The Armor 5″ from STP Hobby is a pre-built FPV drone. The electronics is fully protected by plastic “armour” hence the name. Despite the default Betaflight settings, it flies really well thanks to the excellent hardware and build quality.
Update (Nov 2022): There’s a new version – the Armor 5C!
Table of Contents
Where to Buy?
- Banggood: https://oscarliang.com/product-25m8
- AliExpress: https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DEueW2L
Spare props:
LiPo Battery: https://oscarliang.com/product-alyy
It doesn’t come with battery, so make sure to grab some. 6S 1300mAh is a good choice, here are my LiPo battery recommendations. Also get some spare propellers as it only comes with one set (4 props).
Specifications
There are two versions, DJI version and Analog version. I am testing the DJI version in this review.
DJI Digital Version:
- Wheelbase : 215mm
- FC : BLADE F722
- ESC : BLADE 50A SPORT 4in1
- VTX : Caddx Vista (DJI FPV)
- Antenna : RushFPV Cherry
- Motor : RushFPV Reactor Training 2207 1960KV
- FPV Camera : DJI FPV Camera (Stock)
- Weight without battery: 417g
- Weight including 6S 1300mAh: 620g
- Weight including 6S 1300mah and GoPro 7: 742g
Analog Version:
- Wheelbase : 215mm
- FC : BLADE F722
- ESC : BLADE 50A SPORT 4in1
- VTX : RushFPV TANK MINI
- Antenna : RushFPV Cherry
- Motor : RushFPV Reactor Training 2207 1960KV
- Camera : Caddx Ratel 2
- Weight without battery: 392g
For more info about the FC/ESC stack: https://oscarliang.com/rush-blade-fc-stack/
Closer Look at the STP Hobby Armor 5″
The STP Hobby Armor 5″ FPV drone is a bit heavy, comes in at 417g without LiPo and HD camera. But the powerful motor and propeller combo can totally handle that weight without problems.
The electronics are protected by light weight plastic panels from debris and dirt.
They can be removed and opened like a door for repair and inspections.
Between the bottom plates, it has TPU locking mechanism, makes structure more rigid and arm replacement easier (only two bolts required for holding each arm). The carbon fibre arms are 5mm thick.
The frame can be bought separately. It supports both 30x30mm and 20x20mm FC stack, and there is a 20x20mm mounting for VTX in the rear.
It comes with a HD camera mount, compatible with many HD action cameras such as the GoPro.
There are TPU protectors at the tip of each arm, they also act like skids.
Motor wires are nicely protected using plastic tubes, the attention to detail is impressive.
Motors are Reactor 2207 1960KV by RushFPV, propellers are HQ S5 triblades.
The motors have spikes on top of the bell for gripping the props more firmly.
Propellers should be mounted in “props out” configuration (reversed motor rotation). The main benefit of this for a 5″ is to keep the FPV camera lens clean, and less likely to get stuck on a branch or race gate in collisions.
I wish the battery pad on top of the frame could be more sticky, the battery slides back and forth in a crash.
The flight controller stack uses plugs, no soldering involved which is easier for repair and replacing components.
My quad had no radio receiver (it came setup for SBUS from the Vista, but i am not using DJI remote controller), so I had to solder my own. I will be using ExpressLRS, the RX I am using is the BetaFPV Nano. No particular reason to use this RX, just because I have a spare :)
Setup for First Flight
Original CLI dump: https://intofpv.com/t-cli-dump-for-stp-armour-5-bnf-drone
Beware that Betaflight settings are pretty much default values, so you’d have to basically configure it from scratch. Also the GPS is disabled out of the box so if you want to use it for rescue mode you also need to configure it first. For me I am not going to use it so I will just leave it disabled.
Here I will show you how I set up the Armor 5″ for the first flight.
It comes with Betaflight 4.2.9 firmware. The Board target is RUSH/BLADE_F7_HD(STM32F7X2)
First thing first, bind Vista to DJI FPV Goggles.
Then go into Betaflight, under Configuration tab:
- Enable DShot Beacon
- Arming 180 degree
Receiver:
- Bind RX
- Set Channel Map to AETR (default)
- Stick low set to 1010
- RC deadband 2, yaw deadband 2
Modes: Assign switch to arm, angle mode, beeper, turtle mode
OSD
Flight Performance
Even with default settings, it flies really well! No jello or noticeable oscillations whatsoever.
What Could Be Done Better?
This is a drone with excellent hardware, I wish they put in a bit more effort in configuring the software and PID/filter tuning. With that said, the Armor still flies really good out of the box. The easiest thing to gain performance would be enabling bi-directional DShot and RPM filter.
The plastic covers are really cool looking, but they are quite brittle (i broke the front ones when repairing the drone). Would be more practical to use elastic bands like HGLRC.
It would be nice to have a buzzer onboard.