Info

This claw is used for drone, to pickup items or drop items. I used for pickup “crashed” small size other drones.

This is a chinese made drone claw, so far I have not found the claw 3d printed parts on any 3d printing collection website yet. The claw part also looks good.

However, the electronic part is not good enough, there are three small pieces of PCB inside of the cabin, and a lot of wires, I broken one black wire of the motor while I put all stuff back into the cabin. There are much more things can be improved for electronic parts. At least it is working.

Malfunction part: when the claw is in fully “close” status, the motor fail to run to “open” status, the motor probably does not have start-up capacitor, I will need to rotate the motor to “help” it to start.

Teardown

Remove the screws of the side claw parts.

The underneath and close loop of the bottom part

Open the cabin, the first look of the inside, the tape warpped part is a DCDC regulator, nothing interesting to say.

The main controller part PCB, we can see it includes motor control, RF signal and probably a MCU controller, because there is a crystal around.

Output are motors IN+ IN- and RF signal IN+ IN- (?)

The top PCB is a TP4056 battery charge board.

The rest in the cabin is a very small dc motor, which probably not strong enough.

The motor come out with a shaft coupler part, and connect to a long M3 screw, to drive finally the claw

The post Teardown a 3D printed Drone Claw appeared first on ElectroDragon.

Make good products, not War!

This is how the car looks like from the beginning, because we are going to hack it, it won’t look the same afterward.

The car is also fully water proofed, let’s see how they did. And estimated their cost and profit. Also we will focus on the electronics how it works.

Lithium Battery

The battery in a plastic case, well isolated to be water proofed.

So lets check the toy car step by step, first is the battery, the battery has four wires, but in the master, only two wires are connected, so they are not originally fit.

The designer should spend more cost on the wire and case joint to add a ring to make it water proof. But maybe this is also OK enough.

Now the battery is out, capacity is small enough only 500mAH, 2S 7.3V, and the advertisement said it can run up to 30-40 minutes, I have doublt.

It has four wires but only two finally were used on the car, which makes me confused for a while.

The entrance of the battery and connectors, it has water proof ring, and four manual lockers.

The Main Car Body

The car’s side wings are installed by two screws.

Further remove the whole top case, so it is all decoration, nothing else, and there are many grass stuck between after I played with it.

Love the large wheels, it run smooths on the grass, even when it run through the shoes. This is how it looks like after remove all the top “car” decoration.

You can also notice that there is a protruding part on the top, which is also a part of the space for large batteries.

Open Inside and the Electronics Part

There is a big sqaure container in the middle, locked by 8 screws as you can see, between the cases there is a also a water proof ring.

The inside comes up with roughly simply three parts, the battery house, the motor house, and the PCB control board.

Ignore the battery house, lets go for the motor house, open the small top cap, there are simply two slighly big DC motors inside, based on the image, lets ask AI what’s its specificatoins.

130-size DC Motors:

• Voltage: Commonly run on 3V to 6V.
• Speed: Depends on the voltage, but typically range from 10,000 to 20,000 RPM.
• Shaft Diameter: Usually 2 mm.
• Dimensions: About 15 mm diameter and 25 mm length for the motor can.
• Application: Perfect for light-load applications like small RC vehicles or fans.

However it looks bigger than normal 130 motors I know, so let me further ask it could be: 260 or 280 Size DC Motors, yeah either one of them could be.

260 Motor

• Diameter: ~24 mm
• Length (without shaft): ~30–35 mm
• Shaft Diameter: ~2 mm
• Voltage: 3V to 12V
• Use: Medium-sized RC toys, gearboxes

280 Motor

• Diameter: ~24 mm (same as 260)
• Length (without shaft): ~38–40 mm
• Shaft Diameter: ~2 mm
• Voltage: 3V to 12V
• Use: More torque/speed than 260, found in faster or heavier RC vehicles

Electronics

The wiring is simple, only two power supply in from batteries, and 2×2 power supply for the DC motors.

The PCB board is also very simple, there are two motor controller chips side by side, and a main MCU controller chip doing following functions: A LED indicator, 2.4GHz controller signal receiving and processing, and commands control the motor chips. That is all.

Here is the really SMALL antenna, maybe for toy playing is good enough, but I want to hack this later. The antenna also nicely hang on the water proof ring, the maxium place it can reach from the inside of the case.

The PCB board view from the another side, two motor connectors M1 and M2, and two large electrolyte capacitors for motor probably? The LED indicator the remote signal while pairing.

The Final Part Remote Controller

The remote console is even also water proofed, easy to use, a middle button probably to wake-up itself, and up / down, left / right two round pad keyboards.

