This is a 210mm mini quad gps build running INAV 2.0.0.
It is not built for speed but for cruising and flight time.
AUW of the quad is 681gm which includes a tattu 3300mah 35C 3S lipo, Ublox Neo-m8n GPS with compass and 4 yellow smiley balls as landing gear.
Thrust to weight ratio of this build is 3.8:1
I am getting around 10 minutes of flight time on hovering. Temperature of motors after run 100F~, ESC never get warm, Lipo get slightly warm (95F).
I have also added a 8 led WS2812 strip. Configured them to display GPS, Arm and battery status. It worked really nice. These LED's are very bright and doea not take away much current. I did not use any capacitors.
Also added a Flysky FS-CVT01 voltage module to display lipo voltage on my FS-i6.
UPDATE Dec 2018
Changed props from 5040 4 blade to 5030 2 blade. This helped me increased flihght by almost 2 minutes.
Rebuilt to remove some extra wires and LEDs to get some weight going.
Moved GPS to the rear of quad, so the camera can shoot without obstructions.
Added new Hawkeye Firefly Micro Camera DVR. It does live feed using VTX.
Brought down AUW to 641gm.
Quick Sepcs
Omnibus f4 pro v2
Racerstar BR2205 2300KV Motors
Racerstar RS30A Lite 30A Blheli_S 16.5 BB1 ESCs
Gemfan 5030 2 blade Props.
Eachine VTX03
Hawkeye Firefly Micro HD Camera (FPV as well)
Ublox Neo-m8n GPS with compass
Features include,
Altitude Hold,
Position Hold (3D),
RTH (return to home on fail safe or manual),
Way point navigation (autonomous flight).
Lipo voltage display at FS-i6 Tx using FS-CVT01 voltage module.
GPS lock, Lipo voltage and turn indicator status using a WS2812 LED strip.
Main Challenges Faced,
Powering the flight controller - This flight controller has current sensing feature. I am not using it, So i just connected the PDB vbat to FC vbat. Lipo is connected to PDB.
i2c errors - Initially the compass connected to i2c (sda, scl) was not being detected. So I changed the i2c speed to 200KHZ, which made the compass detected, but during flight time I was seeing lot i2c errors and compass sensor failiures. Work Around connecting 2 4.7KOhm pull-up resistors to SCL and SDA. One end of resistors are connected to 3.3V (I used SBUS port) on FC. This cleared all compass issues.
Position hold not working - When position hold was activtated, instead of quad being stay at the position, it was slowly taking small rounds (toilet bowling). This was due to compass was not correctly setup and configured. Compass should report the same data as any other compass. I used my iphone compass to compare. I also had to change Mag Alignment to cw 270 degree flip.
If all done correctly, in INAV setup tab, the value for "Heading" should be close to any other compass' value. Also when quad is rotated clock wise, the "Heading" value should increase. If it is decreasing, we have to change Mag Alignment setting.
Altitude Hold Accuracy - Altitude Hold works based on barometer chip(bmp280) inside flight controller. Vibraions, light, and turbulence can cause BMP280 provide incorrect values to flight controller and which can cause less accurate altitude hold. I have tried different material to protect the baro from external interferences. I tried sponge, cardboard etc. What worked out well finally was a piece of gluestick with inside carved out. A small piece of black sponge inside the cavity and used that to cover the baro. I have posted some graphs using blackbox of baroAlt(cm) - barometer reported height, navPos(2) - Flight controller instructed height and navTgtPos(2) - height we commanded to do alt hold. As you can see the last graph is looking good.
Hawkeye Firefly Micro Camera DVR Aerial shots from quadcopter
Autonomous flight (way point missions) demonstration
Position Hold in Action
It was windy during first, thats the wobbles. Pos hold and getting quad to exact stand still never worked, it slightly move around in small space of 1 meter. But the whole flight time I could be in pos hold and not touch my Tx at all.
Cheap SQ11 camera mounted on the quad. Horrible jello effect due to incorrect mounting of camera and inexperienced flyer (me)
Helicam shots, after using rubber mounts to clear jello effect
Photos
Part List
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