Multicopter Megathread

[Pyrannha]

I don't see anything glaringly obvious as far as "wrong" with that build. Generally expect all those components to have poor life, take forever to show up and/or be dead on arrival. Banggood is just cheap, in every sense of the word, if your'e in the states I HIGHLY suggest Racedayquads.com they're the best retailer I've ever used and they have pretty comparable pricing on a lot of stuff. Barring that I honeslty suggest paying a few extra bucks to get it off Amazon if it's available and at least be able to return DOA stuff. GetFPV, Heli-Direct and Helination are all also good, as is MyRCMart - thoug hthey are also chinese so shippin gtakes time they have great prices on stuff.

Personally I would spend more money and get better quality stuff so you're not constantly replacing broken things - i personally spent about 150 bucks on replacing and replacing parts for a 25 dollar frame before I bought a hundred dolalr frame and haven't ever broken a part of it. 

Lastly your FC doesn't have telemetry, so you can't get flight data back to your radio from it or run LUA scripts, if that's important to you. 

 

[Legolessed]

On 3/29/2019 at 3:00 PM, Pyrannha said:

I don't see anything glaringly obvious as far as "wrong" with that build. Generally expect all those components to have poor life, take forever to show up and/or be dead on arrival. Banggood is just cheap, in every sense of the word, if your'e in the states I HIGHLY suggest Racedayquads.com they're the best retailer I've ever used and they have pretty comparable pricing on a lot of stuff. Barring that I honeslty suggest paying a few extra bucks to get it off Amazon if it's available and at least be able to return DOA stuff. GetFPV, Heli-Direct and Helination are all also good, as is MyRCMart - thoug hthey are also chinese so shippin gtakes time they have great prices on stuff.

Personally I would spend more money and get better quality stuff so you're not constantly replacing broken things - i personally spent about 150 bucks on replacing and replacing parts for a 25 dollar frame before I bought a hundred dolalr frame and haven't ever broken a part of it. 

Lastly your FC doesn't have telemetry, so you can't get flight data back to your radio from it or run LUA scripts, if that's important to you. 

 

Yeah I have to admit I’m a little perturbed with banggood right now. I paid extra for 8 day shipping and it’s been 3 weeks and my order is still processing. I asked them about it and all they could give me for my wait was a 6% off coupon

[Mr.Meerkat]

Quick question to ya'lls. So, about 6 months ago, I finished building my quadcopter. I'm using betaflight (with a F4 flight controller) and while configuring, I can see the FC sees all TX/RX inputs, gyro & accelerometer works, reads battery voltage correctly ect. However, moving the throttle does absolutely nothing. 

 

Any idea's what it could be? 

[Hackentosher]

36 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Quick question to ya'lls. So, about 6 months ago, I finished building my quadcopter. I'm using betaflight (with a F4 flight controller) and while configuring, I can see the FC sees all TX/RX inputs, gyro & accelerometer works, reads battery voltage correctly ect. However, moving the throttle does absolutely nothing. 

 

Any idea's what it could be? 

Did you arm it? Or are you saying that throttle is unresponsive in the inputs tab in BF? 

[Mr.Meerkat]

1 hour ago, Hackentosher said:

Did you arm it? Or are you saying that throttle is unresponsive in the inputs tab in BF? 

I'm pretty sure I've armed it. The throttle is responsive in the inputs tab. As for whether I've soldered everything correctly or not, I'm pretty sure I have as whenever I plug in the battery, all 4 motors do quickly spin for a split second. 

[KaminKevCrew]

54 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

I'm pretty sure I've armed it. The throttle is responsive in the inputs tab. As for whether I've soldered everything correctly or not, I'm pretty sure I have as whenever I plug in the battery, all 4 motors do quickly spin for a split second. 

The motors should not spin when you plug in the battery. They should make a tone, but not spin.

 

If the throttle is responsive in the input tab then you've soldered the RX correctly. Perhaps you haven't properly soldered the signal wires for the ESC's? Other than that, it could be that your gyro setting is too strict, which will disallow the arming function.

[Mr.Meerkat]

32 minutes ago, KaminKevCrew said:

The motors should not spin when you plug in the battery. They should make a tone, but not spin.

 

If the throttle is responsive in the input tab then you've soldered the RX correctly. Perhaps you haven't properly soldered the signal wires for the ESC's? Other than that, it could be that your gyro setting is too strict, which will disallow the arming function.

Hmm odd. 

 

I'll have a look into that. 

[Hackentosher]

18 hours ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Hmm odd. 

 

I'll have a look into that. 

do you have the correct ESC protocol selected? And do all the bar graphs in the receiver tab work as expected? Have you setup an arm switch on both the radio and in Betaflight? One more thing, I remember Betaflight used to do this thing where it would require the board to be power cycled if you plugged it in to USB before it would arm again, perhaps that is the issue?

