The weather was perfect today, so I decided to go for an FPV flight in the morning. Packed my FPV Quad, FatShark goggles, Transmitter and two battery packs and went to the field.
Sadly, after the first one minute flying I didn’t manage well the speed of descending and got a small crash. The propeller hit the FPV antenna of the ImmersionRC Transmitter and broke it. That was all with the FPV flying today. Then I flew just for fun making flips and so on 🙂
Quick info about the flight: 10:30min with one Zippy 1300mAh 25C battery (AUW including GoPro Hero3 is 485g). At home I charged again 1211mA. Here is the short video of the flight:
The summer is coming and it is time for FPV flying. It is just great feeling to fly around. In the past months I have used mostly my SG Acro quadcopter and that one is not suitable for FPV flying, even it is great fun making flips with it 🙂
I will be using my own SG Adventure Mini v4 frame. I spent many hours learning CAD from zero and trying to create an unique FPV frame, that is as good as possible. I just love this asymmetric carbon fiber frame 🙂
Let´s get started with the parts that I have used for that FPV Racer:
SG Adventure Mini v4 frame
T-Motor MN2206 2000kv
HK BlueSeries 12A ESC flashed with SimonK firmware
First I mounted the M3 6mm nylon spacers on the top center plate. Next I mounted the MN2206 motors on the arms and cut the 2mm gold connectors as I was going to solder the motor cables directly to the ESCs.
Then unsoldered the original motor cables from every ESC. I also removed the 5V and GND cables from 3 ESCs and left only the signal cable (I was going to use the supplied BEC on the fourth one).
Took the bottom center plate and mounted the power distribution board with on it. Next step was cutting the power cables from the ESC, so these can fit on the bottom plate. Then soldered these cables to the power distribution board. I also soldered the power cable to the battery, the LEDs and a power cable for the ImmersionRC video transmitter.
After that I put heat shrink on the ESCs and soldered the cables from the motors to every ESC. You should care when soldering to reverse two of the motor cables because of the different rotation.
Next step is assembling the arms with the center plates. I don’t like to see the locknuts on the top, but it is much easier to mount the arms by that way. Once you are done with two of these, you can put the other screws from the top and then remove or reverse the firstly mounted screws and locknuts.
Finally I have mounted the CC3D flight controller, a carbon cover for it and the 6” propellers. I also put two 6mm nylon spacers in the middle between the two center plates for more strength. On the top of the flight controller cover I mounted the ImmersionRC TX with a zip tie until I receive my third FPV cover plate.
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.
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:
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 🙂
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:
Today they released another great and popular flight controller: the OpenPilot CC3D. It is also an 32bit controller like the HK Pilot32 and the Naze32. Hardware and software are completely open sourced. More about the project you can find on the OpenPilot website.
The CC3D version is more like the Naze32 Acro. It is also so small: just 36x36mm and only 6 grams. The processor is the same as on the Naze32, STM32F1 and not the faster STM32F4 like on the HK Pilot32. Gyro and accelerometer on the CC3D is the popular MPU6000. The Naze32 Acro has the MPU6050. Both OpenPilot CC3D and Naze32 Acro haven’t any barometer or magnetometer like the OpenPilot Revo or the HK Pilot32.
So both flight controllers are a kind of competitors. The OpenPilot CC3D is priced at 31.99$ and the Naze32 Acro at 24.99$. Although you don’t need to solder any pins on the OpenPilot CC3D. It comes ready to fly. So far HobbyKing is doing great job by offering another open source flight controller. It will be a good alternative for my SG Adventure Mini Quad 🙂
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