My first drone - Volador flyfish 3"

[Zogtrog]

Hi,
I have started building my first drone a volador flyfish 3". The parts list was based on a list by the youtuber “Sam The Hoarder”. I am not entirely sure what I am doing, so far I have installed the bottom esc and the motors. There are two rubber pads in the frame kit, do I need mount my electronics on these. There are a couple of things I am not sure of.

1 Should I mount the ELRS on the underside of the drone in the yellow tpu holder thingy ?
2 The VTX came with two different aerials - should I have a lollipop mounted on the end of the aerial or will they work as is ?

Voldar fly fish 3" frame kit
SpeedyBee Mini Flight stack F405
SpeedyBee TX800 VTX
Caddx Ratel 2 Camera
ELRS RX24T
T-MOTORS P1604 KV3800
GPS MODULE BZ-181 GPS
Tattu R-Line 850mAh 14.8v 95c XT-60 battery ( 4S )
HQ Durable Prop T3x3x3 Light Red

Peripherals

Bought Eachine analogue goggles
Hota D6 Pro battery charger
LiPo Charging bag

[bmsleight]

@Zogtrog

1 Should I mount the ELRS on the underside of the drone in the yellow tpu holder thingy ?
2 The VTX came with two different aerials - should I have a lollipop mounted on the end of the aerial or will they work as is ?

1 - Yes
2 - Lollipop but it does not matter that much IMHO.

Cant wait for first video.

[Fin24]

Hi,
Do those rubber pads look like the attached image?

These stick onto the top plate of the quad and grip the battery once it is strapped on so it doesn’t slide around. If you find they seem to magically stick really well to the battery then that’s probably what it is!

Then you can just stick it on the quad as per the photo.

Good luck with the build

[Zogtrog]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I connected the flight controller to my PC with the hope of binding the radio and nothing blew up. I have mounted and connected the ELRS module, but I have realised I probably have a mismatch between my PocketMaster Radio which I ordered before my drone, and the ELRS module. The pocket master radio is the CC2500 version rather than the ELRS version. I believe I can plug a module into the back of the controller to make it support ELRS. So I couldn’t bind my drone to the controller. I don’t want to wire anything else up until I have tested everything with the motors running to spare the peripheral electronics, if there is a fault. I don’t know which ELRS module for the Radio Master Pocket I should buy ?

[Steviegeek]

I use this one, RadioMaster RC kit is solid

Radiomaster Ranger Micro 2.4GHz ELRS Module

[Zogtrog]

Cheers Stevie - I ordered the nano variant as my module bay is nano sized according to the box the radio came in.

[Zogtrog]

Progress so far

The radio master nano module is working a treat. I managed to use the speedybee app to program the radio master nano module and the speedybee device itself. I then used the wifi from the transmitter and receiver to use the embed web sites on 10.0.0.1 to configure the ELRS system.

Next I watched some videos about LiPo battery care and the Hota D6 Pro charger and charged a battery up at C2 although my battery pack says it will accept a rate of up to C5. I then discovered the battery connect on the volador was a male xt30 connector and the battery connector was a female xt60. Luckily my smoke stopper has both connectors on it so I was able to proceed with testing. I then ordered a set of male to female xt30 to xt60 adapters from amazon which in the conformation email from amazon the picture of the product had been hidden for modesty purposes, because the AI must have thought it was a naughty item!

I then used betaflight to check the receiver was working and to test the motors. Luckily nothing shorted out and blew up.

I then configured the VTX800 with the EU 5.8Ghz channel data bands file I downloaded off the internet.

I then took out my brand new EACHINE googles and turned them on and I got a picture!

The next thing I did was to install a GPS unit and a buzzer.

Due to space constraints I couldn’t put the GPS unit pointing upwards, but I don’t think it will make too much difference. The GPS appears to be working but I couldn’t get a set of strong signals because of being indoors.

I messed around with the OSD settings and set things up.

So far because the drone in 3" I have struggled to fit the electronics into the frame. The rear aerial caddy is useless because I have been unable to fit any vtx aerial cables through the hole at the back. The hole could have been made bigger or designed slightly differently to allow for this. I might design and 3D print a different one.

I couldn’t use the lollipop aerial I bought in the build because it couldn’t get it to fit in.

