Long story short, I had a $600 budget. Now I have $200 and no multirotor. If your wondering how that happened please read the story below.
To start off I'd like to confess I know very little about multirotors, I've only been flying and scratch building about three or four months now and thats all been planes, so I'm hoping you guys can help.
I would like to use this multirotor for aerial video and, down the road, FPV. I would like for it to run on 3s 2200's (since I have a bunch of those) and I'm pushing for the longest flight time possible. I'd also like some kind of gps so I can lock it in position. If thats asking to much of my $200, the gps can wait. I was thinking tricopter because that seems cheaper to me than anything else. I found this frame and I like the portability of folding arms. I also found this frame though it's a quad. I've been reading the threads here and doing research and the kk2.0 sounds like the best deal but its on back order at Hobby King in the US. Any other suggestions for cheap, good flight controllers or maybe somewhere else I can buy a kk2.0 board in the United States? I also found David's tricopter build guide here but I don't want to have to build my own frame and I don't want to wait three weeks (or more) for David to get things going now that he's back home. So I was thinking maybe using the HK tricopter frame I posted above and put all the stuff David listed in his build on it. What do you guy's think? I could be way off since I know next to nothing about multirotors. So please feel free to give me any advice, guidance, suggestions you may have. So just to recap, I'm basically looking for a a parts list to build a multirotor that will carry a gopro and FPV gear with the longest flight time possible using a 3s 2200 battery for under $200. Is it possible? And if so what parts combination do you guys suggest?
So one day I walked in the local hobby store and there it was! A big hex with naza lite on it! And my mind immediately jumped back to what my friend had said about having something to do video at their events. This thing was beast! It looked like it could carry a full size DSLR with no problem. I talked to one of the guys at the hobby shop and it was on consignment for $550. I went home and started counting my penny's. I was way short but I saved and scratched and bent corners and after about a month I came up with $600. I went back to the hobby store, and of course, it was gone! I was bummed but talked to the store owner and he showed me the Blade 350QX. It had gps which I felt was important for what I wanted it to do and some different flight modes which sounded cool. It checked all the boxes for what I imagined the big hex would do. The owner let me talk him down on the price and I walked out of there with it (BNF) for $395 out of pocket. I felt good since I still had $205 left over and I figured I could put that toward saving for a gopro. Now here comes the point to my story. I messed around with the thing for three days, had maybe an hour flight time on it. Even had a couple night flights which is cool with all the led's. On the third night, I had an especially stressful day/evening (I work long hours) at work and when I got home I wanted to unwind a little with my new quad. I took it outside and walked to the end of my road where I had flown this thing a few times and my little quad a whole bunch of times. Big open lot in front of me and trees behind me. I fired the 350QX up and let it initialize then I took off and flew around until the light started flashing telling me the battery was getting low. I was pretty high so I switch flight modes and brought it down pretty quick then leveled it out and switched it to RTH. Everything was looking good, it slowed and leveled out and started heading toward me. It kept coming. Then it flew over my head and went behind the trees. This is when I realized something was wrong. I flipped it out of RTH mode and tried bringing it back to me in stability mode. I could still see the lights between the tree branches. It was responding but very sluggish and the controls were all wrong. I was like back and left to bring it back and right. And that kept changing. I had to fight it and work the controls to keep pulling it to me. And it was moving so slow. Finally my commands didn't seem to be doing anything at all and it was seriously getting out of view so I flipped it into agility mode and gave it full throttle hoping it would gain some altitude and I would be able to see it above the trees. I never saw my 350QX again. That was last night. I was off today and I spent most the day walking through the woods looking for it and still haven't found it. It was still cruzing the last time I saw it so it could of really ended up anywhere and I'm not feeling too optimistic that I'll find it. And now you know why I'm now trying to piece together a cheap multirotor.
To start off I'd like to confess I know very little about multirotors, I've only been flying and scratch building about three or four months now and thats all been planes, so I'm hoping you guys can help.
