Many have heard of reflashing Simon K firmware and yet many had read but not attempted to do it.

Being The Engineer, I should not shunt away from the vast pages of info to read and attempt. Therefore, gathering all the tools necessary from past 2 months, finally took the plunge when an opportunity arose to build an Octocopter.

1. First, we need the programmer. I got this from HK:
USBasp AVR Programming Device for ATMEL proccessors
The device came with 10pins serial connector cable to the PCB end. At the other end of the cable there is a choice of 10 pins and 6 pins female socket.

Then I have to determine what type of connection I want to made in order to touch the ESC. Since I am flashing the HK F-40A ESC which has the pads in place, it is easier to made the cable and hotglue it to a cloth-peg style as shown. I learned this from this thread.

Here's the style I copied from:




As to which pin from the pad goes to which pin in the programmer, you have to refer to this diagram:
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Here's the mod Deans to accommodate anti-spark. However, this is the battery side.

Really, nothing to mod except I just superglue them together and clamp it till dry with heat gun and then shrink wrap them after soldering the cross link and to the battery:


The other connector is the balancing connector wired to adapt Schulze charger. Not ready to wrap yet, waiting for a resistor to be added so that the charger will auto recognise the charge current for this pack.

Here's another view. I have pumped in hot glue into the hole where the shrink did not close all the way on the main connector.
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I am copying and pasting the following info from my entire build log just so to focus on the PDB alone.

The objective is to hard mount all the ESCs for the multirotors on a single plate of PDB, double sided. Since there is none in the market to handle the higher than expected current and power, the only way to test the idea is to build one, out of acrylic and copper sheet.

So here goes.
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Now that the frame and motor mount and motor is done.. time to move up the base and think of how to mount the ESC.

My design believe in having a low CG and all components should concentrate to the middle as much as possible. Even my base plate is very small at 100x100mm for a 750mm Quad.

So to reduce wire and cable clutter, I want to formulate my own PCB to carry those power.

So the idea came from http://hackaday.com/2008/07/28/how-t...gle-sided-pcb/

Its interesting to learn that one can laser print onto practically any flat surface, literally.. But instead of meddling with pungent chemicals, i decided to adopt my own method..

Here's the PCb plan on drawing:


S that means, we can employ the same manner to transfer these lines onto a sheet of copper! Voila!

But which paper or foil to use? I suppose using the aluminum foil looks better as I can see how the print out will turn out.. But before I can do that, I think it may sense to reverse the color like this:


Reason is simple. the track should be clear of any printing so we...Continue Reading

Its all starts from here.

The arrival of the CF parts in March 2012:


But only in Sept I started working on this.
100x300x1.5mm sheet cut into 100x100. That's how small I like it to be to keep weight down.


The usual, 4 corners with holes, act as pivot for the boom too. Make last minute change to include a swing-close design.. had to drill many holes and file them to shape.. not very nicely done.. had to oversize them to get a smooth swing.
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Sometime in Feb 2012, I started this project after deciding I should do something like a quad with the spare material lying in my workshop..



So I tried my hands on milling using a drill press and did a cross-joint.. looks ok:


Days later, went to buy some low Kv and cheap motors and mounted them on:
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