Review: Happymodel Mobeetle 1S Whoop / Toothpick BNF

The Happymodel Mobeetle is probably the smallest BNF toothpick available right now with a 60mm wheelbase. You can also turn it into an ultra-light 65mm Tiny whoop with insane performance to safely fly in the house. It’s a very interesting new concept.

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Where to Buy?

Get the Happymodel Mobeetle from:

• Banggood: https://oscarliang.com/product-z2jn
• RDQ: https://oscarliang.com/product-ea71
• Makerfire: https://oscarliang.com/product-mtaq

The drone came assembled in the tiny whoop frame. There’s a toothpick frame in the box made of carbon fibre and you can move the parts across to turn it into a “toothpick” drone.

It comes with the following accessories and spares:

• 1x 60mm toothpick frame
• 4x Gemfan 1210 31mm propeller
• 1x Mobula6 Canopy
• 2x 1s 300mah Lipo battery
• 1x Prop Removal Tool
• 1x Screwdriver
• spare rubber bands and screws
• battery pad (for toothpick frame)
• stickers

Note that it doesn’t come with a battery charger. If you need a 1S LiPo charger or charging board, here are my recommendations.

You might want to get some spares too:

Tattu 1S 300mAh

• Banggood: https://oscarliang.com/product-f22b
• NBD: https://oscarliang.com/product-8z8o

Nitro Nectar 1S 300mAh

• GetFPV: https://oscarliang.com/product-jcny
• NewBeeDrone: https://oscarliang.com/product-7ih4
• RDQ: https://oscarliang.com/product-qrnp

Gemfan 1210×2 Propellers

• BG: https://oscarliang.com/product-hatc
• GetFPV: https://oscarliang.com/product-cs7a
• RDQ: https://oscarliang.com/product-0r3x
• NBD: https://oscarliang.com/product-uofa

Specs and Features

Specifications:

• FC: Diamond F4 ELRS AIO
  • F411 Processor
  • ICM20689 Gyro
  • Built-in ELRS V2 2.4GHz SPI Receiver
  • 5A BLHeli_S ESC (burst 6A), Firmware O_H_5_REV16_8.HEX
  • Built-in 400mW OpenVTX
• Motor: Happymodel SE0702 23000KV
• FPV Camera: Runcam Nano3 (140° FOV)
• Input Voltage: 1S
• Wheelbase: 65mm (whoop), 60mm (toothpick)
• Whoop Weight: 17.5g, with 1S 300mAh LiPo: 25.2g
• Toothpick Weight: 16.1g, with 1S 300mAh LiPo: 23.8g

Closer Look at the Mobeetle

Weight comparison:

• Mobeetle (Whoop): 17.5g
• Mobeetle (Toothpick): 16.1g
• Mobula6: 20.3g
• Moblite6 (with external ELRS RX): 19.6g

The frame is the same as the Mobula6. The camera angle can be adjusted by using a different mounting hole on the back of the canopy. If you need even finer adjustment, you can switch over to the provided mobula6 canopy. It also provides better protection / robustness against crashes.

The New DiamondF4 ELRS FC is Amazing

The new Happymodel DiamondF4 FC is a brand new design for the Mobeetle, which is truly impressive. It’s in a “diamond” shape with the missing corner which saves weight, but still they manage to cram four 5A ESC, an ELRS receiver and a 400mW VTX in to the same board. For ultimate compactness and light weight, it’s using an enameled copper wire as receiver antenna instead of the usual ceramic tower antenna. VTX antenna is also just a piece of wire.

Note that the ELRS receiver is connected via SPI instead of regular UART, while this is more compact and doesn’t take up a UART, this comes with a downside. By integrating the RX into the FC, the ExpressLRS code needs to be merged into the flight controller firmware, so you need to flash Betaflight in order to update the receiver firmware. But you don’t really need to update receiver firmware that often unless there’s a new feature or bug fix you really want. As long as both of your TX module and RX are on the same major version, they should work fine.

Motors and Props

The motors are SE0702 23000KV brushless motors with unibell (1mm shaft), the props are Gemfan 1210 two-blade propellers with 1mm centre hole.

These 0702 motors are smaller and have round bell instead of the EX0802 thin curved bell used in the Moblite and Mobula.

Switching to Toothpick

When you transfer all the electronics to the toothpick frame (which has a smaller wheelbase of 60mm) and gets rid of the ducts, and it feels absolutely tiny in my hand. It literally takes only 5 mins to do.

