My Ugly Pixhawk Octocopter: outdoor maiden and loiter mode
2,319 views · Published 18 February 2014 · 1:58 · Indexed 17 October 2026
Channel: Thomas Shaddox · 2014 · Science & Technology
I finally got a rain-free weekend to fly my octocopter outdoors. The main goals were to test out altitude hold and loiter mode. Everything works perfectly, and this is with no tuning whatsoever other than the Arducopter calibration wizard. The only issue is that my octocopter hovers at 25% throttle, so I have to go to 50% throttle when using altitude hold and loiter mode, because otherwise it will attempt to slowly decrease in altitude. I let it do that once in this video, just to see what happens—it lands itself gently and powers the motors down to minimum throttle. I believe I can calibrate the hover throttle variable in the APM software to resolve this, and of course this will improve once I load it up with bigger batteries and a gimbal. Parts List A lot of this was just scrounged together from parts I already had, so I don't claim that this is an ideal build, although it does work fine. Motors: Turnigy NTM 28-26A 1200kv ESCs: Hobby King 30A (flashed with SimonK) Props: Hobby King 8045 SF (have also used 9047) Battery: 4S 2200-3000 mAH (various Turnigy and nano-tech) Flight controller: Pixhawk and GPS from 3DRobotics Receiver: FrSky X8R (connected via SBUS) Frame: FliteTest AnyCopter hub, Knuckle H-Quad parts, and landing gear made from clothes hangers :)