Open the inside, we will see a big water proof rubber cover, and the sperated buttons on the top.

The buttons are aligned by guides with the top cases, as shown below, the movement directions are limited to up and down.

Removed all the screws and then the plastic frame cover for the water proof rubber conver, the side of the PCB show up.So there are power inputs, led indicator, antenna, and five buttons.

The chip should be a highly customized one, with signal inputs, and 2.4Ghz transmitter.

The backside battery is also water proofed.

Further Hack

For now it is all done, I will leave these decorations, and further hack it for other purpose.

You can read the hack info here, because it is constantly udpated, so it is stored in our wiki page system.

Thank you for reading!

The post Tear down and Learn a good-build $20 RC Toy Car appeared first on ElectroDragon.

We just back from a long local holiday, also called Chinese lunar year. Sorry for the late reply during this time. This won’t have in this year anymore.

We currently have another situation is the corona-virus spreading in China, it is a long story but we will scientifically prevent this incident, all will be fine.

In the meantime, the local government is taking measure to prevent crowding of people:

All local companies are forced to start to work after 10th February. This will influence our supply chain, logistics and more. So we are not able to run fabrication, or ship any orders.

Also many of our employees were back to their hometown, where is the original infected area. We need further quarantine even after 10th.

Please ONLY place order if you can wait until 10th or maybe 20th for us to send your order. Thank you!

Recommend the popular science books “A Planet of Viruses”, explain a lot of facts and history about virus.

The post Delayed Start of Work appeared first on ElectroDragon.

Install mingw +GCC on windows, find mingw installer on google:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/

Install mingw base and gcc in installer:

Setup environment path:

in control panel – system and safe – system – advanced system setup – environment setup and find path

Check if the path is working correctly:

enter into console CMD: gcc -v

Install notepad, recommanded version is 7.56, which has better support for plugins. Start to test simple hello print code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
	int i = 10;
	printf("i=%d\n", i);
	printf("Hello 111\n");
}

Use notepad “run” function from the menu, enter following command for compiling:

cmd /k gcc -o “$(CURRENT_DIRECTORY)\$(NAME_PART).exe” “$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)” & pause & exit

This will compile the current c file in notepad into windows executable file .exe, same name in the same folder.

And run command to run this exe file:

cmd /k “$(CURRENT_DIRECTORY)\$(NAME_PART).exe”

These two commands can be saved in notepad menu “run”:

C compiler GCC in windows can help you to quick start with c code learing, also try many preincluded functions like:

• memcpy()
• getkey()
• printf()
• …

These functions are pre-included in the string or stdio headers:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

The post Windows C Toolchain Easy Setup (Mingw + Notepad) appeared first on ElectroDragon.

We have tried first round of test, very very simple setup, to just make sure all can work and what is the performance by default without any optimize.

Setup of NRF24duino:

• A pair of module, both flashed with get_started sketch
• receiver module powered by 9V battery (on board xc6206 only support up to 6V, this is wrong)
• transmitter module powered by FT232RL at laptop to see serial output result.
• Laptop send packet, both module run in “ping-pong” mode, so lucky it should have round-trip feedback.

Setup of Loraduino:

• A pair of module, transmitter module flashed with radiohead RF95 reliable client sketch, receiver module flashed with radiohead RF95 reliable server sketch.
• transmitter module powered by lithium battery, powered and send data packet.
• receive module powered by FT232RL laptop, receive data and send hello back
• Both module soldered spring coil 433MHZ antenna.

Some points we already know:

Nrf24duino:

• The on board nrf24duino can reach TX power +7dbm, we use default sketch, not sure if can make it better.
• No 2.4G wifi connection to interfere, laptop wlan even turn off.
• Not test voltage, not test current, not power TX power. Just rough test.
• Wifi range, data could congest is a busy channel selected, can use a scanner.ino to find good/bad channel.
  • 0 => 2400 Mhz (RF24 channel 1)- wifi start
  • 1 => 2401 Mhz (RF24 channel 2)
  • 76 => 2476 Mhz (RF24 channel 77) standard
  • 83 => 2483 Mhz (RF24 channel 84) — Wifi goes to about here
  • 124 => 2524 Mhz (RF24 channel 125)
  • 125 => 2525 Mhz (RF24 channel 126)
• 250KBPS instead of 2MBPS could greatly improve the range.

