Been looking for a small quad brushless quad for a while more power than a tiny whoop with proper brushless motors something like 2s power but still small and safe enough I feel happy flying it inside and around people.
There used to be a nice quiet area near the old office where I could get some flight time in but it's now pretty far away and also on the property of another company. So I've been keeping a look out. \
A while back I did get a small brushless quad which came in kit form but so far will not fly and I'm not sure why the rotors spin in the right directions I can feel it shifting air and it's gyros seems to be leveling it correctly but even at full power it just won't fly it just sort of skitters on the ground. So wary of buying another useless kit I was looking at some of the premades that have started popping up. The eachine lizard 95 first caught my eye very favourable reviews looked powerful but seemed a little too powerful a 3s even up to 4s machine.
Then I spotted the Revenger 55 also from eachine which is a tiny little brushless quad with 2s setup and integrated camera beta flight compatible f3 flight controller and with built in prop guards. This seemed ideal and it was also 120 bucks so I ordered one in DSM2/X bind to fly.
A week or so later it arrived in a small box from banggood.com.
It's an absolutely tiny little thing 55mm diagonal and basically fits in the palm of your hand I think it might be smaller than the first brushed quad I got the venerable hubsan x4. It has these micro sized 1102 11500KV brushless motors which use 4 bladed 1535 props (35mm diameter I think) The esc's (unknown amperage but with relatively new features like DSHOT600), flight controller (teeny F3), and receiver module all come in this small stack of boards in the center. Glued to the side of the frame is a small camera and a small 25mW vtx. There is also a buzzer on the back and I think it supports some telemetry for tx's that support it (mine doesn't). It comes fully assembled with BetaFlight 3.1 loaded and configured with a 2s 400mah supposedly 40C battery and a set of spare props some sticky velcro for attaching the battery even some tiny allen keys and screw drivers a fairly good manual and weighs in at 46g without the battery.
I loaded up the configurator and set the thing up did the radio bind then couldn't get the thing to arm remembered the fact my crappy radio is out of range so had to remap the rxranges so it registered idle throttle correctly and then I was off. Keep meaning to get a better radio now there is the newer cheaper tiranis qx7 and things like the turnigy evolution I might look at investing in one but of course that would mean needing all new rx units.
Not flown it much so far was just about getting the hang when the battery ran out. Found it has a lost buzzer mode which is mapped to a channel I forgot to configure so it was bleeping all the time. It slings the battery underneath and that makes it not stand up level very easily which made take off tricky. Once in the air this adds a fair amount of natural stability but it means it could do with some sort of landing gear or launch platform to allow it to get off the ground and out of ground effect from a level. Flys really well and so far seems pretty resilient I had it in angle mode by mistake so was crashing the thing constantly and so far the propguards keep the little blades intact.
It's amazing how far things have come that for a relatively low price I can get this tiny little brushless quad with a lot of power that fits in the palm of my hand and it almost out of the box flyable.
Need to get some more 2s batteries for it but think it's a good little machine for getting some quad time in where ever.
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Had my first small issue with the thing on my second flight the little screws (m2 m1.5 not sure) that hold the props on were working loose or just not tight to begin with. As I was taking off it was making a load of extra noise and not flying well first I thought I'd bent a prop and it was catching or some such but closer examination showed one of the screws had come out and another was working loose. So I found the missing screw (which by some miracle was just on the ground next to it rather than flung off into space (given their tiny size it would be a bastard to find replacements here in the land of non metric everything) I gave them all a good tighten down and then it flew nicely again. Could put some thread locker on the screws but that would make changing props tricky guess I'll just have to make sure to check they stay tight.
That's ace!
I've nearly finished building an Airblade Macaron, which is an 80mm brushless micro. I'm hoping to fly it in the office after hours (the office is well trendy and the building manager is up for it if I do a talk session on quads at some point). I broke the Rx antenna last night (like an idiot). I have spares for the bigger quads but the new connector is smaller so I have to wait for Royal Mail again!
The 55 looks soooo small. You might find that the props are just a bit shit. AndyRC has found that the props supplied are often of a poor design. I've bought Gemfans for the Macaron, mostly because I trust the brand as I started with them on the QAV 250.
