The new BetaFPV Meteor75 1S Tiny Whoop has an ExpressLRS receiver built into the FC. Apart from the improved range, it also has some other improvements. It’s a tiny little fun drone to fly indoor, very sturdy and can take some beating.
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Where to Buy?
- Banggood: https://oscarliang.com/product-sb9o
- BetaFPV: https://oscarliang.com/product-1r1d
Features and Specs
What I have here is the ELRS version. The specs are different if you pick other receiver options.
- FC&ESC: F4 1S 5A FC
- Motors: 0802SE 19500KV Motor
- Props: 40mm 2-Blade Propellers (1.0mm Shaft)
- Camera: C02 Micro Camera
- VTX: M03 VTX (25-350mW)
- Weight excluding battery 24.0g
The included 1S 450mah LiPos weigh 12.5g each.
Closer Look at the Meteor75 ELRS Whoop
The BetaFPV Meteor75 ELRS version has a different setup from the previous Meteor75 V2.
Not only it’s using their brand new F4 1S 5A AIO FC with ELRS RX integrated, it’s also using smaller motors (0802 19500KV) with Gemfan two-blade propellers. This change lowers the current draw as the new FC is only rated at 5A. But since the whole craft is so much lighter (used to be around 29g, but now only 24g), it flies almost just as fast and agile.
They also upgraded the VTX to 350mW (M03). The increase in output power shows noticeable range improvement. Together with the ELRS 2.4GHz RX, this whoop is amazing when it comes to range. There are rooms in my house that would normally give me sketchy video signals because there are multiple walls between me and the quad. However, I barely get any interference in my video with the BetaFPV Meteor75 ELRS whoop.
It’s designed to take a 1S 450mAh LiPo with BT2.0 Connector. The battery bay is a snug fit and the battery stays in place even after crashing.
The FC has ExpressLRS built-in with a ceramic antenna. It’s a compact design, and no more dangling antennas. The FPV camera and VTX are mounted separately inside the strong plastic canopy.
If you are already using ExpressLRS and hate having so many different RF protocols in your fleet, you will definitely enjoy this quad. The setup and binding is super simple and straight forward. You don’t need to mess with firmware update at all, just press the “Bind Receiver” button in Betaflight and you are good to go.
Flight Performance
I am getting about 5 minutes of flight time with the LiPo battery provided, which is excellent in its class. It’s a great indoor drone. You can fly it outside too when it’s calm, but it will get pushed around by the wind.
When it comes to tuning (PID, filter etc), it has the default Betaflight tune. It flies well out of the box, but there’s definitely room to improve. Compared to the NewBeeDrone Acrobee, the BetaFPV Meteor75 is not as smooth, but it still flies well enough to be fun, no jello whatsoever.
You can feel the extra weight compared to a typical 65mm tiny whoops carrying a smaller 1S 300mah LiPo, which makes it slightly harder to manage throttle. But it’s for sure more powerful, faster, and gives you longer flight time.
My main complaint would be the FPV camera. It’s quite noisy in low light. If you fly in LED tracks with little background lighting it can be a struggle. But fly during the day, it’s totally fine.
The other thing would be the fixed camera angle. For someone who’s new to flying a drone, the tilt angle might be a bit too much and it can be hard to slow down. Anyway this can be overcome with practice.
The included battery charger is a really handy tool, it’s can be used as a LiPo voltage checker.
How to Setup
- Bind the quad to your radio (with ExperssLRS TX module in bind mode). You can enter the quad into bind mode by pressing the “Bind Receiver” button in the receiver tab, or enter bind_rx in CLI.
- In “Power” tab, change Min. voltage to 3.0V and voltage warning to 3.3V.
- enable Dshot beacon as it doesn’t have a beeper
- setup modes/OSD to your liking
- I also increased yaw rate to 0.9, but that’s a personal preference
Stock CLI can be found here.
Updating ExpressLRS Firmware
The ExpressLRS SPI receiver firmware is part of the Betaflight firmware, so updating ExpressLRS can be done through updating Betaflight firmware. Configuration can be done in CLI. More info here: https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight/pull/10788
1 comment
is there a way to upgrade the stock elrs firmware to 2.0 with a binding phrase so i can use my jumper t lite