The AtomRC Seagull FPV Drone Kit comes with everything you need to start flying. It includes the drone, battery, FPV goggles, remote controller and charger. But is it good for beginners and should you get it? Let’s find out.
Table of Contents
Where to Buy?
In the box, it comes with:
- 1x Seagull 3.5″ Cinewhoop FPV Drone
- 1x Cobra Lite FPV Goggles
- 1x Eachine T8 Lite Radio
- 1x Tattu 4S 850mah 45C LiPo Battery
- 1x Charger
The Drone
- Flight Controller: ATOMRC Exceed F405 MINI FC
- ESC: ATOMRC Exceed 30A BLHeli_S 4in1 ESC
- VTX: ATOMRC Exceed 500mW MINI VTX
- Camera: Foxeer Razer Nano (NTSC)
- Motors: ATOMRC 2004 2700KV
- Propeller: Gemfan 90mm Tri-blade (3.5-inch)
- Antenna: RUSH Cherry
- For 4S LiPo
- Weight: 239g (without LiPo), 331g with 4S 850mAh
The tune of the quad is great! It flies very smoothly out of the box, meaning you don’t have to tweak anything and that’s important for beginners.
Being a 3.5″ drone, it’s pretty powerful. You can do freestyle tricks just like a standard 5″ FPV drone. The prop guards and frame are pretty tough and can take some beating, so this can be a good trainer if you are just learning how to fly. This is actually branded as a cinewhoop, which mean as you progress, you can mount your GoPro on this drone and get some cinematic footage with it. (GoPro mount has to be 3D printed by yourself)
One minor complaint though is the lack of buzzer, which would make it easier to find when we crash.
Diversity RX antenna and VTX antenna at the back.
Motors are 2004 2700KV, these combo is quite powerful.
The bottom carbon fibre plate is 2.8mm thick which is pretty strong for a 3.5mm drone.
The FPV Goggles
The included FPV Goggles is the Cobra Lite made by Skyzone. Here’s the specs:
- 4.3-inch 480×272 LCD screen
- 5.8GHz 48ch diversity receiver
- DVR File format: MJPEG
- Support up to 32GB SD Card
I previously reviewed the Skyzone Cobra X FPV Goggles, and I absolutely love it. I do believe it’s one of the best box style FPV goggles right now. The Cobra Lite is the cheaper version of that, with lower specs, but still a very capable goggle. The menu interface is very user friendly, and the screen is crystal clear. The best thing is that it allows me to wear my glasses while using it.
It comes with two linearly polarized antennas. These antennas work fine, but because the drone comes with circularly polarized antenna (CP), I think it would be much better to ship the goggles with the same circular polarized antennas for maximum range and anti multipath interference benefit. You can learn more about CP antennas here.
Anyway you can upgrade these antennas yourself, here’re my recommendations.
The Cobra Lite FPV goggle can be powered by a single 18650 Li-ion cell. It’s not included so you would have to purchase it separately. You can recharge the 18650 via the USB-C connector which is handy. You can also update the goggles firmware through that USB port.
It has DVR (video recording), but it requires a micro SD card which is also not included.
The diversity receiver module is removable.
The Remote Controller
The Eachine/AtomRC T8 Lite radio is manufactured by Radiomaster. It’s a very basic radio and one of most compact radios.
The official specs:
- Frequency: 2.4GHZ
- Supports 8 Channels
- Battery: Built in 3.7v 1000mah
- Charging: Built in USB-C charging
- Range: >1km@ 20dbm
This remote uses Frsky ACCST D8 protocol, so you can actually use this radio to control other drones that support Frsky D8 protocol, or bind the Seagull to other radios that supports this protocol (for example the Radiomaster TX16S or Jumper T16).
The AtomRC T8 Lite is almost the same as the Radiomaster T8 Pro (review) which I reviewed recently. The Lite version has no screen, but apart from that, they are the same when it comes to hardware, build quality and features. You can check out my review if you want to learn more about it.
It runs OpenTX system, but as it doesn’t have a screen, to change settings, you’d have to connect it to your computer (OpenTX Companion).
It doesn’t support the same detachable screen as the Pro version, as it’s missing the necessary pin on the back.
It has a built-in 1000mAh battery, which is rechargeable via the USB-C connector on top.
LiPo Battery and Charger
The AtomRC Seagull RTF kit comes with a Tattu 4S 850mAh LiPo battery (XT30 connector) for the drone, as well as a basic battery charger. To charge the LiPo, you only need to plug in the balance lead, the XT30 does not need to be plugged in.
I get about 5 minutes of flight time from this LiPo, and it’s a very good quality pack to be honest.
The charger is very basic and simple to use, but it only charges your battery one at a time, and it takes almost half an hours to fully charge it. So if you want to get a lot of practice in, this is probably not the best way to go. I’d recommend something like a multi-channel charger, or a more powerful charger with parallel charging board, these enable you to charge multiple batteries at the same time. This way you don’t have to sit around and wait for the battery to be charged.
Anyway, this setup does get the job done if you don’t mind how slow it is.
If you want longer flight time, you can also use bigger batteries such as 4S 1500mAh. But make sure you get one with XT30, or get yourself a XT30 female to XT60 male adapter. With a 4S 1500mAh you will probably get about 8-9 mins flight time.
How to Setup?
I didn’t really have to change anything in Betaflight. I just took it out of the box, charge the LiPo battery and that’s all I needed to do! The drone is already bind to the radio. Of course you do need to read the manual, and get familiar with the switches and how to arm/disarm the drone.
