The Eachine E010 is an affordable Inductrix Clone, with the same mod you can turn it into something similar to a Tiny Whoop, but much cheaper.

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Update: Why spend time building tiny whoop when you can just buy one ready to fly? Here are some of the best Tiny Whoops on the market.

Update (Apr 2018), there is now an FPV ready version, the E013, you don’t have to DIY anymore.

Get your Eachine E010 from Banggood. Here is a list of best Tiny Whoop in the market.

If you already bought this quad, check out my modifications how to improve flight performance.

Eachine E010 Spec

They come in 2 different colours, green and red. The structure feels very solid. Looks almost identical to the Inductrix apart from colour. The transmitter takes 2xAA batteries, and it’s just as tiny as the quadcopter.

Weight:

• AUW: 16.7g without battery
• Canopy 0.9g
• 21.5 with FX797 and mount, without battery

Compared to the Inductrix

• Inductrix AUW: 15.3g without battery
• Inductrix Canopy: 0.2g

The quad comes with a 1S 150mAh 30C LiPo battery. Eachine also makes these batteries for sale separately, however they come with different connectors, and with protection foam which might be a tight fit in this frame.

The battery compartment dimension is about 17.5mm x 8mm x 26mm. But I think we can remove the wall at the end to fit longer batteries.

Basic Operation

To arm, push throttle stick all the way up, and down. Doesn’t matter if you power up the quad first or the TX first.

It’s important to calibrate the accelerometer (ACC)  first. Place the quad on a level surface, throttle down, pitch down, roll left. The LED on the FC will flash and when it stops it indicates the successful calibration.

Then when you take off and hover, you can now trim your pitch/roll stick first otherwise the Eachine E010 will drift when flying.

Acro mode is not what I thought it is. By pressing the top right button it allows you to do a flip or roll, but then will switch back to level mode.

Top Left button is the switch between high rate and low rate.

The Trim button on the throttle stick isn’t for YAW trim, but rather for headless mode and “Return to home”.

Headless mode is basically just reverse your pitch/roll stick control (not using mag sesnor). Return to home basically just sends your quad forward, it won’t really “return it to home”. It will only stop if you move your pitch stick.

How it feels flying LOS

With the crappy TX, it actually flies pretty decent in LOS (line of sight). It’s very punchy and very fun to fly around the house.

But we won’t stop there! Our ultimate goal is to fly FPV with this :)

Tear Down and Installing FPV setup

The Canopy cover is mounted on the frame by only 2 plastic pins on the left and right sides, so that was easy to remove.

Once removed the canopy you will find the FC, and the motors are directly soldered on it.

The only things that are holding the FC in place are 2 little screws (front and tail). FC screw holes (left right): 35.5mm, FC screw holes (front tail): 27.9mm.

Like the Inductrix you can easily replace the motors by pushing them up, with something more powerful like the MMW Dark Edition, or Chaoli Upgrade motors (which I am going to try next).

I soldered 2 header pins on the battery connector pads, to power my FX797 VTX.

Here is the STL File download for the FX797/FX798 mount (VTX+Camera), designed by myself. With the stock motors, I found  the10 degree tilt is more than enough. But I will make a 20 degree version shortly.

VTX I am using here is the FX797.

FPV Flights

Because I only have 1 battery at the moment, and it takes 20 mins to charge, I can’t practice much with it yet. Here is my lousy 3rd flight with it, you can tell I am still not used to the quad especially the small TX.

With stock battery/motors, I get about 2:30 flight time. (3:40 if hovering)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3uFoEqPyGs

Here I am flying with my Taranis and you can tell the difference in control and precision :)

Main Differences between Tiny Whoop

• Eachine E010 is $15, Inductrix Blade RTF is $70
• Both use 6mm motors
• The frame feels very similar in terms of stiffness, the Eachine is slightly less flexible
• The whoop (ducts) sizes are almost identical, height are very similar too
• The inductrix has the FC mount dropped down
• Blades (propellers) look identical
• Motor rotates opposite direction, Eachine rotates inward (traditional, like in Cleanflight), tiny whoop rotates outward
• Motor mount supports (struts) are different, the Eachine using thicker square bars (width 2.3mm) instead of angled thinner struts; might be not so good for efficiency
• Battery connector on the Eachine is mCPX, a very uncommon connector. Not sure why they don’t use the more popular Lossi connectors, or pico on the inductrix. You can probably remove the existing connector on the board and replace it with something you prefer
• It could be a little bit harder to mount your VTX/Camera combo on top of the FC board, as it sticks out about 3/4mm. Also the screws locations are different, so existing Camera mounts for the Tiny might not work. You could probably insert some foam tape underneath, or design a new mount for it
• 3 out of 4 of the FC screw holes actually match the ones on the Inductrix, so replacement FC designed for Tiny Whoop might fit

And here is how you can swap the frame of the Eachine with a Inductrix.

Pros

It’s very affordable, a lot cheaper than the Inductrix. Very fun to fly LOS with this. Self level mode is very stable and responsive.

Cons

Transmitter is really really bad. The sticks are unproportional, I feel like the resolution of sticks are like only 2 steps (either 0% or 100%).It’s really hard to stay anywhere in the middle because of the tight springs. Throttle stick is better as there is no spring forcing it, but when you are flying with FPV setup, the hover point is at 60% throttle, making it very hard to stay level.

It doesn’t fly very nice with the FPV setup, nor fly very accurately, using a bigger TX is a must IMO.

I will possibly swap out the motors too, they are lacking power. I would also get some 200mAh batteries for longer flight time.

Binding another TX

It’s possible to bind the Eachine E010 to another TX. I have heard it works with the Deviation TX. But I have the Taranis, and I will be getting a Goebish TX module to try (can be installed at the TX module bay). I will make another post if that works. We also found this TX module for the Taranis on BG, it can bind many other toy grade quadcopters, but I can’t find the Eachine E010 TX protocol in the list (FQ777-124), maybe someone can flash it with Goebish’s firmware?

Compared to some of my micro quads

It’s absolutely tiny compared to my whoopee. But in terms of power there is not comparison.

The Oskie V1 is a 110mm frame, it still looks significantly bigger than the Eachine (80mm x 80mm from duct to duct)