Flitetest DIY Gremlins

[LitterBug]

Stefan,

PM me. We can set y'all up with some custom .stl files for the EMAX motors/props or the OpenSCAD files so you can customize it yourself. I have not posted it up to Thingiverse yet. Would like to work some slicing/leak bugs out first and get some video of a really good flight rather than just the one from maiden.

Cheers
LB

 

[three west]

Hey guys, I had the day off today, and flashed Betaflight 3.2.2 to the board, upgrading from 3.1.7 at the time of my original build.
I took a diff dump before I flashed, and I'm glad because I lost all my settings. Upon inputting them back in using CLI I started getting a sort of clicking sound somewhere around the PID inputs (I don't know if this is related, but it was weird, so I mention it)

Long story short, the props spin up (just a quick blip) at reboot now and I have a new chip in my wood desk. I reset the pids from within Betaflight, but its still doing it.
This is probably something simple, but I don't have enough experience to recognize what would cause it yet.
Can anybody help me out?

 

[Gospike]

I'm looking for help. I think I fried my F3 Femto FC... But I'm not sure. The ESCs power up. Voltage = 7.8

But the board doesn't have any leds blinking. And the Frysky rx doesn't power up. I did remove the rx and tried it on the workbench. It worked fine.

When the FC is plugged into Betaflight I can make changes to the settings...

Any ideas?

 

[SmokeshowFPV]

I'm looking for help. I think I fried my F3 Femto FC... But I'm not sure. The ESCs power up. Voltage = 7.8

But the board doesn't have any leds blinking. And the Frysky rx doesn't power up. I did remove the rx and tried it on the workbench. It worked fine.

When the FC is plugged into Betaflight I can make changes to the settings...

Any ideas?

If it works off of usb but not battery power you most likely fried the 5V regulator on the FC. And unless you have some good hot air rework tools you will prob be best off replacing the FC

 

[SmokeshowFPV]

Hey guys! Figured I'd share my little Gremlin in progress. I really dig Alex's frame as my 5" is a QAV210. Did the first hover tests today and she flies great! This will be quad #3 from me, my first was a Whoop (BetaFPV 75mm w/ 720 17500kv motors) but brushed gets old fast lol. So here she is!

Alex's Gremlin Frame
Racerstar 8A ESCs running DShot600
EMAX F3 Femto FC
EMAX Babyhawk motors, props and prop guards
Flysky A8 Micro receiver (No telemetry but it has the larger whip antenna for more range)

Just waiting on my AKK A5 Camera and VTX combo off amazon and she'll be ready for some indoor rippin!

 

[TazRC]

Nice! Looks like you could almost mount the battery on top if you wanted.

 

[SmokeshowFPV]

Nice! Looks like you could almost mount the battery on top if you wanted.

I totally could, but decided against it as it increases the chance of the props hitting it. Besides it still has a super low profile even with the battery on the bottom. I am going to try and get the camera and VTX mounted on lunch today so hopefully I get to do it's first FPV maiden today!

 

[TazRC]

Good luck with the maiden!

 

[SmokeshowFPV]

Good luck with the maiden!

Thank you! She is ready to rip now

Here is my AKK A5 Camera/VTX combo with the good ol' mullet mod. I highly reccomend this setup as the image is very sharp and at $17 shipped I don't think it can be beat! https://www.amazon.com/AKK-Transmitter-Switchable-Raceband-Quadcopter/dp/B073WV3HLS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1512669951&sr=8-1&keywords=akk+a5


All done! I used a small section of 1/8" urethane air brake hose for my antenna tube. I heatshrunk the tube to the zip tie as I found on my 5" that shrinking the antenna to the zip tie can cause the antenna to break in a hard crash.



It's a tight squeeze, but it all fits!

 

[SmokeshowFPV]

The maiden went great! Check out this super boring video of me flying in angle mode lol

 

[TazRC]

Nice! Looks like you have a great place to fly! What batteries are you using?

 

[SmokeshowFPV]

I have one Eachine 450mah 2S battery that I bought after watching some micro battery reviews on YT. It is very light and my charger rated it at 504mah. And I also have 2 custom 2S batteries I made using some 450mah GNB cells that I originally bought for my tiny whoop. They were much too heavy for the whoop to handle so I took them apart, wired 2 up as 2S and wrapped them with tape. I was using the home-brew GNBs in the maiden. I flew for another 4min after I stopped recording in my goggles so I am very pleased with the flight time of the Gremlin! It is very quick on 2S so I really don't think it needs 3S unless you are flying outdoors.

edit: I just was able to fly 8min of acro ripping around the warehouse on the eachine battery

 

[TazRC]

Sorry I meant the one in the picture.

 

[NewLn]

Receiver Help

Update: The issue has been resolved. I had had UART 3 set up wrong. All settings are now saved. Now I just need to buy the motors and a transmitter and soon I will be ripping holes in the sky!

I recently got a FrSky xm+ receiver and am having trouble setting it up in Betaflight. The receiver says it runs sbus, so I set the receiver in the configuration tab as serial-based receiver running sbus. But when I save and reboot, it switches back to ppm. I have the receiver set to UART 3 because of the way I soldered it on the FC. Does it run PPM or sbus? please help

 

[SmokeshowFPV]

Sorry I meant the one in the picture.

The one in the pic is 2x GNB 450mah 1S cells that I wired up to be 2S. They work darn well! With these little babyhawk motors I can tell no difference in punch between my homebrew 2S and the eachine 2S.
https://www.amazon.com/450mAh-Battery-JST-PH-Connector-Quadcopter/dp/B073J4CS72

The only reason I made them 2S instead of just buying some GNB 2S cells is that they were for my tiny whoop but were too heavy. I have to maintain almost 3/4 throttle to keep the whoop hovering with the 450mah 1S cells lol

 

[Luegg]

ebony gremlin frame

So, I received and built my gremlin (josh carbon frame) last week and had a blast soldering and assembling the thing. I even learned how to flash the XSR with compatible firmware for my european taranis ;-)

After 2 days of flying I decided to build my own frame from wood - I had some very beautiful macassar-ebony veneer lying around. I made an instructable https://www.instructables.com/id/Ebony-Micro-Quad/

It looks very pretty and flies well (although I'll have to do some adjustments - the dimensions are almost the same as before, but the position of the FC is not exactly the same) and I can really encourage everybody to try and build a frame for this fun and nice micro quad!

Keep up the awesome projects...

 

[rockyboy]

Very nice looking frame!

 

[jridge16]

Can anyone recommend a good 4-in-1 ESC for the gremlin? Would be using 2-3S and the Emax 1104 motors.

I see several on-line - Is there anything I need to look for when picking one out?

Found a KingKong combined FC and 4-in1 10A ESC at banggood and other places. Would this work? Anyone have experience with this combo? See https://www.banggood.com/KINGKONG-L...-p-1160375.html?rmmds=search&cur_warehouse=CN

This is my first exposure to quads. Coming from the RC airplane world, this stuff is a bit more complicated.....

Jeff

 

[PsyBorg]

Well since its an Emax product in every other aspect maybe look into this? Other then that the smallest AIO esc I can find is 12amp and thats a bit over kill. Get FPV has a 4 amp AIO that is only 1s rated.

http://emax-usa.com/emax-f3-magnum-mini-fpv-tower-system/

 

[FlyingMonkey]

https://store.flitetest.com/f3-mini-magnum-fpv-tower-system/