Archives: General

How to start flying drones?

So there is this cool friend of mine who just got into FPV (First Person View) and he asked me about how to start flying drones like in the video below, without spending a fortune on it. Read on if you want to know how to do it (I am starting over, again, as well in 2021).

Buy yourself a TX and start to fly on your PC

You don’t have to buy batteries, chargers, goggles, antennas, propellers and even a drone to start. Just buy the most popular and versatile transmitter out there and then start flying on your PC. The name of the transmitter is Taranis and it’s made by FrSky. There are two versions of this well known transmitter that are really worth buying, the Taranis 9XD Plus and the Lite version.
You might ask why to start flying on PC, well the answer is pretty simple. What if you don’t like flying in the long run? I met a dude who’s sense of balance went crazy while he was flying with goggles on his head and so he had to puke all the time. You want to avoid spending money on the whole setup before even knowing whether you’ll like your new hobby. If you don’t you’ll save yourself a lot of hustle because you don’t have to sell any other gear beside your TX.
The great thing about the mentioned TX is that you can plug it in into your PC very easily. Then download a free trial of Velocidrone to get a feeling for FPV. Controlling a drone is not an easy task at the beginning but if you master it virtually then you’ll master the real thing as well, plus you won’t crash a physical drone that fast (but you’ll still crash one for sure, that’s part of the hobby :)).

If you want to know how to proceed after flying for hours in Velocidrone just stay tuned for another short article from me.

Airbot OMNIBUS F4 Nano + Ori32 4in1

This is most probably the one and only killer combo for the micro FPV quads out there. The flight controller is not even officially out but I already have it and will start building my beautiful Eclair (yes, I give my drones names) seconds after posting the following pictures of the combo.

So the features for a freaking micro drone will be insane with this setup.

Airbot OMNIBUS F4 Nano V4

  • STM32 F405 MCU
  • MPU6000 gyro connected via SPI
  • Betaflight OSD
  • LC Filter
  • 20x20mm M3 mount holes

Ori32 4in1 25A ESCs

  • 32bit ESC with BLHeli32 (DSHOT1200 available)
  • Supports 2-4S
  • Voltage Output (VBAT)
  • 20x20mm M3 mount holes

Everything I can say now is that the soldering pads on both boards are huge. Every casual solderer should be able to solder wires to them. The build quality of the boards is extremely good, as always for all Airbot products.

Motor Resource Re-Mapping

At first I though one of the ESCs on the Ori32 4in1 board is broken because motor 2 was not spinning at all. It was not so please keep reading.

If using the all-in-one connector to connect the OMNIBUS Nano FC and the Ori32 4in1 ESCs you most probably have to re-map your motors because the last pin of the white connector on the FC is actually motor 6 and not 4. That’s why after connecting you get ESC number 4 connected to motor 6 pin on the FC. Additionally if you rotate the ESC board you have to adjust resources accordingly.

Standoffs

A word of warning about the stand-offs. I had to get the nylon stand-offs down to avoid pushing components like FETs or capacitors off the boards while screwing the stand-off down. Please take a look before using your gorilla strength 😉

Soon

Hall Gimbals

Look at my “modded” Taranis with hall gimbals. Just look at it! 😉

SBUS + Telemetry with OMNIBUS F4

There are some things you have to know before using a FrSky SBUS receiver like the FrSky X4R-SB or FrSky XSR on Airbot’s OMNIBUS flight controllers with F405 MCUs.

Enabling UARTs in Betaflight UI

To enable desired UART ports you may need to take following steps after a putting the newest firmware version onto your board.

  1. Go to the configuration tab and select RX_SERIAL. After this save + reboot. Connect to the board over the same COM port.
  2. Now in the ports tab UART1 (or any other missing UART) should be visible. Select Serial RX for it. Save + Reboot. Reconnect to the board.
  3. Now again, like in step 1, go to the configuration tab and choose RX_SERIAL and SBUS for your receiver. Save + Reboot. Reconnect to the board.

After doing all of the above go to the receiver tab and take a look at stick input from your transmitter.

Telemetry

Since we can’t make use of “set telemetry_inversion = ON” on the OMNIBUS with the F405 MCU, there are 2 options to get telemetry working.

  1. Use external hardware inverter (not so sexy for tight builds).
  2. Solder a wire to your receiver to get inverted signal (see pictures for XSR and X4R-SB).

After soldering the wire connect it to TX pin of UART6 or UART3.

 

TBS Vendetta

…und warum du noch mit dem Kauf des sexy Flitzers vermutlich etwas warten solltest.

Vendetta
Vendetta

Der erste Batch kÀmpft mit den folgenden QualitÀtsproblemen.

  • manchmal unsauber gelötete Motorkabel
  • gerissene Kabelisolierung
  • nicht ganz korrekt eingestellte TBS Zero Zero (kann via Adapter korrigiert werden)
  • LED Abdeckung fĂ€llt bei der Landung ab
  • Plastikteile notgedrungen unsauber gefertigt
  • Schraubmuttern nicht immer sauber gefertigt
  • Schrauben brechen ab
  • Fehlerhafte Arme im Umlauf (werden durch TBS kostenlos getauscht)
  • […]

Andererseits muss man den Flitzer einfach lieben. Der Carbon Rahmen ist wirklich extrem schön und der Racer sieht Hammer aus. Ich bin ĂŒberzeugt, dass TBS bereits dran ist die QualitĂ€tsprobleme zu beheben. Der TBS Support ist ausserordentlich gut und hilft bei den kleinsten Problemen. Ich wĂŒrde also noch etwas warten aber nicht all zu lange!

TBS hat sogar STL Files der Plastikteile veröffentlicht, so dass man sie nach einem Crash selbst ersetzen kann. Welches Unternehmen macht schon so etwas? Damit machen sich die Jungs bei ihren Kunden sehr beliebt.