I would like to use this multirotor for aerial video and, down the road, FPV. I would like for it to run on 3s 2200's (since I have a bunch of those) and I'm pushing for the longest flight time possible. I'd also like some kind of gps so I can lock it in position. If thats asking to much of my $200, the gps can wait. I was thinking tricopter because that seems cheaper to me than anything else. I found this frame and I like the portability of folding arms. I also found this frame though it's a quad. I've been reading the threads here and doing research and the kk2.0 sounds like the best deal but its on back order at Hobby King in the US. Any other suggestions for cheap, good flight controllers or maybe somewhere else I can buy a kk2.0 board in the United States? I also found David's tricopter build guide here but I don't want to have to build my own frame and I don't want to wait three weeks (or more) for David to get things going now that he's back home. So I was thinking maybe using the HK tricopter frame I posted above and put all the stuff David listed in his build on it. What do you guy's think? I could be way off since I know next to nothing about multirotors. So please feel free to give me any advice, guidance, suggestions you may have. So just to recap, I'm basically looking for a a parts list to build a multirotor that will carry a gopro and FPV gear with the longest flight time possible using a 3s 2200 battery for under $200. Is it possible? And if so what parts combination do you guys suggest?
-----------------------------The Story Below------------------------
So here's the long story. I have some friends (husband and wife), who are much older and wiser than me, that I've known for a very long time (over 20 years) who are active members in a volunteer organization called the CMA. They help a lot of people and do a lot of really cool stuff and I really look up to them. I was hanging out with them one day and playing with a little mini (toy) quad I have when the husband came up to me and said "You know what? It would be really cool to put a camera on one of those and fly it around at events". We talked about it and I explained to him about all the cool things people do with FPV and video using multirotor's and I told him that I would love to do that for them one day when I have a "real" multirotor. So one day I walked in the local hobby store and there it was! A big hex with naza lite on it! And my mind immediately jumped back to what my friend had said about having something to do video at their events. This thing was beast! It looked like it could carry a full size DSLR with no problem. I talked to one of the guys at the hobby shop and it was on consignment for $550. I went home and started counting my penny's. I was way short but I saved and scratched and bent corners and after about a month I came up with $600. I went back to the hobby store, and of course, it was gone! I was bummed but talked to the store owner and he showed me the Blade 350QX. It had gps which I felt was important for what I wanted it to do and some different flight modes which sounded cool. It checked all the boxes for what I imagined the big hex would do. The owner let me talk him down on the price and I walked out of there with it (BNF) for $395 out of pocket. I felt good since I still had $205 left over and I figured I could put that toward saving for a gopro. Now here comes the point to my story. I messed around with the thing for three days, had maybe an hour flight time on it. Even had a couple night flights which is cool with all the led's. On the third night, I had an especially stressful day/evening (I work long hours) at work and when I got home I wanted to unwind a little with my new quad. I took it outside and walked to the end of my road where I had flown this thing a few times and my little quad a whole bunch of times. Big open lot in front of me and trees behind me. I fired the 350QX up and let it initialize then I took off and flew around until the light started flashing telling me the battery was getting low. I was pretty high so I switch flight modes and brought it down pretty quick then leveled it out and switched it to RTH. Everything was looking good, it slowed and leveled out and started heading toward me. It kept coming. Then it flew over my head and went behind the trees. This is when I realized something was wrong. I flipped it out of RTH mode and tried bringing it back to me in stability mode. I could still see the lights between the tree branches. It was responding but very sluggish and the controls were all wrong. I was like back and left to bring it back and right. And that kept changing. I had to fight it and work the controls to keep pulling it to me. And it was moving so slow. Finally my commands didn't seem to be doing anything at all and it was seriously getting out of view so I flipped it into agility mode and gave it full throttle hoping it would gain some altitude and I would be able to see it above the trees. I never saw my 350QX again. That was last night. I was off today and I spent most the day walking through the woods looking for it and still haven't found it. It was still cruzing the last time I saw it so it could of really ended up anywhere and I'm not feeling too optimistic that I'll find it. And now you know why I'm now trying to piece together a cheap multirotor.
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