DIATONE Blade 150 build

Nerobro

A Severe Lack of Sense
Happy Back to the Future Day. After today, all of BttF happens in the past.

If you'd like full size pictures: http://realtinker.blogspot.com/2015/10/building-150-class-quad-diatone-blade.html

Well, there goes another handfull of cash. In the mail today, I got a package from BangGood. In that package was the following:

1. 1 - Diatone Blade 150: http://www.diatone.hk/goods.php?id=80
2. 4 - EMAX BLHeli 6 amp ESCs
3. 4 - Eachine 1306 BG1306 3100KV motors.

In addition, on my bench, I have a Naze32, a camera, a 5.8ghz transmitter, a couple 3s 1000mah lipo packs, and a soldering iron.

Annoyingly, the 6amp ESCs weren't what I thought they were. They were being sold on the same page with five other ESCs. Every one of those ESCs, excepting the 6amp one, were 2-3s rated. We'll get back to that though...

Here's what I got in the mail:

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At first I thought they didn't ship the airframe. I only found it when counting props and ESCs. The anti-static bag it ships in, is tiny.

The airframe kit is quite complete. And it even comes with spare parts. You get almost twice as many screws as you really need, twice as many nuts. An extra plastic board standoff, and an extra main frame spacer.

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I swear, that's my usual red work rag. There's a few more pictures like that. It seems my cellphone got it's white balance way off.

One reason I bought this airframe, was that I was expecting it to have an integrated 5v regulator. Imagine my surprise when I found this PDB.

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Well, I might as well use it.

DIATONE recommends that the PDB is screwed directly to the lower frame. That setup seemed like it would leave the airframe wanting for space. After some digging through parts boxes, I found some standoffs. The PDB on my Blade 150 is under the bottom plate.

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Oh yeah, we're building this now.

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The Naze32 looks pretty comfy up there. It doesn't maintain that orientation... but I think that setup might be superior to what the quad ended up with in the end.

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The lower arms mount on top of the lower plate. They have two post holes, and the bottom plate has slots for the inner bolts. This lets you set the arms at two lengths, with about 5mm between them. This example is being built with the shorter arm layout.

And now we can make this convertable, a coupe.

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It really set in how small this thing was. The red work rag doesn't really show scale. So here's a 18650 battery, and a 5x4.5 prop for scale.

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The motors went on quickly. The 1306's look right on those tiny arms.

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A quad this small, makes mounting all the components quite a challenge. I like to hard wire everything I can, so first there needs to be some testing. Alligator clips are essential in this stage.

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It was also time to see if a hunch of mine was correct. ESCs are typically voltage limited not by their beefy driver side electronics, but instead by the accessories. The input filter caps, and the BEC are the big reasons for 1-2s, or 2-4s, or 1-12s, rated ESCs.

These little 1-2s 6amp ESCs have a different BEC regulator than the bigger ESCs have. The LDO type vreg would fry trying to handle 3s and the electrical load from say, a servo, or a Naze32.

That PDB with the 5volt regulator on it is just about to become essential for this build. By not plugging in the positive wires on the ESCs, I can remove almost all of the load from the regulators on the ESCs, hopefully allowing them to survive higher input voltages.

... They can. So they got installed.

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Those are some itty bitty pads to solder to.

The PDB needed to be tinned too.

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I made a mistake. I should have soldered on the center taps first. But as you can see here, the positive leads for the ESCs were soldered first.

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With the negative legs soldered on, it starts to look pretty busy.

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Finally, the 12v and 5v takeoff leads were soldered on, and some wire management was begun.

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That board got flipped over and screwed in place. Later on in the build, the bottom of the quad ended up looking pretty manageable.

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Now it's time to go after the flight control systems.

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At some point, I'll start caring, and start cleaning up my rosin. Today, is not that day. I've soldered the +5 and gnd from the PDB to the bottom of the Naze32. That way it won't need the BEC power from the ESCs.

