I have seen this video about a month ago. Until talking to Casey at Quadro yesterday, I did not realize that this was a prototype rig. I should have asked a more specific question. Without spending two thousand dollars to buy 8 new booms 8 new motors, traco, and 8 Castle ICE ESC's, Can the current bird handle a Red with just the ESC conversion, on the stock QC motors, 14.5 APC's and stock 450 booms?
We fly an Epic and Scarlet with standard booms, MT 3515's, CC 50 ICE, WKM and Graupner 14x8's. 2x5000 6s gets about 7 mins. But to answer your question... no not really. You pretty much need bigger motors as well. I think a few folks have actually lifted the Epic with the stock config but I don't imagine it wasn't a comfortable flight and on its absolute limits.
That is what I figured. I wish I would have known about the inadequacies of the MK ESC's when ordering this thing. I hate that POS distro board of theirs. At the time I ordered my CS in may they were not offering WKM on it. I guess I will be hacking the MK FC in the future to accept Castle 50's and 6S lipo's. I like the MK Flight controller and the smart OSD from poland. So far the Polish Smart-Electronics have developed the best OSD for the multirotor's, Ironically it is the only OSD that resembles the US Military Heads Up display that I used to have in the Predator GCS. Nevermind my tangent been up for 36 hours doing gradschool
Well you don't need to hack anything for the MK FC to work with standard controllers as the I2C converter works very nicely. Just gets some new esc's, motors and the converter.
What about changing out the VR's to make it handle 6S batteries. It seems that people are getting better performance with a high voltage battery. I have been reading that the 4S's require almost 90% of the throttle to sustain a hover with the 4S's
The above video is all on 4s... just something to consider. On our copter we run 6s to fly the Epic. The 5s will fly it but not very well (my motors are low KV which works extremely well for the 5D on 5s but not so much with the Epic). Josh
You can change out the recoms and caps if you want or just use a BEC. When I tested it, I wasn't sure how well the converter was going to work so I didn't want to change my MK FC. I just used a CC BEC Pro to convert to 12V from 6s.
That's a good idea I like using the BEC to power the FC. I did not want to mess with de-soldering this thing and messing it up. @Josh I have followed your issues with the CS with overtemps and your rebuild. I face similar situation I fly out of Albuquerque, not as as hot as Phoenix, but hot enough in the summer coupled with our high altitude to really work those ESC's. I like the build you did. I wish I knew that it was possible to switch out that crappy MK PDB, 8 months ago. I burnt out the number 8 BL and replaced the entire board saying to myself that I wish there were better ECS's for this. I want to convert it at a minimum to get rid of the ESC's. I like the MK electronics over the WKM, mainly in the sense that the MK-SMART OSD is the best on the market in my opinion. It resembles the Mil Spec HUD which is the standard instrument cluster for all the jets that I have flown. I probably will be bugging you in the future for advice when we do our upgrade
Did you exchanged the horizontal booms of the gimbal to accommodate the size of an EPIC? Which lengths did you use?
I also lengthen the roll tube and mounting tube by 80mm so I can run the side handle with the redvolt instead of a lipo if I wanted. I use the redmote now so the side handle is pretty much just extra weight, but at least its an option. It doesn't seem to affect the setup but you have to be careful with getting the thing balanced or there will be more weight for the roll servo to work.
I am preparing our Cinestar-8 for RED Epic. Any advises about the lens we should use to keep it light but have descent quality? I plan to fly the RED just the brain + the SSD side module plus a lens, is it correct? Regarding the power supply, anyone know the reference of the Lemo connector on the RED Epic? Thanks
Flying If it's not too much trouble, would you be kind enough to change your user name to your real first name and last name, please? The reasons for this (and how to do do it) are explained here: http://forum.freeflysystems.com/index.php?threads/real-names.497/ Thanks
The mating connector for the RED Epic and Scarlet is the LEMO FGJ.1B.306.CWLD72Z (technical details are in the RED Epic & Scarlet manual around page 170). You can power the cam straight from an 4s LiPo. I would recommend primes or shorter zooms. Lens choice depends heavily on your budget. The new Nikon G series primes are awesome. Cheers David
Which mounts do you have? PL, Canon or Nikon? One thing to remember with the CS gimbal and Red is that any lens that sticks out a fair ways is going to make the roll work very hard and also make it hard to balance. The shorter primes will save you a lot of headaches.
I flew the Red, will not do again. Way too many risks, too much weight, too little flight time. We got up in the air and barely had time to get a shot once in position and once the action on ground was coordinated. Once I saw how the footage was used you would not have known if it was a DSLR or GH2 or NEX. My question to everyone is why do you need to fly the Red? Slow Motion? 4K image? Just curious. I like the Red, I just don't think these flying platforms are ready for the weight and technical interfacing needed. Just my 2 cents, I operate specialty camera systems as a career and am usually using full size remote heads with Red, Panavision, Arri Alexa, and so on... Cheers, Craig