Spitfire76’s Build log of a Speedybee F405wing

[Spitfire76]

Had one of these for awhile so it’s time to put it together. Initially will install Inav and maybe Ardupilot later.

Great intro to this board from Painless360

 

[Spitfire76]

First step was to solder the connectors on to the FC board. I used the upright connectors that come in black, red and yellow. There is also a 4 pin white connector.



Also soldered the battery lead and ESC lead to the PDB.



Note I am using an OPTO ESC as the PDB provides the BEC.

 

[LitterBug]

I have have been flying Ardupilot on a few of the Matek Equivilent for several years. I soldered a few of these SpeedyBee boards up for a friend at the field. They definitely look like a great bang for the buck!

 

[Spitfire76]

I have have been flying Ardupilot on a few of the Matek Equivilent for several years. I soldered a few of these SpeedyBee boards up for a friend at the field. They definitely look like a great bang for the buck!

I paid $39 for this one!

I have been using the FT Aura 5 Lite in most of my planes but they are now $59 and although they are relatively simple to setup don't have all the features of a full blown flight controller.

 

[Foamforce]

Yeah, at this price not even the standard HobbyEagle A3Pro v2 at $30 make much sense. Just ten bucks more for a good flight controller. I also have one of these waiting for install.

One thing I had hoped for was to be able to control complex individually addressed LEDs with this, like a MudLED, but apparently iNav and Betaflight only support up to 32 LEDs. I think they only envisioned using that feature for informational LEDs, rather than decorative night flying LED strips.

 

[LitterBug]

Yeah, at this price not even the standard HobbyEagle A3Pro v2 at $30 make much sense. Just ten bucks more for a good flight controller. I also have one of these waiting for install.

One thing I had hoped for was to be able to control complex individually addressed LEDs with this, like a MudLED, but apparently iNav and Betaflight only support up to 32 LEDs. I think they only envisioned using that feature for informational LEDs, rather than decorative night flying LED strips.

A simple Arduino can do all sorts of fun LED stuff. https://fastled.io/ is a good place to start. You will want all those LEDs on their own BEC anyway so you don't have a brownout....

 

[Foamforce]

A simple Arduino can do all sorts of fun LED stuff. https://fastled.io/ is a good place to start. You will want all those LEDs on their own BEC anyway so you don't have a brownout....

Yeah, I’ve done that, but it’s an extra piece of hardware and expense. Would have been cool if it was built in. They could pull power directly from the 3s battery in that case. However, iNav is all free open source, and I appreciate all their work! Maybe some day I can contribute. At the moment it seems like MudLED is the best option. It’s only a little more than an Arduino, smaller, and has a great UI. Really looks like a cool product.

 

[Spitfire76]

I connected the USB extender board and plugged it into my windows 10 PC and although was able to connect to the FC when I tried to flash the firmware from the configurator it failed. Turned out that I did not have the STM32 Bootloader driver installed. Fortunately the front page of the INAV Configurator has links to drivers.

The USB VCP driver was already installed but I did need to use Zadig to install the Bootloader.

Also I think it would have been wiser to first install the firmware before any soldering to make sure it works.

After flashing the firmware 7.0.1 I choose the "Airplane with a tail" profile and with the boards just powered by the USB I saw that the airframe moved when moving the board so I know that the gyro is working.

At this point I have no RX connected or GPS but I do have an ESC connected to the PDB and plugged into S1 (just ground and signal no 5v)

 

[Spitfire76]

Was able to test the ESC/Motor from the outputs screen.

When I first connected the battery the ESC was making the motor beep which I believe indicates no PWM signal.

I "Enabled motor and servo output" and saved and rebooted (it was needed).

After rebooting the ESC/motor was no longer beeping. I confirmed that the props were removed and was able to use the slider to test the ESC and motor.



I also used this screen to calibrate the ESC by moving the slider to 100% before connecting the battery and after the beeps moved it down.

 

[Spitfire76]

I’ve connected an ELRS receiver to the 4 pin white connector. It’s an RP2 from Radiomaster and came with the Ranger Micro. I did need to change the channel order to TAER in the INAV configurator as that’s the order I’ve been using for the Aura 5 Lite. I no longer need a throttle cut in my TX since there is an arming channel. Configured arming. Checked that the sticks control the right channels. Motor spins up after arming. Connected 4 servos to S3 to S6 and they seem to work.

Next step is to test the phone app and wireless connection as that will be handy at the field.

 

[Spitfire76]

iPhone app works well and is easy to setup. It picks up the default configured BLE wireless connection on the FC.

Now on to GPS. I have 2 existing options

• BN-880 GPS
• FT EZ Remote ID

Although it looks like the BN-880 supports both NMEA-0183 and UBX, NMEA-0183 is the default so it would have to be changed as I don't believe iNav still supports it. To change requires a FTDI adapter and U-Center software, something I that I would need to look into. Also the connector although very similar are not the same size.

• Speedybee connectors are JST-SH 1mm spacing
• BN-880 connector is JST-GH 1.25mm spacing

I believe that the FT EZ could be used with a FC but will have to research how the connection is made.

 

[LitterBug]

This should help with the FT EZID

Connecting EZ ID to Betaflight for GPS Passthrough

Want to get GPS data from the Flite Test EZ ID module into Betaflight? This will show you how!

www.flitetest.com

I have tested it with Ardupilot as well.

 

[Spitfire76]

This should help with the FT EZID

Connecting EZ ID to Betaflight for GPS Passthrough

Want to get GPS data from the Flite Test EZ ID module into Betaflight? This will show you how!

www.flitetest.com

I have tested it with Ardupilot as well.

Thanks that article is great. I would want to make it a connector though so I can move the EZ ID to another plane.

 

[Spitfire76]

Although thanks to @LitterBug I have the information to use the FT EZ ID I do want to see if I can use the BN-880. I have found a FTDI board that I purchased back in 2015 and so just need to know how to connect it. Looks like this could help.

How To Optimize GPS Receiver Settings in U-Center To Get More Satellite Locks - Oscar Liang

In this tutorial I will show you how to optimize GPS configurations to get more satellite locks and faster 3d fix using u-center. It works for BN220 and BN880, BN180 doesn't have flash memory so it won't work.

oscarliang.com

 

[LitterBug]

Not sure why a BN880 wouldn't work.... Then again, I mostly use ardupilot and it configures the GPS for you....

 

[Spitfire76]

Not sure why a BN880 wouldn't work.... Then again, I mostly use ardupilot and it configures the GPS for you....

Its to do with the iNav GPS protocol support, Lee points this out at around 11:00 mins into the video.

INAV no longer supports NMEA-0183 but that's the default set on the BN-880

Data Protocol : NMEA-0183 or UBX, Default NMEA-0183