We built a FPV (First Person View) Race Quadcopter with a weight of 430g for about 310 EURO ($360 US) “all in” (including Flysky I6X radio transmitter, Eachine EV800 FPV goggles and a LiPo charger).
Quadcopter Frame (3D printed)
The “Peon230” is a 3D printed 230 size FPV race quadcopter frame with a weight of 124g for about 10 EURO ($12 US).
Here is a video of the 3D print on the Original Prusa i3 MK3 and the complete build of the frame.
We downloaded and printed the “Peon230” quadcopter frame by Tech2C on thingiverse (see attribution tag on bottom of page) www.thingiverse.com/thing:629338.
We purchased a 1kg spool (~400m) of Prusa Blue EasyABS filament for 22.99 EUR from Prusa Research shop.prusa3d.com.
We used the following parameters in PrusaControl:
Material: Prusa ABS
Quality: Optimal – 0.15mm
Infill: Solid – 70%
Note that less infill will reduce the weight, down to about 100g for the frame.
The 3D print took about 12 hours and required 44m filament (~2.55 EUR).
We purchased and used the following hardware from Amazon:
– 50x M3x10mm countersunk screws for 5 EURO / 12x used for spacers (~1.2 EURO)
– 50x M3x12mm countersunk screws for 5.45 EURO / 8x used for arms (~0.88 EURO)
– 50x M3 Nyloc nuts for 4.05 EURO / 8x used for arms (~0.65 EURO)
– 30x M3x40mm Nylon spacers for 6.07 EURO / 6x used (~1.22 EURO)
– 4x Vibration Balls Dampeners for 3.87 EURO / 3x used (~2.91 EUR)
Electronics
Here is a video of the complete wiring, soldering, assembly, configuration, use of simulator, all the way up to the first flight.
We purchased the following hardware from Banggood (US$ 177 – just the quadcopter):
– Omnibus F4 V2.1 Flight Controller (FC) with Betaflight 3.2 for US$26.00
– Racerstar RS20Ax4 4 in 1 Electronic Speed Control (ESC) with BLHeli_S for US$ 26.99
– 4X Racerstar BR2204 2300KV Brushless Motors for US$ 29.49
– 10 Pairs GEPRC 5040 V2 5 Inch 3 Blade Propeller for $7.39
– 4 PCS 22XX Series Motor Silicone Anti-vibration Pad for US$ 3.59
– RunCam Micro Swift 2 Camera NTSC 2.1mm for US$ 31.99
– Eachine ATX03 Mini Video Transmitter for US$ 17.99
– DC-DC Converter Step Down Module 3A 5V/12V Mini BEC for US$ 2.76
– 3.3V-25V DC-DC LC Filter Power Supply Filter Module for US$2.46
– 11.1V 1100mAh 65C 3S Lipo Battery XT60 Plug for US$ 11.99
– XT60 Female Plug Connector 12AWG 10cm Power Cable for US$ 3.69
– 10 PCS 26cm Eachine Lipo Battery Tie Down Strap for US$ 3.69
– FPV Racer Simulator with Dongle Cable for Flysky Remote Controller for US$9.41
We purchased the following hardware from Amazon:
– Flysky I6X Radio Transmitter with IA10B Radio Receiver (Mode 2: left hand throttle) for 63 Euro
– Eachine EV800 FPV Goggles for 55,99Euro
We purchased the following hardware from Conrad:
– Modellbau-Ladegerät 230 V 3 A VOLTCRAFT V-Charge Eco LiPo 3000 LiPo for 24,99 Euro
We used tinkercad www.tinkercad.com to design a custom pod for the camera.
We used the following configuration for the FlySky i6X:
– System>RX setup>Output mode: PPM, s-bus
– System>RX setup>Failsafe: Throttle stick down, channel3 (throttle), on
– System>Aux switches: SwA: on, SwB: on, VrA: off, VrB: off
– Functions setup>Aux channels: Channel 5 source SwA, Channel 6 Source SwB
We are running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on our PC.
We downloaded and installed BetaFlight Configurator to configure the flight controller.
If “failed to open serial port” do $: sudo chmod 0777 /dev/ttyACM0
We used the following configuration for BetaFlight 3.2:
– Enable Expert Mode
– Configuration: Receiver Mode: PPM Rx Input
– Configuration ESC/Motor Features: Dshot300
– Modes: ARM Add Range: Aux1, 1500 to 2100
– Failsafe: AUX(ARM) Set 2000, Land
– OSD: all off, Main Batt Voltage on, Logo off
To use the BLHeli Configurator under Ubuntu, we downloaded and installed Chrome and then installed the BLHeli Configurator Chrome App to reverse the direction of motors 2 and 3 in the Electronic Speed Control (ESC).
We used the following configuration for BLHeli:
– Read Settings
– ESC 2: G-L-30, 16.5: Reversed > Flash Firmware: Version 16.5 > Flash
– ESC 3: G-L-30, 16.5: Reversed > Flash Firmware: Version 16.5 > Flash
We downloaded and installed FPV FreeRider (free) to first train with a simulator.
Attribution:
