Open Sky Anchor WiFi Drone Brings The GIG

Not that I like to highlight failures, but these power supplies popped way under their rated load. Everyone likes to see things explode though right?!   one PSU seems to have a short on the Neutral Mains in line, it immediately pops the fuses when plugged in, the second power supply seems to be working however. I already have suitable ( and more expensive) kind of power supply I posted about earlier. 

This failed at about 35-40 percent throttle. I can build a custom one with much higher capacity, it is just a waiting game on parts and spreading things out over paydays. This will not keep sky anchor from flying though, there are options :)

New weight at around 8.6 pounds after swapping down to slim lines heatsinks. Next comes testing.

weight in 10 pounds 4 ounces. At 12.6 volts DJI estimates 600 gram thrust per motor, however we have upped the voltage to 15 volts even, but still below the 17 volts recommended maximum for the ESC / Motor combination tuned E300 system. I am considering swapping to smaller heatsinks without fans to lose around a pound since there are 8 of them.  I have smaller and longer ones that would be only 4 and no doubt a weight decrease.  The upper level anti vibration I added could be eliminated if needed to maybe lose another half pound or so, but that’s a last resort.

8 x 40mm heatsinks each with their own 12 volt 40mm fan originally destined for the hot end f a 3D printer. After fitting the heatsinks I do see some possible trouble connecting the DC power wires and the 220v ground tether after being assembled. O it looks like I will stop here for tonight and get the connections for the tether soldered up so I can make these connections before I put the antenna gimbal back on. Oh and I didn’t mention it , but removing the antenna gimbal is a must to get to these fans and the screw connections as well. There is one set on each side as one psi board is mounted in the opposite direction for the purpose of keeping the load balanced as much as possible on the frame.

The array has to be folded down flat when on the ground. After it takes off the antennas unfold and the make movements to track the ground antenna target. Remember the 5G antenna has a 30 degree cone of effectiveness and the 2.4G has a 60 degree cone of effective signal.

It is funny when you troubleshoot problems that usually some of the simplest fixes are what is causing the bug in your machine. After some time investigating, I realized brushless AC motors using three leads can reverse rotation by swapping any two of the three inputs to the motor.  So one motor at a time I powered on the drone and upped the throttle so I could feel if the air was blowing downward as intended. I repeat this process ten times. I did have 1 prop that was incorrect for the motor, the other 11 were the correct prop and CCW or CW rotating motor in place. The battery is down to about 11.6 volts so it is nearly dead and the controller batteries are dead after being on for about 6 hours today during troubleshooting and corrections. So I will put them on the charger to test tomorrow. If you ever do this kind of project I highly recommend using a label maker to label both the ESC and well as the end of the RC signal cable, because they all look the same and are easy to confuse and make a mistake. The labels give you a visual confirmation you are plugging in the correct plug.

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