Low Cost FPV With DVR poor pilot with glasses

Racing Quads, Self-builds & FPV
41

Doesn’t have a camera, it’s a LoS quad.

Yes, I use those goggles and they are ok. You can upgrade them as well with a better antenna. Battery life is about 2 hours if you are running the DVR a lot and 4 if you aren’t. With some messing you can also get a set of reading glasses into them.

So the radio side of it is subjective, but for me personally I would say get something cheap and basic, to start with, so I have a Radiomaster T8 Lite which cost me £30 new. it’s a D8 radio, so real basic, but it works ok. Yes it’s not the same quality as my Jumper T-Pro, but it still works ok and I use it mainly for Liftoff and flying the handful of D8 quads I own.

So if you got that, then you need a D8 quad. Choices are many. Shortlists should be whoops or toothpicks. So Crux3, Mobula7, Meteor75, Meteor85, ideally if you can afford one, get a 2S as it will be better for flying outside with a chunk more power.

The CineFlea is also a nice quad, but in it’s cinewhoop form, it’s really a 3S only quad and 3S Lipos are not cheap (about £22 for 3x 550mAh CNHL Lipos at YourFPV). If you were do like I did or @DaveJaVu did and take it otu on to a lighter frame, then yes it becomes quite flyable at 2S and somewhat overpowered at 3S.

Aside for that (and assuming you could afford it), Sub250’s Nanofly could be a good option.

What is your absolute, top budget?

Bear in mind a full setup including batteries is going to be about £250. Assuming you can find all the bits. Right now there are no cheap radios available at the big 3 fpv stores (UMT, HobbyRC and YourFPV).

So you could go with something like this.

ecommercedns.uk - your DNS is configured correctly - £30 - FrSky D8
Happymodel Crux3 Toothpick (FrSky) | HobbyRC UK - £103.60
BetaFPV VR03 -£65 - Now out of stock at UMT
SkyRC e3 Charger - £13
5x GNB 350mAh 2S 60C LiPo Battery (XT30) | HobbyRC UK - £25

Total £236 (plus some postage which is generally calculated at checkout).

In total when i started last year it cost me about £250 initially for a Meteor85, Jumper T-Pro ELRS, BetaFPV VR02, SkyRC e3 and a bunch of 380mAh Lipos. Since then i have spent probably 3x that, including over £150 just on Lipos. Those five 350mAh Lipos will give you about 10-15 mins in the air tops. If you want more flight time, you will need more batteries. it’s not unusual to find people bringing 30-40 to a bando. it all depends how much flight time you want.

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42

Again very useful, informative responses. People are generous in sharing their knowledge and experience.

Doesn’t have a camera, it’s a LoS quad.

Good spot thank-you!

Yes, I use those goggles and they are ok. You can upgrade them as well
also get a set of reading glasses into them.

Great - I think I can print an adapter to make them a better fit.

Radiomaster T8 Lite which cost me £30 new. it’s a D8 radio, so real
basic, but it works ok. Yes it’s not the same quality as my Jumper

Thanks - I noted it also works with USB simulator. Not bad for £30. If my £10 ebay dummy transmitter does not work I may invest some money as as first step.

So if you got that, then you need a D8 quad. Choices are many.
Shortlists should be whoops or toothpicks. So Crux3, Mobula7,
Meteor75, Meteor85, ideally if you can afford one, get a 2S as it will
be better for flying outside with a chunk more power.

Is 2S referring to the battery/cell size ?
Using LiPo Batteries for FPV Drones: A Beginner's Guide with Top Product Recommendations - Oscar Liang ?

The CineFlea is also a nice quad, but in it’s cinewhoop form, it’s

Aside for that (and assuming you could afford it), Sub250’s Nanofly
could be a good option.

Looks very very nice. I could least print some more parts for it - and even prop guards ?

What is your absolute, top budget?

How long is a piece of string?
I am naturally frugal. But I really like the Nanofly, I like to spend less on the transmitter and more on the quad.

I think the next step is to invest in a transmitter and practice, practice, practice - then think about £350 for the whole kit.

Really appreciate the response - took me a while to respond. As I was cross-referencing all the valuable information.

43

If you were to get a Cine Flea, also buy some other things (to make it awesome).

For Motor Toothpick Flight JMT F4 Fiber AIO FPV TWIGLET BETAFPV 2inch Control | eBay - get the 2.5" frame
BetaFPV Canopy for Micro Camera 2022 - Unmanned Tech UK FPV Shop
HQ Prop Cinewhoop T2.5x2x3 V2S (2CW, 2CCW) - Unmanned Tech UK FPV Shop - get a few packs

The result is this.

1280×1707 396 KB

You basically turn a £90 flying brick (sorry cinewhoop) into something very nippy on 2S and downright insanely fast on 3S. The frames are like £7 each and weigh 6g, so get a few. You will use them either to repair it or build new lightweight quads.

