I have a T-Rex 450 heli collecting lots of dust in the spare room, I never really got to grips with it mostly I think because the giro I was using was, well, crap.
So I thought maybe sometime before it completely buries itself in the dust never to be seen again it might be worth slapping a Pixhawk and GPS on it. Trouble is there is very little room on a T-Rex, as I recall it was a bit of a struggle getting just the RX and giro on the thing, so wondering if anyone has done it or would an alternative APM be a better option?
If space is a limitation then I suggest you go for the APM platform as its quite abit smaller. As for mounting the best way is to build a baseplate as shown below which will give you some space to mount the APM/Pixhawk. The GPS is usually mounted on the boom. You can find more information on how to get everything working in the manual
Seen that video, that was what prompted me LOL Quite amazing really to think that you can now set these things to take off, fly a mission, come back and land fully autonomous where when I got the T-Rex I think giro’s were about as state of the art as you got! The giro cost me as much as a pixhawk and even then the bloody thing was a fair way off what I would call stable LOL
I don’t want to go with another copter as I already have the T-Rex V2 with all fancy blue anodised parts and blinged up like a rapper. It’s all dressed up with no where to go so I thought I would look at giving it a new lease of life so to speak.
I will have to get it dug out of the hole its in and have a look, but sticking a new layer on the bottom is really quite an obvious solution, not sure why that never dawned on me
Anyway, there is no rush because the pixhawk is not in stock yet anyway, and I am way too busy making bloody cat toys for Christmas orders at the moment to actually enjoy myself or anything stupid like that!
Cool, well if you need any parts I can help get some fibreglass plates CNC’d for you also get some parts 3D printed for you if you need any custom parts made.
He he, if you are looking for a basic one to get started on printrbot have some nice options if you dont mind tinkering abit. They are definitely fun and usefull for product design, but only worth it if you have some CAD experience (you can always learn via YouTube) and a decent cad program as 123D/tinkercad are not that nice to use for making use full things in my opinion.
I got one of the first printrbots which was ok, but never realy worked as well as I wanted as most of the parts I make with them are quite small, but I think they have come a long way since then. And yes you will have to pay customs and VAT
Seems like you know your way around CAD so it would definitely be something useful for you. I mainly like how you can go through an iterative design process with a 3D printer as the plastic is relatively cheap, as sometimes you only see what can be improved once you are putting something together.
We eventually went for a makerbot as they where the best at the time and they come ready to use and also has some decent software too. Perhaps there are some better alternatives right now that are cheaper.
so it would definitely be something useful for you. I mainly like how you can go through an iterative design process with a 3D printer as the plastic is relatively cheap, as sometimes you only see what can be improved once you are putting something together.