Tag Archives: sg acro

HobbyWing XRotor 10A ESC

Posted by on September 1, 2015 No comments

Some time ago I looked for small, quality and not expensive ESC for my SG Acro quadcopter and I found the HobbyWing XRotor 10A. Ordered four of these and approximately 2 weeks later they are by me. I don’t have a free acro frame now, to mount them on, so the flight test will be in a few weeks. But as I love to take pictures, here are some of the ESCs:

They came well packaged, but with manual in Chinese. This is actually normal as I ordered the Asia-Version, because it was cheaper. If I wish, I can always download the English manual.

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The ESC is really small: 36.5mm x 16.4mm x 4.1mm. The weight is 6.5g with 2mm connectors already soldered. So it is really easy to connect to my T-Motor MN2206 or MN1804 motors. It is important to know, that the ESC does not have any BEC, so you cant power the flight controller directly from the ESC.

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I decided to remove the heat shrink on one of the ESCs, to check what is inside and as expected, these ESCs are exactly the same as the T-Motor Air 10A. I have already tested one T-Motor Air 10A (compared with one HK BlueSeries 12A flashed with the newest SimonK and comp_pwm enabled) and it performed great. I am not absolutely 100% sure if the XRotor 10A have the same firmware as the T-Motor Air 10A, but it is probably the case.

HobbyWing XRotor 10A:

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T-Motor Air 10A:

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Both ESCs are labeled as 2-3S, but I will give it a try on a 4S configuration and see if it will burn. If you already tested these ESCs on your multicopter, I would love to know about your flight experience with them.

SG Acro – free quadcopter frame

Posted by on March 21, 2015 No comments

I wanted to share my new quadcopter frame design, that I made a few weeks ago in my free time. It is very light and compact frame, so it can be used for acro flying. The maximum propeller size is 6”. Motor to motor distance is 230mm.

For assemble are only needed 8 x M3x10 screws and 8 x M3 locknuts. Fully assembled the frame weight only 54g, as mine is made of carbon fiber.

I only had MN1804 from T-Motor so mounted these on the frame (weight 119g).  I think ideal should be the T-Motor MN2206 with 6×4.5 carbon propeller on 4S.

There are mounting holes for the most flight controllers, like the Naze32, OpenPilot CC3D, KK2.1.5 or Pixhawk. The mounting holes on the arms are standard M3 16×19, M2 16×12 and M2 12×12. I use the same arms on my new SG Adventure Mini v4 frame too.

It is as simple as possible, but with a good design. The CAD file is free. You can share it with your friends, use it to cut the frame for you, but not for commercial purposes. If you share it, please refer to this article.

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You can download the file here. If you like it, but don’t know anyone with CNC-machine, send me a message and I will try to help you.

24.03.2015: Assembled all the parts and here is how it looks like:

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Total weight without battery 201g. Share if you like it 😉

Update 18.04.2015: I equipped the small acro quad with Pixhawk, Neo M8N GPS and 433Mhz Telemetry module. There are some opinions that the Pixhawk is not so great as the Naze32 for acro flying, but for me as a beginner in Acro flying it is good enough. It is right that it feels not so “locked” as the Naze32. Now it is mini smart quad, not an acro quad 🙂

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Update 19.04.2015: Short flight with Pixhawk in Loiter mode (GPS is Ublox Neo M8N). ArduCopter version is 3.2.1. Compared to the old Ublox Neo 6M it is much more stable in my opinion.

Update 02.09.2015: Updated the CAD schematics for my SG Acro frame to v1.1. Added mounting holes for the flight controller of Nick Arsov, the AUAV-X2 as its holes are not the standard 30.5mmx30.5mm (yet). Also added spacers and design for Naze32 carbon cover. It fits to the CC3D flight controller too. If you like the design or have some other ideas, I would love to hear it.

Update 22.09.2015: Received the parts from the CNC factory and started building my new acro quadcopter. Here some details and pictures from the building process:

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