Codename: purple gecko

This was my first build. Overall, it went great.

I started out with an Armattan Gecko 3" frame. I knew it was going to be tough to squeeze in all the parts I wanted, but from what I could find out online, it should work.

I wanted to try to stick with a purple theme. It was difficult to stay with that, but in the end it turned out good. Purple parts are not always the easiest to find. I wanted the purple camera and antenna from Foxeer, but ended up with a different antenna because the purple was very limited and I could not find anyplace that had one.

I ordered all the parts (well, all the parts I thought I would need) and waited by the mailbox.

When all the parts came in, I thought "Wow! That is a lot of parts".

I would find out later that there were lots of little parts that I didn't think about - more solder, shrink tubing, standoffs, screws, nuts, double stick tape, more shrink tubing, some tools and a magnifying light (the soldering on such a small board was a challenge).

I put part of the frame together and then started figuring out where everything would go. It looked like it would be fine, but the front standoffs would interfer with the VTX (mounted to the top plate), so I had to order some new standoffs - they ended up being just the right height.

There is not a whole lot of information on the Lumenier Micro LUX v3. This was especailly confusing since this was my first build. I wasn't even sure where the battery would connect. After a guess and some help from getfpv, I was on the right track. Of course, looking back now, it only made sense.

I decided to solder the front motors to the bottom of the board. It probably didn't make a differnce but at the time, I thought it would be easier. It worked out pretty good, but I had to think a little bit about what wire would go were because I had to flip the board over with 6 wires attached. Then measure the rear motor wires and cut them (and hope I left enough wire). Solder them up and add the batter lead. It really looked like things were going good now.

Motor test went great - they all run clockwise...

I used the BLHeli suite software to reverse the motors that needed to go counter-clockwise. I had some problems with the software since I am using a Mac. I just happend to have a PC sitting around that I could use. It was eiser to use that than to try a VM or Wine - maybe I will go back to that when I have some time to spare.

Soldering everything else went pretty smoothly. I connected TX6 to the TBS VTX for smart audio. I hooked the s.port of the frsky R-XSR to TX3 (not sure if that is needed). Then I squeezed everything in. I think I am missing something. Oh, yeah, where is that beeper? Still on its way here - must have gotten on the slow boat.

I had to play around with the standoffs for the Foxeer Mix board, but eventually got it set pretty good.

Oh, did I go back and put locktite on the screws that needed it? Maybe.

With everything else all set up and connected, I wanted to check out the video. Well, that didn't work. Why not? Because video in is not the same as video out and for some reason, I had switched the two. Fixed that and all was good.

Time for a test flight.

All went pretty good. This thing is crazy fast (well at least in comparison to the whoops I had been flying). I probably need to do a little tuning or at least some throttle scaling until I get used to it. The throttle is very sensitive.

I went into Betaflight and changed my throttle scaling to 80%. That made it a little easier to fly. I also enabled the buzzer feature on the ESCs. You would be suprised at how easy it is for this drone to dissappear in the leaves.