The drone weighed in with battery at about 270 grams 21 g over target weight. I think I should be able to get it sub 250g by using a smaller battery at the expense of flight time.

Problems

Motors start making a beeping sound after ten minutes of testing on the bench - why ?

I don’t understand about radio channel etiquette when flying drones in groups, and what the PIT channel is for in beta flight ?
Also I can’t find the setting for ACRO mode in betaflight, but I can find flight mode HORIZON and flight mode angle ?

[Cedric]

@Zogtrog

Motors start making a beeping sound after ten minutes of testing on the bench - why ?

Low battery voltage warning?

@Zogtrog

I don’t understand about radio channel etiquette when flying drones in groups

You need to decide what channel each drone will use before starting flying. Some drones (for example the all in one DJI’s) automatically switch channels and broadcast cross channel - you have to stay clear of them (or not fly at the same time)

@Zogtrog

what the PIT channel is for in beta flight ?

If your FC supports it - it allows to switch on/off your VTX power supply using the (handy if you want to have the battery connected but not overheat the VTX)

@Zogtrog

Also I can’t find the setting for ACRO mode in betaflight, but I can find flight mode HORIZON and flight mode angle ?

ACRO is the default (when HORIZON and ANGLE are both set to off)

[Zogtrog]

GPS MODULE BZ-181 GPS - does not seem to be working very well as I can’t get a GPS fix even when I take the drone outside to the middle of the street. My android phones GPS works using the GPS Test app. I was wondering can I use a GPS antenna with BZ-181 or should I just buy a different module. First of all I had the GPS unit situated behind the camera in the wrong orientation and then I moved it above the VTX800 ( I known this is bad ), in the correct orientation but it didn’t work well when the VTX800 was off and the GPS was being powered through the USB C connection

[Steviegeek]

@Zogtrog

Motors start making a beeping sound after ten minutes of testing on the bench - why ?

This is normal, it’s the ‘beacon’ mode in BLHeli / AM32. It’s to help you find the craft if lost
You can alter the time and volume in the ESC configurator

HTH

[Steviegeek]

In this day and age make sure you have/buy/use an M10 generation unit, soooo much better
In the configurator select Galileo and GPS and GLONASS constellations (don’t both with BeiDo)
Position it as far from your VTX as you can
HTH

[Zogtrog]

Thanks Cedric for the advice.

[Zogtrog]

Thanks again Stevie for the advice. I am finding it more difficult than usual to get the information I need from the internet, especially in text form.

[Zogtrog]

Ok so I think have finished the physical build. I bought a holybro micro GPS to replace the BZ-181 GPS. The holybro micro GPS works really well, but it’s not very mico. I couldn’t find a holder for the GPS unit so I remixed a holder I found on thingiverse and mounted the holybro micro in it after I 3D printed it. The holybro is stuck in with foamy pads and mobile phone screen tape.

I think I need to tune the drone before I fly it. What’s the best way to do that with out flying it ?

[Cedric]

If you have not done so - load the ELRS preset (matching the freq you chose on your radio)

Then search for your frame to see if there is an existing preset for it - if not, just pick the SupaflyFPV preset for your frame size. The default tune of the preset should give you very good result already.

Then go have fun

[Zogtrog]

Cheers Cedric. I downloaded and applied the presets for the SupraflyFPV 3 / 4 inch model. I am going to take my laptop to the north west meet up tommorow so I can get everything checked out. Today I am going to get some SIM time in.

[Zogtrog]

I did my first flight today at the North West meet up. I launched my drone and after 5 seconds the screen went black and I had to disarm the drone to do a crash landing. I couldn’t get the goggles to stay on for more than 20 seconds before they shut down. When I got home I figured out what was wrong with the Eachine EV800D goggles. I put a brand new 128 GB micro ssd card in them this morning with the hope of recording my first ever drone flight.
I found a thread on redit where someone had, had the same problem in that they had inserted a micro SSD card into the goggles greater than 32 GB in size. Having an ssd bigger than 32 Gb in the goggles makes them crash and turn off . I repeated the experiment 5 times to confirm that was the problem. I then replaced the ssd card with an old 32 GB ssd card and the googles started working again and I did a 10 minute test recording out of the window at home.

[PingSpike]

Glad it was a relatively easy fix Jack, but what a bizarre issue to try and track down in the first place

[Kawala]

Lovely build. Enjoyable read.