New Build! Strix AWK210 - BrainFPV RE1 - dRonin

[LitterBug]

Been building this one over the last month after determining that my original BrainFPV RE1 FC that I had been running in my owl had a defective Gyro/Acell. Didn't document the build very well as I have been mostly playing with my RMRC Hellbender and RCExplorer Baby Tricopter lately. Most of the work happened last weekend after receiving my replacement RE1 from BrainFPV last week. Will be initially running dRonin on it which comes native on the RE1. After making sure it all flies well, I'll be flipping over to BetaFlight for comparison. Opted to add the HD camera mount on top, so this will be my "good footage" flier. Was able to get a LOS maiden and autotune in the back yard last night. Should be getting FPV maiden at the field tonight after work.

Frame: Strix AWK210
FC-OSD/Firmware: BrainFPV RE1 / dRonin
PDB: BrainFPV MPB
RX: LemonRX LM0037 Diversity receiver
ESCs: DYS XS30A BLHeli_S 16.4
Motors: Edge Racing Light R2205 2480kv
Props: Strix 5045 tri
FPV Cam: Strix Ochi 650
FPV TX: RMRC Cricket V2 200ma
FPV Ant: Omnivision 3 lobe RHCP (Red Hot Chili Peppers

AUW with Tattu 4S 1550 75C battery: 556g




Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[LitterBug]

Well @#)($*)(@#)($* about sums it up.

Another RE1, another problem child. Reboot 80 feet up on maiden FPV. Had logging enabled. Pretty sure that will be the first question followed by, can you try disabling logging....

Ah well. Had the Baby out and managed to get one pack in on it with some beta firmware. I'll post that up too.

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[PsyBorg]

Hrrmmm. Them brains do not seem to be too smart. You are averaging one brain per cool crash video.:black_eyed:

I am playin with you mate. That sucks you are having a string of bad luck with them. The good thing is with all your building and experimenting you have more then one thing that flys so you are not stuck sorting your crew bin or windexing FPV gear on good days.

Good to see you back and active again. I been yakkin to much in here lately and its skeerin some of the peoples.

 

[LitterBug]

Looks like we may have nailed down the root cause. Looks like the integrated OSD may have been to blame. It lost sync when the contrast/brightness changed. Appears there may be a flurry of interrupts that caused triggering a watchdog timer to reset. Going to recalibrate the OSD sync, and they are working to fix the firmware so this can not happen.


Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[PsyBorg]

Cool find. Good job sniffin the issue out for them.

Looking at those last pictures reminds me of what I see thru my eyes at times with migraines. Maybe I need to resync my eyes and brain too!!

 

[LitterBug]

PB,
I get the Flashies/Jaggies at the onset of migraines too. They are somewhat seasonal for me. Usually start getting them around the middle or end of winter through spring. This year was particularly bad and was getting them half way through summer. Surprised I did not have weather knee friday. Was 78 and sunny. Then 32, windy, rain, snow, sleet Saturday. No chance to get an event-free re-maiden in to test the modified settings. (calibrated OSD Vsync and disabled logging) Got my upgrade Vicdozia lens for the FPV camera today. Was able to get that swapped and focused. Looking forward to getting this puppy back out to the field for another go.

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[PsyBorg]

yeah weather here is turning to crap as well. That nasty whits stuff should start falling any time now here if it isn't already. I havent looked out side in a few hours.

My migraines are injury related and are always present in varying degrees. I have a 50k dollar implant in my shoulder with wires running under the skin up the back of my neck to the base of my skull where the spinal cord is that confuses pain transmission thru nerve conduction that messes with my neck muscles and all that goes along with this mess. They ain't fun that's for sure.

I thought at first that FPV would enhance the ocular issues with the migraines but its actually less painful and intense when I wear the goggles as I control the light and contrast so its not such a multiplying factor.

What is a Vicdozia lens? I never heard of that. Focus the fpv camera... That's a laugh for me as my eye sight varies from hour to hour most days. Some days I see great other days not so much. The worst part is the constant watering when the migraines are in full force. That stim may block most of the pain but I still get the symptoms with the blurriness the noise and light sensitivity. I am glad the nausea is far less since they put that thing in me.

 

[LitterBug]

PB,
Sounds like I need to do and article on FPV Lens comparisons. The Vicdozia is basically a GoPro replacement lens. It has better optics and focal length. Removes a lot of the fisheye from the video and has better image clarity. Makes for an all around better FPV experience.

Here's some of the lenses I have. The 4 on the left I've replaced and the one on the right is the Vicdozia GoPro replacement lens. Screws right in to the majority of FPV cameras.