Can you take a pic of the camera mount? I'm keen to see how it connects to the frame. Will it take much of the impact?
It's ridiculously small it might even be smaller than the first brushed quad I got.
The camera is on simple a swivel bolt off the frame wrapped in a sort of plastic clamp it's inside the perimeter of the prop guards and has a sort of bar across it that will offer some protection but it could be better. I'll try and remember to take a pic.
I've looked around for props you can get them but they look about the same as the ones it comes with I had a look at gemfan ones but they don't seem to make ones that small.
Here's some better pictures of the camera mount.
Had a few goes with it while waiting for dinner getting the hang of flying it a bit need to practice. The bleeper seems to just go off constantly when flying not sure it that's a misconfigured voltage alarm or some such. I disabled the lost device buzzer as I don't really have a channel for it as my tx is only six channel. Not got the hang of flying it in fpv tends to crash right away at the moment.
Got a 4 pack of 430mah batteries in today once I get those charged I can get a bit more flight time out of this thing. Did some fpv in it still in horizon mode but had more success this time in keeping it flying.
Still bleeps constantly maybe current alarm as it only seems to do it during flight.
I sunk 12 batteries through the Macaron at the weekend, mostly with Naomi watching on and cooing. I've found that in our cluttered house acro mode is almost impossible as the thrust is so great and vorticies so powerful that passing close to any object can give you sudden thrust or sideslip. Secondly, if you so much as bump the tiniest amount, the attitude change is large enough to send you off quite erratically. That's OK if you have the space to recover but not when you're going down a 2ft wide hallway. In angle mode, it's much more fun to fly as it's much more forgiving for the accidents.
So I've wound my neck with "Acro being the proper way to fly" to "Acro being fine where you have room". I could "go faster" with acro but there is definitely a point where my skill level/reactions top out somewhere before that.
Here's the Macaron with its big brothers:
The prop guard is large but I found that I could shoot gaps between the legs of chairs without much problem. I find the sticky-up video antenna more of a problem as I'm not quite there judging height yet.
I left the wiring a lot longer that I would have liked. Being my first micro build, I wasn't 100% sure what I was doing.
That's a neat design with the ring of carbon fiber low weight but still strong protection some of the other designs I've seen end up adding a lot of mass to protect the props or have those quarter circle elements that just protect the corners.
Didn't do much flying over the weekend found the new batteries which are a lot thinner and wider than the one that comes with the revenger don't attach to the bottom very easily. I managed to get one on it and fly for a bit but it detached in flight and then dangled by the power connector.
It has a arrangement of T hooks in the carbon fiber base plate and then a rubber band that holds the battery on (you can see it in the bottom most picture of the thing above). Since the base is quite narrow with the wider battery it pulls the band to the side a lot more and then off the hooks so I need to come up with another means of attaching the battery. It did come with a mini velcro strap but there doesn't seem to be anywhere to thread it that isn't packed with wires or circuitry it's quite a densely arranged machine. I might be able to hot glue that on or some such the batteries are not that heavy so something like that might work.
So far I've not really managed to get comfortable with rate mode as you say inside it's just complete lack of room for that sort of thing I've been using horizon mostly to give a little taste of acro mode with stability control of angle.
Do you sim much atm? I want an upgrade to Freerider. Some chaps are pointing at Liftoff, which is on Steam (and has multiplayer.... Byrn?!)
I'm going to get one of these dongles because the USB plug in the back of the Taranis is annoying. My co-worker got one on Win 10 and it works a treat. https://hobbyking.com/en_us/frsky-protocol-usb-wireless-dongle-for-simul...
Not tried sims I think I got a plane based one back when I was looking at building an rc plane although I switched to a tricopter instead not sure if that sim supported quads tho
I bought LiftOff last night and it's very good - very accurate! My bad habits come out in the same way.
