Build: Ultralight 3″ Quad + Naked GoPro = 134g AUW!

by Oscar

I’ve always wanted a micro park flyer that can carry the Naked GoPro, so I converted a 3″ ultralight FPV drone (toothpick). The AUW is only 135g and it hovers at 20% throttle. It’s so quiet people don’t even notice I am flying until the quad is on their face!

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For comparison, the GoPro Hero 8 weighs 117g…

Here’s some footage from the first couple of flights:

A Simple Conversion

The drone I am using is the NamelessRC Powerstick (review). It’s a 3″ quad that runs on 3S LiPo battery, and yet it weighs only 65g! It’s a tiny beast, super quiet with really high power to weight ratio. Just the perfect candidate to carry the Naked GoPro :)

You can get the Powerstick here: https://oscarliang.com/product-k2at

You can use the Eachine Twig for the same conversion too if you have one, but the Powerstick flies a lot smoother out of the box.

The whole setup is so light, even when you crash, it’s not going to do as much damage to the naked GoPro (you can still break it so take it easy). And I feel much more comfortable flying in busy parks because it’s so stealthy and small, you can hardly hear it 50 meters away.

I am not going to say “it flies like a 5-inch”, because it doesn’t. But it certainly has a lot of power and can do the same acro tricks on a 5″.

I will be using the naked GoPro Hero 8 (more info here) for this project because it has Hypersmooth 2.0 stabilization. GoPro 6 would work fine too with Reelsteady. I don’t mean to do anything serious with videos from this quad, so Hypersmooth will do just fine for me, and I can use the stabilized footage straight off the camera.

I wanted to get a bit more range out of this quad so I replaced the original VTX and RX with the HGLRC Zeus Nano VTX and Crossfire Nano RX (with mini Immortal T antenna). These are by no mean necessary, the stock VTX and RX works just fine.

I designed a 3D printed mount for the NamelessRC case (that houses the Naked GoPro 8), and it works extremely well! I shared my design here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4835209

With a 3S 450mAh, i get about 3-4 mins of flight time.

Building From Scratch

I gave my converted Powerstick to a friend, so I am planning to build another, this time from scratch by getting these parts:

The specs are basically the same, and that should be an very easy build :) I will come back and update how this new build goes.

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3 comments

Phil 2nd January 2022 - 9:52 pm

Hey Oscar, HNY! It’s been @8 months since this article. Have you completed the build? If so, how’s the FC holding up? Any issues encountered?

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Deng 29th April 2021 - 10:56 am

Hi Oscar, can you design a 3D printed mount for the BetaFPV v2 case (Naked GoPro 6)? Thanks1

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Deng 28th April 2021 - 2:35 am

Looking forward to the full build log from you. I have been hooked to this ultralight platform since I built the 1S Babytooth by KababFPV. Extremely fun to fly.

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