Top view:


Bottom View:


The red hue on two of them is an IR block filter. Some cameras have none, some have it on the sensor, and others do it on the len. I'll do a comparison of that too. You can do some cool stuff with IR only pass. I'm going to check how these FPV cameras do with a UV only pass filter too.

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[LitterBug]

HOLY SCHNITZEL BATMAN... THIS THING IS LOCKED ON RAILS!!!

Got out to the field at dusk tonight and flew two packs. All I can say is WOW! Glad I never gave up on dRonin or the BrainFPV RE1. This thing was locked in no matter what I threw at it. Think my flying was better on the first battery, but forgot to start the DVR. Here's the footage from the 2nd where I was tossin', turnin', and throwin' it down.

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[grnd flyr]

PB,
Sounds like I need to do and article on FPV Lens comparisons. The Vicdozia is basically a GoPro replacement lens. It has better optics and focal length. Removes a lot of the fisheye from the video and has better image clarity. Makes for an all around better FPV experience.

Here's some of the lenses I have. The 4 on the left I've replaced and the one on the right is the Vicdozia GoPro replacement lens. Screws right in to the majority of FPV cameras.

Top view:
View attachment 77451

Bottom View:
View attachment 77452

The red hue on two of them is an IR block filter. Some cameras have none, some have it on the sensor, and others do it on the len. I'll do a comparison of that too. You can do some cool stuff with IR only pass. I'm going to check how these FPV cameras do with a UV only pass filter too.

Cheers!
LitterBug

Just wanted to ditto what you said about this lens, love it...


Saw a couple reviews here by Joshua Bardwell:


Why GoPro Lens Is Better Than 2.5mm Lens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeswyEaE8LA


GoPro Lens vs. 2.5mm Lens for FPV | HEAD-TO-HEAD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y34pndtCp6c


...then ordered it from Amazon:


Vicdozia 2.5mm Replacement 170 Degree Wide Angle Camera DV Lens for Gopro HD Hero
https://www.amazon.com/Vicdozia-Replacement-170°Degree-Camera-SJ4000/dp/B015EE7G58


...what's really nice is that because it's a wide angle lens, you don't have to tilt it up so high, making it much easier to land.


Really like this lens

 

[LitterBug]

Just wanted to ditto what you said about this lens, love it...


Saw a couple reviews here by Joshua Bardwell:

Why GoPro Lens Is Better Than 2.5mm Lens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeswyEaE8LA

GoPro Lens vs. 2.5mm Lens for FPV | HEAD-TO-HEAD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y34pndtCp6c

...then ordered it from Amazon:

Vicdozia 2.5mm Replacement 170 Degree Wide Angle Camera DV Lens for Gopro HD Hero
https://www.amazon.com/Vicdozia-Replacement-170°Degree-Camera-SJ4000/dp/B015EE7G58

...what's really nice is that because it's a wide angle lens, you don't have to tilt it up so high, making it much easier to land.

Really like this lens

Just ordered two of the cheaper GetFPV equivalent for comparison. Need a good sunny day to do side by side outdoor flying comparisons.

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[LitterBug]

Had some surprise warmish weather today and managed to get five packs in at the field. Testing out some new Dominator V1 headgear and a RunCamHD V2 that I picked up on the AWK210. Have been using Teleporter V4 goggles and the higher resolution and larger image on the Dominator are a huge improvement. Really cool to be able to review flights in HD not just the DVR of the FPV feed.

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[PsyBorg]

Nice runs man you are rippin thru the wild blue now. I see you learned the lesson there is only one inch between WEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! and CRAP when flying low n fast hehe.

Quick question.. Do you run any TPA at all? That will probably help clear up the slight wobbles at fast runs. The tune you did looks pretty tight on that one so that leaves TPA to fine tweak it out and get that baby perfect. I just changed mine this last round of re-tuning after changing to Dshot. I found with the Dshot being smoother I had to set the amount of change to 52% let off instead of the 46% I was running pre Dshot.

 

[LitterBug]

Quick question.. Do you run any TPA at all? That will probably help clear up the slight wobbles at fast runs. The tune you did looks pretty tight on that one so that leaves TPA to fine tweak it out and get that baby perfect.

Thanks PB. Not sure about TPA on this tune. This is a bone stock dRonin autotune which was run before I added the HD camera on top. Going to re-run the autotune at some point with the HD camera on top to see how much difference it makes. Got new Dominator V1 goggles with a bigger picture, so the ground didn't look as close as it would have with my old Transporter V4 goggles. Getting used to having double the resolution and bigger image took me about 3 packs before I quit smakin the ground. LOL Bent about 4 props yesterday "playing" with my new gear.

