Retractable landing gear

The other problem is how are you going to trigger the gear to open/close? You don't have any spare channels or assignable switches on your Vision+ controller.
 
EMCSQUAR said:
I did it months ago on a P2, it's more of a novelty. It did fly better when in up position, but when down the weight and movement made landings a little challenging. - http://youtu.be/3eZBqbN8gDU?list=UU_2vD ... VSNdmm127A

I assume you were using an aftermarket 2.4 Ghz controller? If not, how did you toggle the gear with the stock controller?
 
Dirty Bird said:
EMCSQUAR said:
I did it months ago on a P2, it's more of a novelty. It did fly better when in up position, but when down the weight and movement made landings a little challenging. - http://youtu.be/3eZBqbN8gDU?list=UU_2vD ... VSNdmm127A

I assume you were using an aftermarket 2.4 Ghz controller? If not, how did you toggle the gear with the stock controller?


You guessed it, his vid shows a very brief view of his controller at the start. Not stock.
 
Yes the not stock controller is clearly seen in the vid beginning.
Issue with a V+ is that its a 5.8Ghz R/C system.
Not found a after marked 5.8Ghz r/c yet, so almost impossible to implement it in a V+.
Or you need a second R/C and or command something to let the legs function.
Did you see the weight of them ? 188gr.
What are your going to do about that ?
 
Bought one of these. Expensive, but it works and works well on any P2 thought P2V+. It uses a little arduino to tap into the PPM coming from the stock RX and then looks for either 2 or 3 toggles of the IOC (S2) switch for raising or lowering the gear respectively. Very clever and nicely engineered.

Back story:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=27045

And direct link:
https://www.rcdepothobbies.com/RCDH_RET ... etract.htm
 
ToThePoint said:
Yes the not stock controller is clearly seen in the vid beginning.
Issue with a V+ is that its a 5.8Ghz R/C system.
Not found a after marked 5.8Ghz r/c yet, so almost impossible to implement it in a V+.
Or you need a second R/C and or command something to let the legs function.
Did you see the weight of them ? 188gr.
What are your going to do about that ?

I was wondering if some sort of sonar device could be fitted that lowered or raised the UC based on height from the ground? say 3 feet up??
 
locoworks said:
ToThePoint said:
Yes the not stock controller is clearly seen in the vid beginning.
Issue with a V+ is that its a 5.8Ghz R/C system.
Not found a after marked 5.8Ghz r/c yet, so almost impossible to implement it in a V+.
Or you need a second R/C and or command something to let the legs function.
Did you see the weight of them ? 188gr.
What are your going to do about that ?

I was wondering if some sort of sonar device could be fitted that lowered or raised the UC based on height from the ground? say 3 feet up??

Sure it's doable.

Look into small microcontrollers (Adafruit, etc.) and ultrasonic sensors.
 
I tried this a few months ago with limited success and ended up removing them, here’s why…

I had the Arduino Uno board and the HC-SR04 ultrasonic module to trigger the landing gear at 1.5 metres and it seemed to work perfect on the bench and at idle, but as soon as you’d throttle up the legs wouldn’t automatically function any more.

After a bit of Googling it seemed I was probably suffering from both electromagnetic interference & wind turbulence from the 4 props.
I’d never thought of it before my Googlefest but soundwaves are affected by wind and there’s quite a bit of downwash and vibration going on when the machine is in flight, so it makes sense that it’s going to upset the ultrasonic module to some degree.

The other issues were that the servos sticking out either side were affected by wind and the whole lot was putting a lot of extra weight on the P2V+.
With a fresh battery it wasn’t so bad but when you’re getting to the end of your flight time the Phantom was much less responsive that you’d like it to be.

EMI could be sorted with a small amount of filtering & maybe the prop wash was upsetting the ultrasonic module, maybe it wasn’t, but in the end the added weight just didn’t make it fun to fly with a little wind & when the battery was getting low.

If you do want to go down that route remember you want to keep the compass as close to the original position as possible.
When I went to a new adjustable landing gear you can see in the attached pic I have the compass still mounted on one of the original Phantom legs and just chopped it off a bit shorter.
This is the same as I had it mounted when I was trying out the retractable legs.
 

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