Here’s a backup of the stock CLI dump in case you make a mistake. Board: SKZO/ATOMRCF405(STM32F405), BetaFlight version: 4.1.5
Should You Get It?
This kit is certainly designed for new comers, who don’t own any gear and starting from scratch.
Although all the parts are very basic and cheap, they do get the job done, and they work out of the box and get you in the air within minutes! (Well, you do still need to get a 18650 for the Goggles) No setup and tweaking needed, and the drone flies great too and that’s a big plus especially for beginners.
I always recommend buying all the parts separately, because you will grow out of those cheap gear very quickly and end up spending money again. You can check out my recommendations here. But if you don’t have a large budget and all you can spend is to get an RTF kit, then by all mean get the AtomRC Seagull kit.
You can learn how to fly with it, as it has prop guards and the frame is pretty strong. But you should only fly it outdoor (like in a big park), because the drone is actually quite powerful. Being powerful is a good thing, it means you probably don’t have to upgrade it for quite a while, but it also means it’s more dangerous and intimidating and requires more space when you are practicing. Definitely something to consider.
If you don’t have access to a less busy park, maybe you should consider something smaller and less powerful, like the BetaFPV Cetus Kit. You can fly that in your living room! However it won’t handle wind that well when flying outdoor, and it’s a lot slower than the Seagull for sure.
5 comments
Hello from France.
First of all a huge thank you and respect for your work, you are a gold mine of information for the beginner fpv pilot that I am.
I acquired this Seagull in an RTF pack, exactly the same as the photos in your review (without gps). My only big concern is the video feedback from the mask, which is not clear enough for me to progress, and my glasses do not fit in it.
I bought DJi fpv v2 goggles, on which I mounted an adapter for analog VRX (Digidapter v2 from BDI+ Foxeer Wildfire), it’s just exceptional compared to the cobra lite.
My only concern now is that I can’t figure out if the circular polarized antenna originally fitted to this Seagull, is RHCP or LHCP, so I don’t know which antennas to buy.
I’ve contacted AtomRC support several times, they don’t respond, and I can’t find this information anywhere.
So reading your review more than detailed and serious, I think you might be able to give me this information?
I also read very carefully your article on FPV antennas, it’s a titanic job, so I wouldn’t know which ones to choose in order to have a good video link between the Seagull and the Foxeer Wildfire module, to make flights at a maximum of 1km, in large relatively open spaces without buildings, no aerobatic flight, just cruising or courses with many turns and altitude differences.
I hesitate between patch, pagoda, etc ….
But as long as I do not know the sense of polarization of the antenna of the Seagull, it unfortunately remains in the closet to my greatest sadness.
Once again I thank you for your work which is precious for any Fpv drone enthusiast, I have immense respect for what you do.
Sincerely,
Vincent.
The polarisation isn’t specified, but if we have to guess, it’s 80% chance it’s RHCP, since it’s the more common for analog system.
In theory you should be able to achieve 1km range using the stock antennas from the Seagull goggles (using this calculator to estimate range: https://oscarliang.com/js/fpvrange.html), but using a directional + onmi-directional antenna combo will definitely give you more range.
Merci pour ta réponse,
Effectivement cela fonctionne très bien avec une antenne à polarisation RHCP, j’ai mis une omnidirectionnelle et une patch directionelle, j’ai plus de portée, par contre je n’ai pas une meilleure image qu’avec les antennes bâton du masque Cobra Lite fourni avec le drone.
Maintenant j’ai acheté le modèle sans GPS, et j’aimerais vraiment en ajouter un , mais étant débutant, je sais pas trop si j’en ai les capacités.
J’ai vu que tu avais mis une copie du fichier CLI du modèle avec GPS, est ce que si j’achète le même GPS, si je le branche et l’installe et que je copie la version cli du modèle avec GPS cela peut fonctionner ?
Sinon j’ai peur que ce soit trop compliqué à installer.
Hello from Russia and thanks for the detailed review, I would like to clarify if there is a speaker in the t8 lite radio wizard and is it possible to download notification sounds to a USB flash drive? Someone told me that there is no speaker in this hardware, but why then the SD card slot? … I also wanted to clarify, regarding the connection to the open tx companion, is it necessary to insert the isb cable into the equipment or press something else? thanks for the answer
EVGENII Bonjour, je me permet de répondre à ta question car je me la suis également posée.
Il n’y a pas moyen sur la radio fournie dans le pack combo Seagull de AtomRC, qui n’est ni plus ni moins que la Radiomaster T8 Lite rebadgée AtomRC.
C’est la version très allégée de la T8 pro, elle possède une puce RF CC2500 et donc compatible avec les protocoles FRsky D8 et D16, les potentiomètre sont mécaniques et non-pas à effet Hall comme sur le modèle Pro, quand à la carte SD, je vous déconseille fortement d’en introduire une dans la radio fournie avec le Seagull, car il n’y a pas de lecteur dans le modèle Lite, on pourrait le croire car il y a la fente et le logo SDcard, mais c’est juste parce-que c’est le même boîtier que le modèle pro.
Donc si je ne me trompe, je ne pense pas qu’il soit possible de lui inclure un pack langue comme il est possible de le faire sur la T8 pro.
Perso j’ai remplacé cette radio par une Zorro 4 en 1, et cette T8 lite est branchée à mon PC comme contrôleur de simulateurs.
Bon vol .