Hi all, I am thirteen years old and I have been building and flying model aircraft for 5 years now,I got my first multirotor about two years ago and have built many since.I recently purchased a cinestar 8.I plan on working with my Dad in the future who's in the world of outside broadcasting.....Soo two weeks ago a big box arrived!Today I finished it! I took it out to the garden for a test hover.It took of beatifully and i was hovering about a foot of the ground when out of nowhere it violently snaped and rolled into the ground,I stood there shoked and then i saw smoke and sprinted over to it and disconected the battery.The frame survived and only broke two props (i have spare ones) but haven't checked the electronics yet.Heres the list of parts i used: Controller: DJI wookong M ESC:FreeFly motor control set Motors:Quadrocopter 3328 Batt:I used a Quadrocopter 62000mah5s for the test flight today but plan on using 2xturnigy 5000mah5s packs Transmitter:Futaba 14sg All help is welcome.I really hope i didn't mess things up because i have worked soo hard to afford this. Thanks in advance, Hugo
Hugo welcome to the forums. Did you purchase the build videos from Quadrocopter, A Rather Good Guide to Building the CS6/8? That will help you immensely with the build cycle.
I was going to buy it but thought most of it is probably about the mk electronics.Just a quick question is it fully nescessary to program those ESC.Motor 4 quiet causing it to flip.Im waiting for my Dad to come home from work befor we atempt to power anything back up.Thanks for the quick reply! Hugo.
The FF motor set should work just fine out of the box. I'm not a DJI user but likely there is some step in the setup process for ESC calibration, at least there is with most FC setups. Make sure you have followed those instructions. Also the sudden flip of death might be caused by a motor rotating in the wrong direction or a CW prop on a CCW motor. Been there and done that. It gets into the air just as you described. With everything take your time and triple check everything prior to powering it up.
Hugo: Welcome to the forum. I think you have the honor of being the youngest Cinestar pilot on the forum and therefore you immediately get my respect! I'm the producer of the Rather Good Guides, and it's certainly true that the Cinestar 6/8 DVD set uses the MK Board Set, but I deliberately tried to include a lot of content on how to build and test the Cinestar independently of the Mikrocopter boards. Have you also managed to get a copy of AeroSIMRC (flight simulator). It will make learning to fly a lot less stressful -- and don't hesitate to post your messages on the forum. There's a lot of very knowlegeable people on the forum who are willing to help. The FF ESC's should not need to be programmed. I would remove the props and make sure all of the motors spin in the correct direction -- and double check you have the props on the correct motors (quite a few people manage to get it wrong -- of course, *I* have never done that! ) Andy.
Hi Flying skills are not a problem.I have been flying rc helis,airplanes and multirotors for many years now.I can confidently say the motors were going the right way with all the correct props.Still not sure where the smoke came from though it came from the center frame and i could smell burning after the crash. no signes of damage to the distrobution bored though.Im familier with the dji naza but not the wookong.i looked for an ESc calibration of some sort but couldn't find it.i'll go check the softwear now.I really hope it isnt anyting to costly because I've already had to replace $35 worth of props today. Thanks for the help it's much apreciated. Hugo.
Hi Hugo Welcome to the forum! Sorry to hear your issues. Gary and Andy are excellent resources and their advice is as sound as they come. Don't feel so bad, I crashed my copter on my first flight. Luckily for me it landed in nice soft snow. As you know there are a ton of little details with these flyers and it takes overlooking one simple thing like putting the wrong prop on like Gary mentions. Good luck.
Excellent. That wasn't immediately obvious from your first posting. You'll find that the Cinestar is a bit less nimble than most RC helis, I think. Definitely not a good sign. I presume you'll not fly until you have resolved where the smoke came out of the wires. Do you have a standard PWM servo tester? You can use one of those to spin up individual motors. The ESC are standard PWM. Notice the right hand end of the first line of my signature block. Be sure to stay with APCs for a while! My pleasure. Andy.
