The Coke Bottle T-Copter

Recently I was thinking about building a new T-copter frame. And sometimes that makes you look at ordinary things in a different way.

So a normal coke bottle suddenly looked like the perfect fuselage for my new T-copter. The idea behind this was that you could place all electronics in the bottle and keep it protected against the elements and the occasional hard landing. Theoretically it should be possible to seal al holes and make the bottle entirely waterproof so you could, for example, land it in the water. Theoretically... because it would not be very practical when chancing the battery, tuning the flight board or doing other maintenance. Another thing I always take in consideration is the costs. The whole T-copter frame can be build for probably around two euros. So I won't have to cry every time I crash. Anyway, I made a first prototype with a lot of room for improvement but I think it turned out quite neat.

The two front booms are made from one piece of 16mm PVC Pipe (total length of 50cm) with the motor wires running through it. At each end I hot glued a piece of square wood for easier motor installing.

The back boom and the tilting platform are made from some square wood (15x15mm). As tilting mechanism I used the idea from Hallstudio from Simplecopter.com (I used two rods instead of one, for push and pull)

For mounting the motors, again, I use the Hallstudio method of "tape and tie" (double sided sticky tape and zip ties).

The KK2.0 is mounted on a piece of plexiglas which is hot glued in the bottle. 

I normally use a low-voltage beeper but inside the bottle you probably won't hear it to well. So I changed the beeper for a very bright LED.

Inside the bottle it is a bit of a spaghetti of wires and electronics. I still have to think of something to clean that up, but I really like how smooth and tidy it looks on the outside.

Technical specifications:
Motors: RC-Timer 2830/11 (1000kv)
ESC's: RC-Timer 30A preflashed with SimonK firmware
Flight controller: KK 2.0 (Firmware 1.6)
Tilt-servo: Turnigy 380MAX (Metal Gear)
Battery: 3000mah 3s 20C
Props: 8X45

It flies great. I shot some videos with an 808 #16 camera on top of the CokeCopter but those images were pretty rubbish. Later I used my Mobius and strapped it underneath the CokeCopter with a rubber band. I was surprised to see how steady those images were as you can see in the second half of the video.