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The +5v wire from the ESCs were cut off, and not soldered to the Naze32. I need to figure out a way to make that cabling look cleaner.

And lets not forget the CPPM lead.

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Honestly, form this point on, it was a matter of just squeezing things in. For example, the reciever got zip tied to the top deck.

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A little more stuffing later, and the Blade 150 had a transmitter and camera on board.

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153 grams, isn't anything to scoff at. And 235 grams with a battery!

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I've been talking about how small the quad is. Here it is sitting next to a QAV250.

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The QAV seems like a monster in comparison.

Sadly there won't be any flying tonight. The props I have hit the airframe. That really means I need to build a prop trimming rig. That shouldn't be a huge project, but it's not one to do tonight.

I did clip two props, to see what it would look like with props on it.

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I also need to wire up the harness from the camera to the VTX. There may also be some landing gear being built and an LED or two getting put aboard.

The ESCs seem to hold up just fine under 3s use. The motors get a little warm, but being so tiny, they don't exactly hold on to heat very long. The ~3.5x4.5 props seem to be the proper size. I'be got some other ESCs that are rated for 3s use, that I think will hold up just fine for 4s. That'll be a fun experiment. Though I might replace the smoothing caps on those before I trust those to fly with.

First flights should be this weekend.
 
Nice!

I saw that and thought it was cool. I have heard that the 1104 size motors fit better and are more efficient, but the 1306 motors work well.
 

Nerobro

A Severe Lack of Sense
Between the 1306's and ESC's I paid something like $30 less than the 1104's and the special 4000kv rated ESCs. I can buy a lot of props for $30. :)
 
That makes sense. I also have been reading around a little and found that the 1104s tend to be quite falty, most sets have 1-2 motors that don't work straight from the factory. I can't blame you for going cheap, as I am the same way.

Also, just wondering, why did you use the maze board? There are so many cheaper clones, like the flip, that cost almost half the price. I fly a flip32+ (has on board mag and baro for ~$30) and a friend flies a naze32(acro) (running the same motors, escs, transmitter, receiver, and PIDs) and they seem to fly identically as good. You also don't have wires pointing out the side.
 

Nerobro

A Severe Lack of Sense
Good question on the naze versus flip thing.

First of all, buying licensed Naze32's throws some money at the developers. That makes me feel good. Second, they come without soldered on headers, which lets me do direct soldering to the pads, easily. If you're running CPPM, there aren't any wires sticking out to the side. Even with the side header setup, you still have a much lower profile, that has typically been easier for me to find room on quadcopters for.

I have a flip32 on my hexacopter, which has essentially unlimited headroom over the flight controller.

The flip32 is very, very tall. Once you have the headers on it, and plugs installed, you have a minimum height of something like 1 inch of clearance. The separation between the plates on this quad is less than that. Without desoldering the Flip32, I don't have a lot of choice. And the side attachments on the Naze32 turned out to be an advantage on the Maltese and X-Factor builds I did last year.

Electrically, the boards are identical, as far as I can tell. I've seen no difference between flying one or the other. If I have an airframe that has room for the flip.. you can bet I'll be using it.

I should make a post of my quadcopters at some point... I've got four in flying condition, and two that are coming close to completion.
 
First, if you want to support cleanflight (depending on whether you fly that software or not) buying a SP3 would support them, but I understand what you're saying because if you only buy the clones, the developers won't have money to make new products.

Second, you can get flip32 with both no pin option and side pin option. I chose the side pin option on my 250 quad so I could utilize all the ports for UART and SoftSerial and could switch it around to different frames if I ever decide to. I have read that the only difference was a single resistor that is in line with the buzzer port that isn't the correct size and needs to be fixed in upcoming versions.

I agree though that when I can I support the developers, but buying fully functional clones is kind of a nice second option.
 
I know that RTFQuads one comes with no pins. I got mine off eBay with the side pins installed but there were plenty that came with pins, just not installed.
 

