Oh No The Smoke
That awesome helicopter? Turns out it has two weaknesses, one of which is cheap (blades), the other one, not so much. You see, if you crash and the rotors are against the ground (read: can't spin), but you forget to throttle down fast enough (or totally space on it), the motors will draw a very high current (I'm not sure why this happens with DC motors but it does), and for some reason there is no fuse. Well, there is sort of a fuse. There is something that acts like a fuse. Unfortunately, it's the Electronic Speed Control, and it is not user-replacable. So because they didn't install a $2 part, I burned out another $2 part, which rendered a $50 4-in-1 unit completely unusable (see here). Bummer.
This was brought up at work in the presence of Jim (does almost everything that I would pay a guy to do by himself), and Thor (loves building things himself), so of course they refused to drop this until we had devised a plan for fusing the setup. I did some looking online, and it turns out a simple 4A car fuse works great for fusing one motor, and a 7.5A car fuse works great if you put it in between the battery and the 4-in-1 unit. So today I bought a soldering iron, which was surprisingly cheap, and some electronics solder, also pretty cheap, and now I just need to figure out where I can buy the right connectors and a fuse holder and I'll have a nice fuse setup that's an easy drop-in with no modification of the helicopter required. And, as Jim pointed out, I can probably sell 3 dollars worth of hardware for at least 10 bucks on the forums. I'll have to see how good I am at making the gizmo before I try that, but it could be a nice little side thing, since I think it should really be about 10 minutes of work once I get a few under my bet.
I'll be sure to post a couple pictures if it comes out good.
Edit: Phase One of Operation Make A Non-Warranty-Voiding fuse assembly complete. I spent a while trying to look through electronics parts catalogs for the battery-receiver connection, which proved futile. So I looked at the connector, which said only "JST" on it, and googled "JST Battery Connector," which yielded many good hits, the best deal I found was $3 per pair, plus $5 2-3 day shipping, which is a pretty good shipping deal. Might be able to find a better deal for the connectors later but the five pairs I ordered should get me started.
This was brought up at work in the presence of Jim (does almost everything that I would pay a guy to do by himself), and Thor (loves building things himself), so of course they refused to drop this until we had devised a plan for fusing the setup. I did some looking online, and it turns out a simple 4A car fuse works great for fusing one motor, and a 7.5A car fuse works great if you put it in between the battery and the 4-in-1 unit. So today I bought a soldering iron, which was surprisingly cheap, and some electronics solder, also pretty cheap, and now I just need to figure out where I can buy the right connectors and a fuse holder and I'll have a nice fuse setup that's an easy drop-in with no modification of the helicopter required. And, as Jim pointed out, I can probably sell 3 dollars worth of hardware for at least 10 bucks on the forums. I'll have to see how good I am at making the gizmo before I try that, but it could be a nice little side thing, since I think it should really be about 10 minutes of work once I get a few under my bet.
I'll be sure to post a couple pictures if it comes out good.
Edit: Phase One of Operation Make A Non-Warranty-Voiding fuse assembly complete. I spent a while trying to look through electronics parts catalogs for the battery-receiver connection, which proved futile. So I looked at the connector, which said only "JST" on it, and googled "JST Battery Connector," which yielded many good hits, the best deal I found was $3 per pair, plus $5 2-3 day shipping, which is a pretty good shipping deal. Might be able to find a better deal for the connectors later but the five pairs I ordered should get me started.
posted by SomeJerk at 6:21 PM
4 Comments:
IF you need electronic parts try Allied Ecectronics: http://www.alliedelec.com/
They have just about everything.
Cool, thanks. I'll add them to the list of places to check.
It's really cool how much stuff you and the folks you know do for yourselves.
I was proud of myself when I hung a pullup bar, but that hardly compares to helicopter repair.
Hehe, I dunno, with the pullup bar you're the one hanging on to it. I don't actually to get into the helicopter.
I've got all the parts ordered now, so once a few deliveries come in it will be time for the real test.
Post a Comment
<< Home