The UAV Lab(RD-5) RD-5 aka Kneebiter gets AeroQuad Upgrades
Published: Sun Jan 29 2012
With Aeroquad's release of version 3 of thier configuration software and a new version of the FLight Software, It was time that RD-5 got an update.
We began by trying to use the Macbook pro to do this, and found that OS-X Lion, which is the first OS-X to boot into 64 bit mode by default, was unhappy about the 32-bit NI-Visa drivers, so I download the beta 64-bit drivers and tried that. Everything einstalled just fine. I mentioned to the Aeroquad team that these drivers may help future "Lion" Issues.
Next , RD-5 has been running with the AQ 1.9 board. 
And it seemes that the USB drivers for that board were somehow not working right in the Macbook Pro. So I pulled the 1.9 off and put on an AeroQuad Mini.
After hastily putting a few settings into the board, and trying to fly, I managed to brake a few APC SF8x3.8 Props. Then after an elaborate balancing act to move the machine around for the "new for 3.0" accelleromoeter callibration routine, then I began to doubt myself about which way is the front of the board, so took it all apart and put back together with the board facign the wrong way, one hour and 15 minutes later, I was reminded that even a season verteran can make rookie mistakes. Started from scratch and got things responding more or less as expected.
I removed the APC props and put on some junker squarish 8" bulk hobbyking props, if I am going to break props getting the machine to fly, I will use cheap ones. No joy, seemd like the props had no power, so I changed the prop adapters from the o-ring "Prop-saver" type to the frickion fit collet for 3.17 mm adapters and threw on some smallish 7x4x3 Master Airscrew Props.
Now it seemed the issue is still pid tuning. Somehow in had tests I feel that the quad is incverted on the pitch axis. SO I put it away for now. More to come on this.
In the end, after using some pid settigs for my Kinjap frame and th Mini, I got it to behave, but not good enough to fly.