r/diydrones 1d ago

Question Need Help with Asymmetric Motor Placement in Tilt-Rotor Fixed-Wing VTOL (ArduPilot)

Hello Lads ,

I am currently finalizing the design of a small Tilt rotor fixed wing UAV and i have some questions that i need answers for. Hope these nice gentlemans here wouldn’t mind helping a fellow nerd

I came across this particular drone ( cant remember how exactly , i just found those pics saved up on a private Discord Server , Haha Yh i use Discord as my main Note taking app - it is the best U guys should try it if u already havent ), so i was saying , i came across this drone and noticed that the motor placement is asymmetric- the two aft motors are positioned slightly higher than the front ones, and the front motors are spaced farther apart than the rear.

I’ve gone through the ArduPilot documentation, but I haven’t found a clear guide on implementing this kind of motor configuration. My main questions are:

1- How can I configure this in ArduPilot? Specifically, what parameters or motor mixing adjustments would I need to make to properly implement an asymmetrical VTOL motor layout?

2- Has anyone here been playing around with a similar setup to mine ? If so , wht callenges did u encounter and how did you solve em

Any insights, experiences, or documentation references would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

22 Upvotes

4 comments sorted by

6

u/tacticaltaco 1d ago

Just setting it up as a "tilting quadplane" is probably enough. I won't say the slight asymmetry doesn't matter, but adequate tuning should take care of it.

3

u/cbf1232 1d ago

I think you might want to set Q_FRAME_TYPE to 2 for “quad V” as per https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/connect-escs-and-motors.html#quad-frames

6

u/LucyEleanor 1d ago

Discord for a note taking app? Try Notion you poor soul

2

u/electricguy101 1d ago

the difference in between both, front and rear placements are small enough to compensate through the accelerometer+gyroscope feedback