Most of my flight time was spent on flying FPV, and my LOS (line of sight) skill is terrible. So I decided to build a LOS quadcopter to practice with.
As a LOS trainer, and I expect to crash a lot, I want it to be
- Strong
- Easy to build and fix
- Light weight – so I get a bit more flight time out of it
Parts list
The reason I call it “fully BG” is because I got majority of the parts from Banggood. I am using the spare Cobra motors from an old build, I would probably go for the RS2205 or SE2205 2300KV motor if I was going to buy new motors.
- “No name” Durable 230 Frame
- Littlebee Pro 20A 4in1 ESC
- Cobra 2204 2300KV motors
- Naze32 Rev5
- DAL 5040×3 Propellers
- D4R-II RX
I will talk about the parts that I haven’t used in the past.
Littlebee Pro 20A 4in1 ESC
Get the LB 20A Pro 4in1 ESC from Banggood, and thank them for sending me this ESC for testing.
Not only having 4 ESC’s built into the same board, these Littlebee 20A ESC’s are the pro version, which have the better MCU F396 and allows you to run Multishot and more reliable with high KV motors.
And yes we are concerned with 4 in 1 ESC, burning 1 ESC means ditching all 4 ESC’s. I am not too worried as I haven’t personally burned 1 single Littlebee ESC yet, and with the following advantages I am happy to take the risk:
- onboard 5V power supply for your FC and RX
- good thing being a LOS mini quad, I am not running a FPV setup so I don’t need LC filters or voltage regulators, no need for additional PDB
- better MCU – Silabs F396
- easy installation, no messy wiring
Here are the stock BLHeli settings:
Banggood 230 Durable Mini Quad Frame
This frame has no clear brand, nor seems to be a clone of another frame I have seen. Anyway, I wouldn’t recommend this frame because the design and material is pretty sh*t.
First of all, it claims to be carbon fibre, but I found it to be fibre glass.
The frame itself is a good concept. It’s an X frame, and all the arms are connected for better strength against crashes, it also makes it stiffer.
But quickly I found it’s first design flaw: the main cage wobbles when assembled! My quick fix was putting several layers of tape around the tabs on the main plate, so the cage stops moving.
Second design flaw was the standoffs on the bottom of the frame, they get in the way of the FC mounting holes. My quick fix was to replace the standoffs with zip ties, not ideal but should hole up fine.
The frame is actually designed for FPV, allowing your to somehow mount your FPV camera on the hanger shown below.
Only things that I like about this frame is the cheap price, and it actually allows 6″ propellers. It’s pretty easy to build also and works pretty well for a line of sight mini quad.
Building the LOS Quadcopter
I mounted the ESC first. Make sure you know which way is facing front, and that the outputs of the ESC is in the correct location (e.g. output 1 is at bottom right, output 4 is at top left)
Notice that I put a layer of yellow electrical tape for safety reasons.
Removed all the pre-soldered wires from the ESC’s.
And soldered the motor wires directly to the ESC solder pads. I didn’t care about the order of the wires and motor rotations, I know I can change that in BLHeliSuite later on.
I soldered the ESC signal wires directly to the flight controller.
Here I flashed the ESC’s with the latest BLHeli (14.6) using FC pass through.
Before closing the cage, I soldered the wires for VBAT (monitor battery voltage), and a servo lead on the FC to connect to the RX.
Tidied up the cabling, installed the RX and buzzer.
The quad weights 279g without battery.
6 comments
Hey oscar can you give tips or make how tutorial to fly Los. It’s so hard to fly Los and I’m so terrible at it. Regular orientation is fine but once I do the other orientations I start crashing. And I also don’t know how to turn or fly in circles Los.
In the article you say “do not buy this the frame”. Is there one you would recommend for this Banggood LOS build with all of the other components the same? Thanks.
I am building a similar frame from a better manufacturer, I will upload the build log once i finish.
Nice build Oscar, can’t wait flying LOS with you, hum, one day :)
Have nice flight !
Great article.. The 4 in 1 ESC seems like a neat idea to make a small package. Want to try this now.. Thanks again.
I find it funny that so many people tend to not fly LOS when they have FPV setup. For me LOS is way more rewarding especially when im doing freestyle and stuff :)