I decided to swap the motors on my EmuFlight build over to the new T-Motor Velox 2, 2306 2400kv motors. I had switched my oher build already, and really liked the feel, so I thought it would only be fair to give EmuFlight testing on fresh motors.
I had picked these motors up from FlyHighFPV.com after talking with Dave Shaddix. I was bemoaning the durability that I was beginning to experience with my Emax Eco 2 motors. I was looking to get a motor guard printed, and Dave suggested I forego that for better motors. He suggested the T-Motor F60's, but said that the Velox 2 were a good budget alternative. He had some in stock, and his prices were better than everyone else, so I placed an order.
They have already taken some hits, and are doing alright, so we will see how they hold up over time. If nothing else, they are no more expensive than the Emax motors, so I'll have a second option at the very least.
My wife, son, and myself decided to go to EPCOT this evening. We do this pretty regularly after I finish work for the day. We go to ride Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, pick up some popcorn, get some steps in, and hit a few other rides if they aren't too busy.
Well, it was a bit busy, so we decided to hop over to Hollywood Studios to see if we could get a ride on the Rock-n-Roller Coaster. We took the Skyliner.
We got in line, and the cast member directed us to our gondola, and when we went to get on, another lady, and her daughter jumped in front of us. We went ahead and boarded with them.
So this lady, it turns out, is a teacher from Texas. And she was just so ga-ga over everything Disney, fawning over everything about Disney, and how it is so magical. Now, I like Disney, and my wife likes it a bit more than me, even enjoying some of the "Magic", but this lady was over-the-top. She was apparently visiting with her family (quite a large group), and they were staying at the Grand Floridian. She was just going on about all of these things that they done and how some were expensive (the VIP tour for example).
So the rest of the evening, the conversations with my wife revolved around at how much money they have spent to come to Disney, and how they could have had a much better vacation for a lot less going to Kauai. Based on what she had said, this family had easily spent 10-15k, if not more! I just don't understand the fascination that these people have with Disney that they are willing to spend that kind of money to visit a theme park with rides that are just slightly above carnival rides (well many of them, but not all).
May 29, 2023
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For Memorial Day, the wife and I took a quick day trip to Vero Beach. The beach was empty, and it was nice to be able to walk and talk and just enjoy the serenity of the ocean with no one around. I was pretty surprised that it was so empty.
I had brought my drones with me, but ultimately decided that it was too hot, and I didn't have any spots lined up, so I ended up flying at a local school in the evening. I ended up frying the ESC on my other build, so I will have to replace it. I think that the ESC ended up bottoming out on a hard crash, and shorted against the screws in the bottom plate. When I rebuild, I will be correcting that. I thought I had given plenty of clearance (probably about 5mm), but I guess not.
I have a spare Mamba ESC that I guess I will use. I'll have two drones, one with a Mamba FC and a T-Motor ESC, and the other one now with a Mamba ESC and a T-Motor FC. I just find that so amusing for some reason.
May 28, 2023
Today, I gave Emu a proper maiden flight around the house to see how it flew, and to see about tuning. On stock PIDs, it flew ok, but had a little bit of prop wash (not as bad as I expected), and felt a bit sluggish, and not as responsive as I like. I messaged Mystery D to get his ideas on tuning since he has done far more of that, particularly on Emu, than myself.
He gave me a few pointers, so I set those, and decided to just pull the PID settings from BF that I had been using. One difference I noticed right away was that Emu had a different way of handling Feed Forward. Read through the quick pop-up note, and decided to just do a basic average of the Feed Forward values I had used in BetaFlight.
On this flight, it was much better, and felt basically like my old BetaFlight setup. So far, I am not seeing anything that strikes me as groundbreaking, but there is a dynamic rate feature that my buddy wants me to try, so I will be doing that.
One last note, I think I will create a video on getting HDZero working with EmuFlight as I think there are some folks who might want to try EmuFlight but haven't because of this.
May 27, 2023
So, I decided to install EmuFlight today. The decision to this came about because I broke my T-Motor F7 Flight Controller, and I wanted to get my main rig back in the air. I had a spare Mamba F405MK2 (the FC I used to use regularly) laying around, and I had been getting prodded by a friend (Mystery D) to give Emu a try. So, I decided to do that.
I hit up my friend, and he gave me the link, but informed me that it didn't support HDZero. Not to be dismayed, I thought, surely that can't be right, and I found that it does, but it's in the development branch. I found what I needed from here and I got it installed, and setup.
I only had one issue. When I created the ESC to FC cable, I used the wrong postive coming from the ESC, and was only showing 10v in the OSD. At first I thought there was a problem with the OSD on Emu with HDZero, but after some digging I found that the documentaiton for the T-Motor ESC incorrectly listed to of the wires on the port as VBat, when in fact one was VBat, and one was 10v regulated.
Got a quick hover test in the books, and I am going to give it a maiden tomorrow. I am sure it'll need some tuning. I have only put in my BetaFlight rates, and no other configuration changes.
