cheap 5/8 inch square stock at Home Depot

The Aeroquad arms are made from nice, thing 5/8 inch chromed aluminum, and happen to be the cheapie (err, "Best Value") towel bars from the local Big Box hardware store.

I found them in Home Depot.  They're unsurprisingly in the Bathroom Fixtures section.  They come in 18, 24, and 30 inch lengths.  At the Emeryville Home Depot they were $2.50, $3.50, and $4.50 respectively.

They're hidden away in a box on the bottom of the shelf.  Here's what the display looks like. 

Here's the stock number for the 30 inch bar.

Repairing an AeroQuad motor mount

I crashed pretty dramatically over the weekend, and bent a motor mount almost 45 degrees.  It took under a minute to repair to like-new condition.

Interestingly, it was the perfect object lesson, as Chris Anderson (of DIY Drones -- we were at a Bay Area get-together where he was testing some of the new Ardupilot Mega 2.0 features) had just finished telling me that it was more important to make things easily fixable than it was to make things hard to break.

Here's links to the frame, which I'm quite impressed with:

http://aeroquad.com
https://www.aeroquadstore.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=FRAME-001

Some rcexplorer kkboard dimensions

Mike Grundvig, maker of the AeroFPV aluminum frame, is very kindly going to send us an aluminum mount for the kkboard, and offer that mount in the AeroFPV kit.  He requested we send some dimensions and pics.

David over at rcexplorer sent us these dimensions:

• hole distances: 45mm
• distance between two holes diagonally: 63.6mm
• board: 50*50mm. 
• exact same size and hole distance as a MikroKopter controller.

Here's our board.

 The mounting holes seem to be about 3mm.

 I just cut a 4 x 3 x 1/8 inch piece of basswood (about the same size as the ardu board) and mounted that to the aerofpv frame.  I was going to be fancy and bolt the kkboard onto the basswood, but I didn't have any non-slip bolts of that size, so instead I'll just use 3M thick double-sticky tape.  That should give a bit of bonus vibration protection as well.






Here's the back of the board.

rcexplorer kk build guide released

David has released the first cut at a setup guide here.  Initially it covers tri and quad configurations.  Check it out, and if you're building an rcexplorer copter leave a note on rcexplorer so we can follow you!

"This little procedure has the potential to save you platform or face, so be sure to make it a habit."

Some random questions based on first reading: (update: with some answers provided by David in the comments)

• what's the difference between setting up a + and x quad configuration?  Is it simply a matter of downloading the right software?  does the board need to be rotated 45 degrees?
  answer: there are some differences, guide will be updated soon.
• where's the software download?
• where's a pointer to how to download a new build? presumably somewhere over in kk-land.
  answer: need to know about AVR programming, perhaps David will create a guide for that as well.
• in section "finding the correct gain" the last item is "too low gain is recognized by", what is "too high gain recognized by"?
  answer: "too high gain" is recognized by platform rocking back and forth or side to side.
• need to figure out how EPA works... is this something the kk software does automatically?  Does this refer to the radio sticks or the ESCs?  or perhaps both have them?
  answer: EPA is set in the transmitter, and is like a global dual rates setting.