So if budget is not as tight as you originally suggested. Go ELRS. ELRS radio and ELRS quad. Get the Jumper T-Lite 2 or T-Pro as your radio. You won’t regret it. Goggles i would still go with the BetaFPV VR03 or Eachine EV800DM. Fly analogue for a year, then go digital. I am still on analogue and I hate to spend £300 on goggles, not to mention £100 on the vtx. Analogue is fine. :wink: The others will say otherwise, but it depends how rich you are. if money is no object and you can afford to blow money like it’s meaningless, feel free to.

I don’t have a Nanofly, but I do have a Nanofly frame, RCinPower 1002 14000kv motors and a 12A AIO FC, so basically i’m going to build my own 2S Nanofly. They don’t do a 2S version. So i will create my own.

My other suggestion is don’t get too hung up on learning the advanced stuff like tuning and don’t upgrade Betaflight until you know how to fix it if it breaks. Just get out and fly, plus hit the simulator as well. Liftoff Micro Drones will run from fairly low end Nvidia hardware (I run it on a GTX 1050). If you have an old laptop with Intel graphics, Freerider Recharged is a good choice and you will want to get this map pack (made by a guy I talk to from a different site).

The cafe levels are really good for learning a lot of stuff. Just remember this gets you the muscle memory, it’s bugger all like actually flying with wind and environmental stuff to deal with.

44

With respect, I believe this may be a mistake. Your transmitter is likely to get more use than any individual quad (between sim and you’ll more than likely get more quads).
Get the best TX you can for your budget, future you will thank you. For what it’s worth, I’d avoid FrSky too, it’s old hat now and while you can still get bind and fly quads with it, this will be less and less and with a FrSky radio you will either get additional modules or replace it altogether, it will be severely limiting otherwise.
The above is from personal experience, but of course your mileage may vary.

1 Like
45

The thing is ideally you want two radios and two sets of goggles. Plus eventually several quads. I would buy a cheap radio to start with, then buy a better radio. The other thing is if you buy a bunch of kit and then decide you hate flying, the amount of loss you make scales with how much you initially spent. If you buy a TX16, you will never make that money back if you sell it a month later. If you buy a £30 radio, it’s at worst a £30 loss.

I went with a Jumper T-Pro for my first with ELRS. I got it, because it was £57 and I liked the sound of ELRS. I knew bugger all about ELRS and that screwed me over later.

My Radiomaster T8 Lite on the other hand is FrSky D8. No bells or whistles on it. Cost £30. A late I fly that radio more than the Jumper. To bind it, you hold down the power button until it starts flashing, then hit the bind button in BF. It binds. No different versions to worry about, no bind phrases, no constant need to upgrade the software, it just works. If a person is just starting out the last thing they need is faffy software. They need, essentially, Bind’n’Fly. So hold down a button, bind to the quad, go fly. When you can fly and feel the need, then start exploring the more advanced parts of the hobby.

But if you get the Nanofly 16 or 20, you are going to have to get to grips with ELRS. I don’t think they do a D8. The other downside is it uses the ICM20689 or ICM42688 gyro, of which both are a real pile of shit and really susceptible to noise. If you can find a quad that uses BMI270 or MPU6000, they are preferable to ICM-20689 or ICM-42688. TDK seem to suck at making gyros. :stuck_out_tongue:

46

Looks like we’ve got a new FrSky hero. I’ll happily pass on the baton. :rofl: This is absolutely not the experience I (and many others) have had with FrSky. Maybe that’s only the D16 stuff though.

FWIW, your description better matches my experience of TBS Crossfire.

47

To be fair. If i was starting out, I’d get the cheapest kit with recording. That’s how i did.

If you get on with it and really like it, you’ll ‘find’ the money :laughing:

48

Thanks - really interesting.

I got my practice sticks - 6 channel ppm transmitter | eBay I can at sometime make a turn, practice - practice - practice.

You are correct I will find the money if it hits the spot.

The Happymodel Crux3 Toothpick, look good. Easy to repair ?

49

Carlos ( @cst3x6 ) has one, says it’s pretty good.

If you do get one, try and get the 2S version. Their is a 1S version AFAIK. 2S will take you further. Or, maybe the Crux35 (£126 at UMT) as an alternative, but you would be buying into 3-4S.

When you reach that point, maybe consider the UMT Flea. But don’t build it as a Cinewhoop. Put the parts on to a lightweight frame and create a ripper. The difference is an entire magnitude higher in terms of power and handling. Mine runs on 2S really well, still does power loops, Matty flips, rolls, etc. But on 3S it turns into a real monster, throttle punches send you skywards more rapidly and it is really responsive. The video of Selby Colliery I posted should give you an idea and I think that was a 2S 660mAh Lipo, with a 20 mph head wind.

