All I need to say is Lifetime Warranty AGAIN. I know I have said this before.
This is not the lightest from coming in around 123 grams with the hardware and the lightest antenna mount. Armattan finally added 20x20mm mounting holes for the flight controller and for the VTX. There are holes for zip ties as well to mount your gear. It would be nice if Armattan would send hardware to mount the micro cameras. The camera mount fits mini cameras. It would be simple to give spacers and decrease the length of the tube. This would allow for the camera holders to be the width of the micro cameras. With the rooster there was issues with the hardware which Armattan corrected. I received some hardare that was defective (I did not use for my build).
As I was building this quad I was trying to weigh the lightest options to see how much weight I would save. The quad would be about 16 grams less if I were to use the light antenna options and not use the ummagrip. The ummagrip is very tacky and is not the lightest stuff. It will collect dirt too if you get in a crash with it. On the positive side my battery will not move once strapped in. Comparing my Rooster(354 grams) to the Marmotte (362 grams). I was not expecting to be building a heavier quad since the Marmotte frame is 123 grams and the Rooster is 130 grams. I know it is less than 10 grams different and I have added some other items that added weight.
After looking on thingaverse for a camera mount I was able to find a few options but most of those were a camera cage. I then designed a mount similar to the mount I created for the rooster.
I purchased the TBS Unify Pro32 Nano 5G8 which comes with a 20x20mm adapter board that you can solder it to. This allowed me to use the mounting holes behind the FC to attach the VTX. One thing to note as of this build the VTX supports Smart Audio 2.1 and betaflight does not support it yet. I saw a pull request to the betaflight code to fix it so I am hoping it will be fixed soon.
Soldering my gear to my FC was pretty straight forward. The Aikon F4 has a very readable silkscreen plus the FC has pretty good wiring diagram that comes with it. The quick connection cable for 4-in-1 ESCs, works out of the box with the Aikon AK32PIN 4-in-1. I rotated the esc 180 degrees to get the power wires to be on the front of the quad. Remapping the ESC is the key here. I used betaflight to remap the speed controller. Here are the betaflight 4 CLI commands to remap the motor order:
#Default motor mapping
resource MOTOR 1 C06
resource MOTOR 2 C07
resource MOTOR 3 C08
resource MOTOR 4 C09
save
#Rotated 180 degrees
resource MOTOR 1 C09
resource MOTOR 2 C08
resource MOTOR 3 C07
resource MOTOR 4 C06
save
Setting up the runcam racer 2 camera in betaflight is really simple once I realized that by default runcam sends the camera setup to use analog inputs from a camera joystick (one is not even included). I was saved by Joshua Bardwells video on how to set it up.
I tried to use the carbon fiber antenna mount that came with the frame. I was going to use zip ties to to shrink wrap the antennas to but realized there was not a good place to attach them to. The frame arms are pretty thick and the aluminum spacers at the rear of the quad are not very good to connect to. From there I search on thingaverse for antenna mounts did not find anything I liked. I had designed a mount for the rooster and copied the idea for this quad.
Frame |
Marmotte
(91 builds)
Armattanquads.com
|
$114.00 |
Flight Controller |
Aikon F4 Mini 20x20 Flight Controller w/ OSD
Rotorriot.com
|
$28.99 |
ESCs |
Aikon AK32PIN 35A 6S Micro 20x20 4in1 ESC
Rotorriot.com
|
$58.99 |
Motors |
Hypetrain Acro 2207 2450KV Motor
(15 builds)
Rotorriot.com
|
$25.99 |
Propellers |
DAL Cyclone T5249C Tri-Blade 5" Prop 4 Pack - Choose Your Color
Rotorriot.com
|
$2.99 |
FPV Camera |
RunCam Racer 2 ***Choose lens type and color***
(6 builds)
Pyrodrone.com
|
$29.99 |
FPV Transmitter |
TBS Unify Pro32 Nano 5G8 V1.1
(39 builds)
Team-blacksheep.com
|
$29.95 |
Antenna |
Foxeer Lollipop V2 5.8GHz Straight MMCX Antenna 2 Pack - RHCP - Choose Your Color
(8 builds)
Rotorriot.com
|
$19.90 |
Receiver |
Spektrum DSMX Quad Race Serial Receiver with Diversity
Getfpv.com
|
$20.79 |
Batteries |
Thunder Power Adrenaline 4S 100C V2 Battery (14.8V/1300mAh)
w/XT-60 Connector
Amainhobbies.com
|
$34.99 |
Hardware |
SMA Pigtail U.FL Connector for VTXs
Rotorriot.com
|
$2.99 |
Misc Parts |
Ummagrip Battery Pad
(174 builds)
Rotorriot.com
|
$4.99 |
"the VTX supports Smart Audio 2.1 and betaflight does not support it yet."
What are the consequences? I am running BF 4.0 and I am able to control TBS Unify Nano Pro32 through SA.
Nice build! 👍
I am using 4.0.0 from 11/04/18 and could not get it to work at all. I manually configued the vtx with the button UGH!. I have not tried any of the Release Candiates yet the latest one for my board is from 3/4/19. There was a PR that was merged a few months ago. https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight/pull/7461
Are you using the workaround?
https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight/issues/7336
4.0.0 from 11/04/18 can't be a real 4.0. I know I have seen a few boards with 4.0 from last year. I don't know what they are.
I am running a Teenyf4 with the latest 4.0 and it works with a Pro32 without any issues/workarounds. I was a little surprised because I have heard of people having problems using SA 2.1
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how are the Acros on the marmotte?