It was about a year and a half ago that I became interested in multirotor helicopters, around that time I set out to design and build my own basic tricopter. This series of posts will explore my journey of building, crashing, modifying, learning and iterating. The process has been exciting, I’ve learned a lot, and it’s become one of my longest running projects to date! Read on if you’re interested in multirotor, building things, or if you want to know what the heck the photo above is all about!
Recently I’ve become interested in the R/C FPV scene and all things multirotor. My ongoing project for the last few months has been a DIY tricopter multirotor that I fly FPV with. The tricopter I’ve built has been through more iterations than any other project I’ve done and has been great fun! I’m always trying to improve it’s flight characteristics and range and most recently that has meant swapping out my Hitec 2.4Ghz controls for a UHF Long Range System.
Before doing this my controls was the limiting factor on range, the 1000mW video link I use can go much further, so that started the hunt for a low cost UHF LRS I could use with my existing Hitec Aurora 9 transmitter. The lowest cost LRS I could find was the Orange RX OpenLRS combo that’s sold on HobbyKing.com. For US$50 you can get a transmitter and receiver based on the OpenLRS hardware, but unfortunitly the transmitter module is not made for Hitec and is way too big to fit.
That’s where the AutoCAD model above, and a 3d printer comes in! I created a model of my existing 2.4Ghz transmitter module so that I could remotely connect it to the OrangeRX OpenLRS transmitter from HobbyKing. This new printed module snaps in to the back of the Aurora 9.
Here’s the module with the lid
The title of this post isn’t entirely accurate. It’s more of a very strange remotely controlled vehicle, a kind of land drone. You’re probably wondering why it’s made out of a shipping box, well here’s what happened… I bought a 1000mw wireless video transmitter with the intention of learning about it and eventually putting it on an RC plane to fly around. It was shipped to me in that very USPS box pictured above. The first thing I wanted to do was power it up and see how long the range was, of course! So I taped all the components to the top of the box so they would stay together and handed it to +Steve Melton who then proceeded to run far away while I watched the video feed. The camera works great, it gives a good picture for quite a long distance (tested to 1900 feet on flat open ground) and is resistant to objects in the way like buildings and trees.
Continue reading for all the details and a video of it in action!