtime reading (without goggles) ? Is there a way to extract these informations or are you simply not planning using them if they are ok ?

Correct, there are FPV drones that run 12s but they rely on ESC telemetry to feed info. This is what I am trying to set up without succes.

I don’t think I need a live readout outside testing and finetuning. I have given it some thought and actually think a transmitter/ receiver based on frsky (drone transmitters and receivers) would be a nice way to go. This would allow for a ton of telemetry channels and a ton of channels to the flight controller. Not like we need it but imagine arming, disarming and from the transmitter like on a drone. That would be a great way to go also in terms of safety. I am currently looking at arming and disarming with a reedswitch in the electronics casing and a magnet on the remote. This would let me arm and disarm the ESC through the flightcontroller with a process similar to the Lift boards.

I like the ultimate transmitter project but think it would benefit from a drone communication protocol seeing as they are fast, cheap and can carry a ton of info.

Working with Arduino I have managed to get two Arduino’s communicating long range through a TBS crossfire module and reviever for a different project. I could pick that up for this but we could really benefit from smaller transmit modules. Maybe one of those multiprotocol ones, all you need to do is feed it sbus or ppm over a channel and receive sbus over the s-port telemetry line.

Edit: To add, the above only requires a DIY transmitter since the receivers are all easily available and SUPER cheap.

Well, I too am using frsky radio with sbus protocol. I am looking forward to your update as I have all this material laying around with drone parts :slight_smile:

On your foil or on your quads? If it’s on your foil I would like to see how you set that up :slight_smile:

My quads :smile:
I bought the maytech remote v2 for my foil but plan to developp a new remote, might be sbus based along with a fc and your APD esc

Very cool. I’ve been looking at openTX support for a mega 2560. That would allow one to build a custom remote based on openTX pretty easily. I could prototype the setup but it would be great to have someone with electronics knowledge to help me combine it into a nice package. This is something for the future though. I’ve got quite a bit of work to do on the board still haha.

I don’t mind helping but I am not an electronic engineer :smile: I mean everything that I did so far (drone or foil) is based on someone’s previous experience that I learned. And I already checked for something with opentx, there are great tutorials out there and this is definitely something i want to experiment. However, 2,4Ghz radio would not be suitable for water sport use in general as the radio wave does simply not have the necessary power to penetrate the water (if the remote falls or is close to the water). Using an external long range module at 900 MHz will be tricky and will also bring the cost up. This is simply my analyse, I might be wrong, feel free to comment :slight_smile:

Small update. Made a ton of beanbag filler/ fake snow and as luck would have it the core of a board appeared. Also small small electronics stuff sorted and running the CNC for a front wing mould tonight.

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Some better shots of the board and some test fitting. Got me really excited so had to share.
Going to see if I can find the time to solder up the motor wires and see if the parameters are set correct in the flight controller to do the arming and control.


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Looking nice Stijn, making good progress. Great to see quite some dutch builders here.
Did you already test this box for waterproofness? I have a similar one laying around and ditched it because because of the seal which did not perform in a simple static test. Hope yours is better quality.

Thanks for the warning. I have not tested actually but will now as soon as possible. What was the reason yours leaked? Was it because of the quick release screws not giving enough pressure? That has me most concerned.

Well I don’t have quick release screws, just ordinary ones. But it seemed to be the poor quality of the seal itself, perhaps in combination with poor pressure of the lid to the seal too. So I decided for a much bigger compartment with self build hatch + frame and more seal surface, to have a bit more space for the items inside. This did not leak a single bit. An upshot was that later I decided for a larger ESC + batteries than initially planned, this fitted quite easy in the bigger compartment.

There we go! My first carbon part ever - needs trimming and a second layer but pretty happy with that :slight_smile:

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Baby steps… got the board wrapped and the strut wrapped in second layer with couloured resin :grimacing:. Got some sanding and trimming to do before hot coat then she’ll be ready! Also got the internals for the fuselage assembled. Waiting on the tube for the fuselage at the moment but I’ve got a good high powered blender now.

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