Here’s a side by side size comparison with the Mobula6.

Here are some pictures of the Mobeetle in toothpick config.

I have to drill the hole bigger in the back of the canopy to get the standoff through.

To hold the battery in place, I am using the foam sticker and rubber bands provided. However the battery can still get knocked out of the band in a hard crash.

Flying Experience

Whoop Configuration

This is like a more refined version of the Moblite6, with a sturdier and better designed camera mount.

However I found the performance of the Mobeetle to be between the Mobula6 and Moblite6. Although it’s lighter than the Moblite6, it doesn’t quite have the same acceleration/power and not as easy to control, probably due to the smaller motors and two-blade props combo.

I get around 3:30 flight time on a 1S 300mAh battery, similar to the Mobula6, but the Mobeetle definitely feels faster with more agility thanks to the lighter weight and higher KV motors.

However, those motors on my Mobeetle make a rattle noise, changing the props didn’t help so I assume it’s just the quality of the motors, possibly bad bearings. It’s a little noisier than the Mobula6 also.

Apart from that, the PID tune is pretty good out of the box, and it still flies quite smoothly and is easy to control.

Toothpick Config

Removing the ducts (prop guards) and bringing the weight down by over a gram, you can tell the performance improvement straight away. It has a lot more punch and flies well outdoor when it’s calm, but it will still get pushed around by wind because it’s so light and tiny. I get similar flight time outdoor to the whoop configuration indoor, around 3 and a half minutes, probably because I tend to fly a lot faster outside.

It’s fun flying this through small gaps and just cruising around, but it’s not made for freestyle and acro. To be honest I am not particularly impressed by the flight performance. It’s always windy where I live (15+ MPH wind most days), it would be hard to find good weather to fly this outside. Also it lacks power for me, it’s hard to recover from a dive and flip because the tiny motors just don’t have the torque. I would avoid flying the toothpick indoor because it will leave scratches on your wall and TV. Regardless I reckon it would be a fun little quad to show off in a meet up :)

Setup

It doesn’t come with a manual unfortunately. Here’s the original CLI dump.

The FC is loaded with Betaflight 4.3.0 (Jan 6 2022) firmware, the board target is HAMO/CRAZYBEEF4SX1280.

Setup for first flight was easy, I only did the following:

• Bind RX (go to the receiver tab and click “Bind Receiver” button at the bottom, then enter Bind mode in the ExpressLRS Lua script on your radio)
• In the Modes tab, setup switch for arming, angle mode, turtle mode and beeper
• Re-arrange OSD

That’s it.

Is the Mobeetle Better than Mobula6?

I do think the Mobeetle is better than the Mobula6 for the following reasons:

• ExpressLRS support
• 400mW VTX
• Much lighter!
• The possibility of transforming into a toothpick

I still prefer the 0802 motor with triblade props, although that adds some extra weight. The bigger motors has more torque and better control.

But is it the best whoop? For me it’s not. I still find the Mobula7 1S more fun to fly. However, if size is more important to you, then the Mobeetle is definitely worth considering, because it’s absolutely tiny.

Improvements

Mechanical changes:

• Reinforce battery tray with E6000 glue
• Put a piece of foam between fpv cam and FC
• Better with light weight battery e.g. 1S 270mah

PID Tune (sliders):

• Set slider mode to pitch and roll only
• max out yaw P and I (manaully enter 250 in yaw P and I, enter 0 in D and D_max)
• Damping (D gain): 1.75
• Tracking (P and I): 1.75
• Stick Response (Feedforward): 1.3
• Dynamic damping (max D): Zero 0
• Drift Wobble (I gain): 0.45
• Pitch Damping: 0.95
• Pitch Tracking: 0.90
• Master Multiplier: 1.3

PID Settings:

• I-term relax enabled, RPY Axes, Setpoint type, 50 Cutoff
• Turn off Anti Gravity
• Throttle Boost 0
• Voltage Sag Compensation enabled,  80%
• Apply RC Link preset for your radio link packet rate (e.g. ELRS 500Hz)

Filter Settings:

• Turn off Gyro lowpass 2
• Leave Gyro lowpass 1 on
• Dynamic notch max freq set to 750hz
• D-term filter multiplier slider 1.5

Actual Rates

• roll/pitch: 250, 450, 0.25
• yaw: 300, 550, 0.1
• throttle scale 90%

Motor idle set to 8%

Using lower VTX power can give you longer flight time, using 25mW instead of 400mW actually give you almost an extra minute of flight time.