Project: The DJI F550 Hexacopter

My first week back from vacation. My lab needed some re-organizing, I brought back a ton of goodies… tools, etc. too much for the lab so I needed to organize a little better and utilize what space I have a little more efficiently. This is my excuse for being overly absent the last to weeks. I might shoot a revisit of my lab since plenty has changed. I worked on a little EICO Model 324 which I’ll go over once my parts show up.. and I haven’t touched my video. A busy week and next isn’t looking any less busy.

I’m suppose to be working on an RS-485 article but I decided I better go buy my quad with my “birthday money” from my wife. She didn’t know what to get so I got a clever little gift.. but it boiled down to cash for a quad. I stopped by my local hobby store.. no more F450s… but the guy on the other side of the counter talked me into the F550 hex. I bought a bags of goodies and went home for the build.

Below is what I bought: (do NOT use this as a shopping list, it turned out to be incomplete and that TX will not work).

Hexacopter Parts

 

What I bought:

DJI F550 kit

DJI NAZA M-Lite

DX5e

2 cell LiPo

HiTEC X1 multicharger

 

I put it all together and found I forgot (or the sales guy) forgot some way to plug the battery pack to the solder connectors on the F550.. another trip.. another $14. Connector plus adapter for the charger.

programmed it.. but I was having a problem. The NAZA M lite was flashing yellow / orange fast.. well let me save you two hours of trying to figure it out. In my case it turns out the DX5e will not work with the NAZA M Lite because I can not trim my end points on the three position switch. (Control Mode for fail-safe, manual,…) I figured this out by using the calibrator, switching the throttle and Channel 5 on the RX to MC. I could then get past fail-safe and get the motors started.

Oh well.. A trip back tomorrow for the return and a 150$ more for the DX6i or whatever … 🙁

 

Hexacopter on the bench

 

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