[Mr.Meerkat]

16 hours ago, Hackentosher said:

do you have the correct ESC protocol selected? And do all the bar graphs in the receiver tab work as expected? Have you setup an arm switch on both the radio and in Betaflight? One more thing, I remember Betaflight used to do this thing where it would require the board to be power cycled if you plugged it in to USB before it would arm again, perhaps that is the issue?

Yep, they're oneshot ESCs. Anyway, due to personal circumstances, I won't be able to look into it until I'm free on Friday so I'll update yous once I've double checked everything. 

[Hackentosher]

5 hours ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Yep, they're oneshot ESCs. Anyway, due to personal circumstances, I won't be able to look into it until I'm free on Friday so I'll update yous once I've double checked everything. 

Whoops, I meant receiver protocol, but it's always good to double check the esc protocol as well. Keep us posted! 

[Mr.Meerkat]

Right, I've managed to narrow it down to its actually not arming

 

I have a switch for arming however, it is unfortunately not arming when the switch is flicked to on/arm. I can see in Betaflight that multishot is selected for the ESCs (multishot/oneshot ESCs), s-bus selected for radio protocol with UART 3 checked and all channels are working as intended.

 

When I tried throttle arming and using the oneshot protocol, I was actually able to get it to arm and spin all 4 motors with the channels for yaw, roll and pitch so I'm inclined to say that the soldering and whatnot is all good but I'm being stupid and can't seem to set it up in Betaflight. 

[Hackentosher]

53 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Right, I've managed to narrow it down to its actually not arming

 

I have a switch for arming however, it is unfortunately not arming when the switch is flicked to on/arm. I can see in Betaflight that multishot is selected for the ESCs (multishot/oneshot ESCs), s-bus selected for radio protocol with UART 3 checked and all channels are working as intended.

 

When I tried throttle arming and using the oneshot protocol, I was actually able to get it to arm and spin all 4 motors with the channels for yaw, roll and pitch so I'm inclined to say that the soldering and whatnot is all good but I'm being stupid and can't seem to set it up in Betaflight. 

So it sounds like you haven't configured betaflight to arm the quad when you flip the switch. Did you set it up in the modes tab?

[Mr.Meerkat]

3 hours ago, Hackentosher said:

So it sounds like you haven't configured betaflight to arm the quad when you flip the switch. Did you set it up in the modes tab?

Yep. I'll do a little more troubleshooting I guess. 

[Legolessed]

Eoe you guys were very much correct, banggood is not the best I ordered my quad parts on March 17 and it’s April 23 and they are still it here. Apparently 8 day shipping is not 8 days I talked to banggood and they gave me a 6% off coupon but I don’t think I’m going to be ordering from them again. Rip

[Hackentosher]

3 hours ago, Legolessed said:

Eoe you guys were very much correct, banggood is not the best I ordered my quad parts on March 17 and it’s April 23 and they are still it here. Apparently 8 day shipping is not 8 days I talked to banggood and they gave me a 6% off coupon but I don’t think I’m going to be ordering from them again. Rip

Yeah it's not great, but when you need something from them, you really need it. Like little lego bits of electronics, something Amazon wont carry.

[Legolessed]

Quick update:

My parts for my quad came yesterday and I immediately went to building it. This morning I finally was able to test fly it outside and it reminded me how amazing fpv is. The wait for the parts was a while but it is so worth it now that I have the quad assembled. I flew a little in a grassy area nearby and it was amazing. I've lost a lot of my flying rememberence and am going to need to spend some tim tuning it but it was a great success. Sorry I'm just happy. 

 

I was wondering if anyone here named their quads? 

[LittleCarrot]

You guys still fly?

[Legolessed]

1 hour ago, LittleCarrot said:

You guys still fly?

Yup. Do you?

[Hackentosher]

2 hours ago, LittleCarrot said:

You guys still fly?

keep telling myself to... 

 

Buuuut, I am working on a security drone for my university. My lab has a long term project for building this huge security drone, currently working on the floodlight circuit.

[KaminKevCrew]

I haven't had the time at all recently, even though I keep meaning to go fly. 

 

I should really brush up in the simulator though - It's been something like a year since the last time I actually flew.

[LittleCarrot]

i havent flown since i got into mtb. 

[Legolessed]

Ive been pretty much only flying planes to be honest

[LittleCarrot]

Any of you guys still flying?

[Hackentosher]

9 hours ago, LittleCarrot said:

Any of you guys still flying?

On rare occasion. My friend and I both bought EMAX Tinyhawk II Freestyles and the lil bastards are a hoot! They handle like a 5", but weigh less than 100g. Wonderful little $100 purchase. Haven't gotten out in a while because of midterms and now girlfriend, but it's cooling off in AZ and classes are calming down a smidge, so we might get out and fly this weekend.

[ColinLTT]

10 hours ago, LittleCarrot said:

Any of you guys still flying?

Sure am. All the time. Just built a new Yeetmule - its stinkin fast.