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[jhitesma]

dRonin uses "motor curve fit" instead of TPA. TPA is kind of an ugly hack because it's linear while motor response is non-linear. Motor curve fit by comparison is also non-linear and allows the FC to match the motor response better. The default is 0.9 which is a very minor correction to err on the side of caution. Since it's a exponential function small changes can make a big difference. 0.8 or 0.75 are usually suggested for setups where TPA would traditionally be called for to help with high speed wobbles. Much lower than 0.75 and things are likely to get worse rather than better.

TPA pretty much says once you hit this point in throttle turn the PID gain's down by this much.

motor curve fit says the motor response curve is "this" shape, adjust PID's dynamically to match that curve. The value sets the "shape" of the curve.

 

[LitterBug]

Thanks for the explanation @jhitesma. I'll keep that in mind for later tuning. Was mostly flying around at half throttle on the packs I flew yesterday so TPA would not have been much use even if it did use it. @PB, Most of the wiggling was my old body shaking. Just ordered another mPV/RE1 to throw in my Falcon130 frame. Been holding off finishing that build till what turned out to be gyro and OSD VSync issues were worked out on the other RE1. Was almost ready to go DTFc, but after getting the AWK210 sorted and seeing how well the RE1 and dRonin can fly, decided to give it another go on a micro build.

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[PsyBorg]

Cool Thanks from me as well for that explanation. I have only ever used clean flight and KISS both of which use TPA. 'Im used to how it works and can get a respectable fix using it for the most part. Not perfect but for my skills and lack of socialization with other pilots its not needed to be so far.

I have my TPA curve starting at 40-45% throttle up to mid 60's for one change and a harder change from there to 90% throttle which now that I am actually hitting full throttle needs yet another tweaking next time I am in software. Kinda wish there was a usable four point curve not just two.

Still it is cool you have made progress and even better you are documenting it AND showing what the changes are each step LB. Its rare I hit the ground but its a doozy when I do. Most times I clip the gate or recently I have been getting a fail safe every once in a while I can not seem to track down. I know when it happens as it gracefully rolls over to the right as throttle spins down and usually lands on its head. I am still working on my first aomway antenna though after at least thirty or more gate strikes and ten or more fail safes and not completing maneuvers fast enough and landing upside down.

P.S. I get them adrenaline shakes too!! Gotta love em its the best part of flying.

 

[LitterBug]

Playing around with Artifice on the AWK210 BrainFPV RE1 (currently my best flyer)

Frame: STRIX Awk210
FC/OSD: BrainFPV RE1
PDB: BrainFPV mPB
Firmware: dRonin Artifice
Camera: Strix OCHI 650 with GoPro style lens
VTX: TBS Unify Pro V2 5v
Antenna: Omnivision 3lobe RHCP
ESCs: DYS XS30A
Motors: Edge Racing Lite R2205 2480kv
Props: Strix Talon 5x4x3
RX: LemonRX LM0037 Diversity satellite
Battery: Puffy McPuffsalot

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[LitterBug]

Built another AWK210 with RunCam Split

Love this frame so much, figured I would build another. Picked up a RunCam Split for the Camera/HD camera from the Flite Test store so will not need the extra mount on top or have to carry around the extra weight of an HD camera. It all fits nice and tidy with all the stock mounts.

Specs
Frame: STRIX Awk210 V2 (thicker main plate)
FC/OSD: AirDTF Seppuku running dRonin Neat firmware
PDB: BrainFPV mPB V2
Camera: Runcam Split
VTX: RMRC Cricket 200ma V2
Vantenna: Menace RHCP pagoda
ESCs: Spedix IS30A
Motors: Edge Racing Lite R2205 2480kv
Props: Strix Talon 5x4.5x3 (not pictured)
RX: LemonRX LM0037 Diversity satellite





Needed to 3D print a camera adapter for the runcam to work with the RMRC camera mount. Found this one by ProjectBlueFalcon.

95% done. Just need to Calibrate ESCs, attach RX and Props, then wait on the weather to dry out.
Cheers!
LitterBug

EDIT: The PDB is configured via a solder tab as a dual 5v supply, so the FC has it's own 5V source, and the power hungry RunCam Split has it's own 5v feed. Make sure if you run a Split, your 5V source is robust!

 

[PsyBorg]

AWWWK!!! Hallelujah!!!! or E OR E OH!!!

No isolation on the FC? You are not practicing safe quad mate.. no rubber.. Just sayin.

That bad boy ought to rip nicely. Have you tried the spedix ESc's before? Them things are impressively well designed and built. The even feel rock solid just holding them. I love mine but man are they heavy lil beasties.