Loraduino:

• dBm Tx power set to +13dbm on this round of test (set by default), could set to 20dbm (or 23dbm):
• // Defaults after init are 434.0MHz, 13dBm, Bw = 125 kHz, Cr = 4/5, Sf = 128chips/symbol, CRC on
• // The default transmitter power is 13dBm, using PA_BOOST.
• According to manufacture, set bandwidth bigger can get longer distance.
• With a dipole antenna like that, the signal tends to go out in the shape of a doughnut, so the angle may not have it is the most optimum position which would be both sender and receiver perfectly flat with antenna sticking straight up so the signal is polarized the same and in the optimum position for rx/tx
• A buck/boost LDO regulator could fully drink the power of lithium battery.

Environment:

• The giant metal railing that could impact the signal in a number of ways, should be avoid.
• A big high voltage transmission tower is behind the receiver.

Test Result:

Quick image took during test.

Test Result of NRF24duino :

• Get about 40-50 meters sight transmission distance, over this distance, packet will lose 50-90% .
• On 40 meters sometimes can send ok, but failed on round-trip check.
• PCB antenna should be face and point to receiver direction to get better result.

Test Result of Loraduino:

• Use Phone GPS to see two modules, maximum distance 800 meters, signal complete 100% lost on 900 meters. On 800m still can get 100% data packet.
• SX1278 can reach 3KM, so there are still much can be improved. This is not very promising result, will check if anything wrong on code or hardware, and test again.
• TX power set on 13dbm, not full power, need more test.

The post Distance Rough Test NRF24duino and Loarduino Board (Updating) appeared first on ElectroDragon.

We are pleased to inform that our boards and modules have been used during course “Internet of Things” at the WSB University in Wroclaw (Poland, UE). Students learned about the ability to build and programing “Smart Home” using the Electrodragon Relay boards, modules, various sensors, and LEDs and displays. PlatformiIO was used for example programming.

Jaromir Kopp from the Mój Mac Magazyn was teaching young people.

The classes enjoyed great interest and we hope that similar training will continue because “Internet of Things” is the future!

The post Electrodragon boards and modules used in education appeared first on ElectroDragon.

We will sell the same price as anywhere else.

Most information we can find are placed on this page now.

The post ESP32 Information appeared first on ElectroDragon.

Thanks to customer Mark, here is wiring diagram of the flow sensor/meter with esp8266, the key point is needing a 555 timer chip as a Schmitt trigger.

Also the VCC voltage of flow sensor is 5V, and esp8266 is 3v3, a voltage divider is needed in the circuit.

You can find the flow sensor here.

Updated to use a CMOS version of the 555 timer that doesn’t suck massive power like the old LM555.

The post Liquid Flow Sensor, Turbine Meter wiring with ESP8266 appeared first on ElectroDragon.

It seems the current online custom build with dev branch can not work well with smartconfig, or the ESP8266 smart config android APK, so we tried to figure with the espressif official APK and master branch.

The master branch is:

Build on ESP8266 NONOS SDK 1.4.0, support ESPTouch 0.3.4.3

Dev branch version is Espressif NONOS SDK 1.5.1

First compile online use the master branch, and download, note to use the 9600 baudrate instead of 115200:

And you will see the following information when it done:

You successfully commissioned a NodeMCU custom build from the master branch. You selected the following 7 modules: file gpio net node tmr uart wifi.

We’ll keep you posted by email about the progress of your build.

In the meantime I suggest you take a look at the build stats to find out how your firmware configuration compares to others in the community.

Open Esplorer and send the snippet code of startsmart to the board:

The APK Espressif IOT can be found on google play market, make sure you use the latest version, if you can not be sure, in the setting menu you can update the APK. Souce code of this APK can also be found on espressif github page.

The latest version ESPtouch should be 0.3.4.3, see the image below:

Open APK and try quick usage:

Then you can see the module is online now, IP address available:

The post ESP8266 Smartconfig Follow Up appeared first on ElectroDragon.

You can find the mentioned items in our store here.

This is a demo test of the pair of wireless power charger, five LEDs connected paralleled on the receiver end, output more than 200~300 mA (over range of display) current. There are some more notes:

• We use a very thin plastic bag to separated the receiver and transmitter, the thickness of the plastic bag is probably only 0.1mm.
• The magnetic ring of transmitter and receiver get the best transmission performance when the fully matched in round shape, and the power transfer lost very very fast when distance increase.
• The board can transfer on receiver 5V/200-300mA power, check this on the current meter.
• Power bench on the transmitter end is 0.3A and 6V (1.8W).

Update: Get a high power transfer pair, can transfer up to 1.3A current on very close distance. Easily drive small motors, or similar items!

The post Wireless Charging Test [Update March 1st] appeared first on ElectroDragon.