This is a popular frame for good reason. First and foremost, it is beautiful! The build quality and lifetime warranty are definitely factors as well. My chosen components provide a ton of features, including Betaflight OSD with SmartAudio, and FrSky Smartport telemetry to the OSD and my Taranis. The FC and motors are soft-mounted. With all features enabled in Betaflight, including softserial and three flight modes, the CPU sits at 34% utilization. With the accelerometer disabled, it's even lower. I certainly added weight by choosing form over function, but form matters to me. Besides, the weight of the mesh sleeving is negligible. At this time, the RunCam Split 2 is on the horizon, and I will be adding it to this build when it's available. I seriously considered the original Split, but I'm hoping some of its shortcomings will be addressed in the second version.
I painted the frame edges with DecoArt acrylic paints and polyurethane clear coat, using a mixture of burnt orange and metallic copper paints. If I could do it again, I'd mix in a little red paint as well. The cable sleeving is from https://www.cableorganizer.com. If you use it over red wire, it will look brighter than it appears in my build; I used all black wiring where possible.
This build is incredibly stable, responsive, and powerful. Although I fly with 4S batteries, it is capable of utilizing up to 6S. The ESCs are capable of producing these colors with the RGB LEDs: red, blue, green, cyan, yellow, and purple.
Thanks for checking out my build, and happy flying!
Photos
Part List
Frame |
Armattan Chameleon
(3 builds)
Rotorgeeks.com
|
$112.20 |
Flight Controller |
Matek F405 AIO
(63 builds)
Pirofliprc.com
|
$39.99 |
ESCs |
4 x Lumenier BLHeli_32 35A 3-6S DSHOT 1200 ESC w/ LED
(6 builds)
Getfpv.com
|
$71.96 |
Motors |
4 x Armattan Oomph Velvet Edition 2206/2300 KV Motor
(29 builds)
Armattanquads.com
|
$84.00 |
Propellers |
DAL Prop - Cyclone Series T5045C - Orange
(216 builds)
Readymaderc.com
|
$2.99 |
FPV Camera |
RunCam Swift 2 FPV Camera Integrated OSD MIC, 600TVL DC 5-36V WDR NTSC Full Size Cam for FPV Drone and RC Hobbies, Black
(32 builds)
Amazon.com
|
$32.99 |
FPV Transmitter |
TBS Unify Pro 5G8 V2 (SMA)
(154 builds)
Getfpv.com
|
$34.99 |
Antenna |
Pagoda-2 5.8ghz RHCP Antenna
(14 builds)
Armattanquads.com
|
$6.00 |
Receiver |
FrSky - XSR Receiver
(10 builds)
Readymaderc.com
|
$16.49 |
Misc Parts |
Rubber Motor Dampeners (4 pieces)
(2 builds)
Armattanquads.com
|
$2.00 |
Looking good! Did you get the xt60 savee from Armattan? How long was shipping? Just got a Chameleon myself with the Matek F405 AIO. Waiting for the f405. Was it difficult to get smart audio telemetry running? Any problems flashing to Betaflight 3.2 if you did so? Thanks
Thanks! I actually ordered the frame from Rotorgeeks, and it came with the XT60 saver and a few other small accessories. That only took 3 days to ship from Canada to Texas. The motors came directly from Armattan though, and those took two weeks to arrive.
No problems with flashing Betaflight 3.2 to the board, but I did need to install the Zadig 2.3 and STM32 drivers from the F405 AIO website beforehand. If you can't get the firmware to write to the board, make sure you've installed those.
Were you referring to the TBS smart audio, or the smart port telemetry? Both were easy to set up. I believe the only extra thing I had to do for telemetry was invert the RSSI value in Betaflight. The XSR receiver can be made to send a non-inverted signal to a standard UART, but I figured the CPU had enough horsepower to process the inverted softserial connection. If you want to save some CPU usage, and have a receiver that can send non-inverted telemetry, then you can certainly do that with this board. I don't recall having to do anything special for the TBS smart audio. It works great, and is very handy in the field.
Hello, recently purchased the chameleon frame and Matek F405 AIO flight controller. This is my first build and I'm curious to know if you installed the included capacitor.
I ended up not installing it, and have not had any problems so far after around 50-60 flights on this build. Clean video, and no gyro issues. It might depend on your setup, though. If you are powering any components on full battery voltage, or if your ESCs or motors are known to be noisy/spikey, then you might want to use it.
Also, I really couldn't find a decent spot for it. I thought about mounting it parallel to the flexible XT60 saver, but worried that it'd get broken off in a battery-ejecting crash.
How do you program the esc leds?
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Did you use the included 12mm m3 screws to mount your fc?