After ALOT of head scratching i found the problem!!The wookong only has 6 motor ports and 2 gimble ports!! If you want to fly an octa you have to plug in motor 7 and 8 into the gimble ports!! I pluged motor 7 into gimble port 1 and motor 8 into gimble port 2!It turns out motor 7 should have been pluged into gimble port 2 and motor 8 into gimble port 1!! I feel sooo stupid but i'm happy to have found the problem! As for the smoke i think it was the unused audio cable from the FPV camera.I left the conector under the power distrobutian bored and on impact they may have touched causing a short.i tried to power up the fpv transmitter with no luck.it might be fixible or an 80$ bill coming my way. im putting the 8 back together now and should fly it tomorrow.If your wondering why tomorrow I live in Ireland and it's 8;30pm now. Thanks for all the help everyone!
Well done, Hugo. Yeah. It's the simple stuff that gets you almost every time. I could tell from your IP address that you might be in Dublin. But now you've found the likely cause, I think you're ready to fly. The usual advice is to throttle up just below take off power and make sure you've got nick and roll correct control authority before you leap up through ground effect -- but you probably knew that anyway. Andy.
Tell your dad to have a pint of Guinness beforehand. It'll help steady your nerves. No...wait... Andy.
Haha!!Guinness makes everything better!! Just another quick question: I planned on using the 2 axis gimble ports on the wokong to stabilize my CS2axis gimble but i realized this was not possible when it arrived.Soo my only option now is to go down the radian rout? and do you think i should consider upgrading to the 3rd axis in the future? Cheers, hugo.
In our house we spell it Genius but pronounce it Guinness. There are quite a few alternate methods for controlling the gimbal. They range from using a Mikrokopter Flight Control board, to using Radians. Alexmos also offers controllers. You might want to do some Google searches for: camera gimbal stabilizer rc camera gimbal controller and variations on that theme.... (Be sure to spell it "gimbal." Sorry! ) Andy.
hi everyone, Last night at 10:30 pm i flew my cinestar 8 sucsessfuly!!!! When I first took off, the gains that i got online were to sensetive but i had no gimbal or anything to way the copter down so i put the settings back to stock and it flew alot better!!! I took of hovered around abit and then gained some altitude and put it into gps mode.It didn't move!!!I was shocked by how well the wookong worked!!!Then I landed it and discovered something unfortunate.the flight was only about 5 mins.i wanted to see how much of the battery I used so i put it on my little battery checker: Cell 1: 3.65 volts Cell 2: 2.77 volts Cell 3: 3.58 volts Cell 4: 0.01 volts Cell 5: 3.44 It was fully charged(ballance charged).The battery is a BRAND new quadropwer 6200mah5s.I no this battery is a little small but I plane on using 2x5000mah packs in the future.When i landed it was really hot and all the other electronics were perfect.After about ten minutes it was still really hot!!So i put in in a lipo-safe bag and left it out side.Does anyone no if there is a warranty?It was carged with a hyperion duo. Thanks, Hugo
What does it read on the charger? I wouldn't necessarily trust your little batt checker. Maybe use a different one (I have four of them). But if those are accurate readings, I would definitely dispose of that battery. As for warranties, whether or not it has a warranty, there's no way I'd put that battery in a box and send it back. It could be very unstable and therefore quite dangerous.
I've plugged it into to chargers now and one says battery voltige to low and the other on says it,s a four cell when it's really a 5s gone wrong.Im going to go send an email now to quadrocopter.
Sounds like you've got yourself a sick puppy there. I wonder if it was damaged in your initial crash? If something smoked, that could have resulted in one or more cells in that battery getting fried.
Hugo: For the Turnigy, also check the main power leads (not the balance leads). If it is really fully discharged, then you can dispose of it -- in fact you *should* dispose of it. (Do a Google search for: lipo battery disposal). The QC 6200/5S is, as Steve says, one sick puppy. That dead cell is trouble with a capital T. Let us know what QC says. Andy.