50

The Crux3 is super fun and pretty easy to repair, ESC, VTX and RX are all in FC, camera and motors plug via connectors…
The 1s is quite fun, you’ll learn a lot from it, probably best to swap the bi-blades prop it comes with for a 3016 tri-blade… But as Matt (@PathfinderFPV ) has mentioned, the 2s version is better. I don’t think they have a 2s ELRS version, so you would need to buy the FRSKY one and add a receiver if you’re going with ELRS.
Alternatively, the Bassline, also from Happymodel, is 2s, although smaller props and different setup in terms of motors and frame, but similar to the Crux with its connectors for the motors and camera.

51

Caveats, I am running the HM Crazybee that comes with the Flea, I think v3.1, the one with D8 Diversity. I got told to not use D16 when i got it, so never have. I also haven’t flown more than 100m away, but watching ShogunEmperor’s range test on YT for a Cine8, put it at around 220m before rx was too low. Some guy a couple of weeks back range tested it at 350m. Don’t get me wrong I like my ELRS radio and quads, but this one flies so well in comparison to them (not related to the ELRS).

But when i started out it took three days to get ELRS to bind to my Meteor85 quad. Never touched the radio setup since. Everything runs ELRS 2.5.1 on my gear and it works ok.

But not everything is ELRS.

I bought some junk whoops from UMT’s Bargain Bin that came with D8 rx and the CineFlea had it as well. I originally got the T8 Lite for sim usage. But this isn’t full FrSky either, this isn’t ACCST, this is bog standard D8 without any firmware or configuration. When i bound the Flea to the T8 Lite, I literally held down the power button for 3 seconds on the T8 Lite, then typed in bind_rx in CLI on BF. It beeped a few times, plugged a Lipo in and checked it would arm and that was it. I had been told it was a massive ballache to get them to bind, but it just did it in maybe 5 secs. I was then told it would failsafe if I flew more than 25m away. You’ve seen the videos of me flying farther than 25m. I expect it won’t be the same on every D8 quad. But then whoops are the only thing I got a D8 radio for and you don’t tend to do LR with whoops.

As ever YMMV (and probably will). I RTFM and it worked like it said, plus this radio is dare I say it aimed at the most retarded users. It has no functionality beyond sticks, 4 switches, a power button and usb port. No OpenTX, no way to mangle the software. It just does what it says in the manual. My Jumper on the other hand has a million ways to screw it up by faffing with EdgeTX, it has all the fun of configuring ELRS and it’s many versions. But it is like comparing apples and bananas. :slight_smile:

52

So… 2 things…

  1. On whoops FrSky is easy because it’s SPI.
  2. On whoops ELRS is hard because it’s SPI.

Once you move to external Rxes it goes the other way…

53

As for range. I had a horrid failsafe on my FrSky Whoop on Sunday. Around the side of a building. The WS signal was just fine…

I actually usually run quite low power output when using my ELRS Whoops, but I suspect it would have gone further even then…

54

So far I guess I am mindful of keeping my D8 quads in LoS of the radio. i also have no need for flying far away with these craft.

You know I actually don’t have any issue with SPI ELRS. Yes it’s limited to ELRS 2 on the older models, but that’s it. The new models with serial ELRS are fine. I flash with passthrough, I don’t mess with wi-fi. I also never update them again if they fly ok. I don’t buy into the software update arms race that everyone else seems to subscribe to. If it flies well on what it has on it, I won’t try and break it intentionally.

So yeah please don’t take me as being the D8 messiah or anything. It works for me in the situations I use it for. I don’t use it for anything complicated. I fly in open areas, not around buildings, in LoS to my radio, so the chances of a close range failsafe are very low. If you want to fly around buildings or inside them, then as far as I know, D8 doesn’t have the same (or any as I understand it) penetration as ELRS, Tracer and Crossfire. But if you go into a park and fly your D8 whoop within 100m of yourself in an open area you will probably be fine. Saying that I took my flea around the other side of Matlock Bando when i was down there the other week, without any issue. LQ was not massively bad. But this could be the fact it uses two wire antennae. I don’t know.

55

Not true. Just put bf 4.4 on or newer quicksilver and it’ll be elrs 3.

56

Right, bullet bitten …

Purchased

  • BetaFPV VR03 FPV Goggles w/ DVR (unmannedtechshop)

  • Happymodel Crux3 Toothpick (FrSky) (hobbyrc)

  • SkyRC e3 LiPo (2-3S) Balance Charger (V2) (unmannedtechshop)

  • GNB 350mAh 2S 60C LiPo Battery (XT30) x4 (hobbyrc)

  • To go with my Radiomaster t8 lite.

Next step - big meetup, Looks like I’ll see you on the 10th June.

Cracking advice - thanks all.

2 Likes
57

Sorry, slow to reply.

You’ll enjoy it. Look forward to meeting you.

58

@Yith Have you got a link to the 3d model ?

The BetaFPV VR03 FPV Goggles do not fit over my glass (… or I got a big head :slight_smile: )

59

They were specific to the EV800D… there are loads on thingiverse

eg:

60

Thanks. The BetaFPV VR03 FPV Goggles have interesting shape. Time to fire up FreeCAD and my 3d-printer.