SteveRoby

New member
Could you please upload some photos with the top cover off ?
Im building a 150 & Im really struggling to fit everything in. I have no idea where to fit the receiver, I have almost no room for the
fpv gear.
PDB underneath is a really good idea.
 

SteveRoby

New member

Actually it really does. I finished the 150 long ago, just couldnt fit the cam & 5.8TX into it .

So now Im building a Diatone 160. It has a bit more room & top plate is cut out for the cam. Unfortunately it weighs more.
Ive been battling with the 160 for some time now, trying to get everything to fit, and failing.

Looking at you blog I see where Ive been going wrong. The original Diatone PDB is just a bad design . I should never have tried to use it. I also never considered switching vs linear PDB's .
I also use original(genuine) old school NAZE32 v5 boards ,boards that use the servo type connector for the escs. Those big connectors are taking up much of the available space & I now see they just arnt suited to small builds,


I'll start again, with a better PDB & new FC/naze clone similar to that EMAX Skyline32 . That will give me alot more room to work with.

Just 1 question, how did wire the esc signal wire to the fight controller. Was it just a single wire? or signal & -ve ? (as well as the power connectors to esc)

Thanks again, it really was an eye opener.
 
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Darkback2

New member
So I originally built my blade 150 with the idea of flying it in the house. The props will gouge your drywall...and door frames...and furniture...

Best of luck and have fun!

DB
 

SteveRoby

New member
So I originally built my blade 150 with the idea of flying it in the house. The props will gouge your drywall...and door frames...and furniture...

Best of luck and have fun!

DB

The Blade Inductrix is great for indoor fpv, even in my small house. Fully enclosed blades & its small & maneuverable.
I was going to use my 150 at my local indoor RC club, but its quite noisey, the old guys wouldnt have liked it :)
 

rsf

Junior Member
Just 1 question, how did wire the esc signal wire to the fight controller. Was it just a single wire? or signal & -ve ? (as well as the power connectors to esc)
.

Hi Steve, im glad to know it was helpful!
I only wired the signal wire since the ground is already shared between the battery, floght controller and the escs. You can confirm that with a multimeter just to double check ;)
 

Darkback2

New member
Actually it really does. I finished the 150 long ago, just couldnt fit the cam & 5.8TX into it .

So now Im building a Diatone 160. It has a bit more room & top plate is cut out for the cam. Unfortunately it weighs more.
Ive been battling with the 160 for some time now, trying to get everything to fit, and failing.

Sorry to hear your having a hard time. I went with this tiny camera... and this tiny transmitter. The transmitter hangs out the back on a plastic tray I 3d printed which isn't ideal, but seems to work OK. I am using the Graupner GR-18 which is definitely not ideal, it is too skinny and long, but I got it to fit after adding 1mm standoffs under the standoffs that come with it.

Best of luck with your build.

DB
 

Nerobro

A Severe Lack of Sense
Looking at you blog I see where Ive been going wrong. The original Diatone PDB is just a bad design . I should never have tried to use it. I also never considered switching vs linear PDB's .
I also use original(genuine) old school NAZE32 v5 boards ,boards that use the servo type connector for the escs. Those big connectors are taking up much of the available space & I now see they just arnt suited to small builds,


I'll start again, with a better PDB & new FC/naze clone similar to that EMAX Skyline32 . That will give me alot more room to work with.

Just 1 question, how did wire the esc signal wire to the fight controller. Was it just a single wire? or signal & -ve ? (as well as the power connectors to esc)
Depends on which build we're talking about. Maybe I'll actually get pictures for you tonight.

I used the PDB on both of my 150mm builds. I think.

I initially thought the 150's would be good indoor too. Turns out that they're just way to powerful for indoor use. I just build a Doinker for flying around inside.

http://realtinker.blogspot.com/2016/09/a-little-more-doinker.html