Last night I opened up the Taranis and reduced the stiffness of the sticks. I had found when flying the Macaron that the throttle would suffer from a little stiction seemingly at random. The throttle doesn't use the "return springs" to return to the centre, so it has a "stiffener bar" to keep it in place. I popped a little hobby grease under it. That did help but I felt that the pressure needed was a little too much so I reduced the tension springs just up to the point where they wobble loose (and don't return to the centre properly). I tightened a couple of quarter turns but I think it could probably go further.
I used LiftOff to test where the right stiff-to-loose balance was. That was a much better way than doing it with the quad in the air because the worry about crashing was not there and I could concentrate on how it felt.
My office kindly let us beast around in it. I really liked going at speed down the corridors and flying low. When we fly this Thursday, I'm going to fashion some teeny air gates to aim at. The clear plastic props are strong but quite brittle, managed to snap my first one by getting too close to metal work in the ceiling. The other thing that I don't like is that the all-in-one (AIO) camera and VTX gets so hot it shuts off, so you either have to be flying with airflow or unplug. I don't remember the other AIO VTXs doing that.
For those that might have missed it, here's the footage.
looks fun flying round some hipster office space :D Do you have a dvr to record the footage or are your goggles capable of recording. My cheapo fatsharks lack a dvr I've been thinking about swapping them especially now there are so many alternatives fatshark who don't seem to be innovating much.
I've been thinking of taking my little racer out in the carpark out back of the new office. Even in the day it's mostly empty and if I leave it till going home time ish it's pretty much deserted. Means flying over tarmac so could result in quad shredding.
I really need to get a better transmitter the cheapo oranget6 one is pretty bad (I think it might be dying keeps getting low battery alarm when it's got fresh batteries) but that would probably mean changing protocol from spectrum to either FrSky or Flysky. Swapping out receivers on the bigger quads is pretty easy but less so on the tiny one. Think I can get a replacement receiver board for it but I'll have to see.
Think the battery I got with the revenger and even the ones I got for extras may not be high enough c rating they're all 35C and the reports I've seen suggest the beeping is the low voltage alarm where the current draw of the motors is sufficient to cause the voltage to drop bellow normal levels as they just can't provide enough juice to maintain stable battery voltages. Other people have seen the same thing I guess the little monster is just too demanding on a mediocre battery. It's likely on edge as the thing isn't flipping out or browning out.
Ordered some 80c batteries to see if that helps.
This office is so very hipster. The biggest joy is that the people really do give a shit. That's rare in building management.
My goggs were-mid-range but-relatively-cheapo Fatshark Predator 2 don't do DVR either. They do have a composite out socket though and I use a composite to USB capture card plugged into my work laptop. It's about $30 USD, make sure you get one with TWAIN support else you're restricted to proprietary software for doing the capture. Point of note: the capture software that I needed to use is well pants but that's OK, I use Lightworks to create my YouTube vids and that only puts out 720p on the free version.
I found that concrete/tarmac is hard on props but not too bad on the quad. The Quad I've recently gifted to Byrn (QAV250) has rolled across concrete loads of times and it's a bit beaten up (lost the LEDs) but otherwise is in a strong state.
The ones that come from China unbranded are a bag of lies. They should come with 2 numbers: constant and burst. You really need a 30-60C, the burst only holding out for 5-6 seconds. I use mylipo.de, which are a 30C-60C battery and they're fine. The fucking thing beeps all the time but that's down to my messing with the min-voltage setting in BetaFlight.
If you still enjoy flying, get a FrSky Taranis. Don't fuck about. A Taranis is where it's at. My old radio was OK but updating firmware, getting it to bind etc is such a pain in the buttocks. The tiny XM receivers are superb. I use the XM+ on my TSX200 monstrous death machine and XM on the Macaron. The difference being the number of antennas. The support for Taranis is legion, it's definitely the best bit of kit I've bought.
I've got the bottom of the range fatshark teleporters which are ok the picture once you fuck about with the brightness and contrast can be serviceable but they lack the more modern additions like better resolution IPD adjustment dvr or diversity receiver.
You might want to check out HitFilm which has a free hobby version that will do 1080p (maybe higher I've never tried) it's a pretty well featured editor with lots of neat features including some advanced features like motion match tracking so on. I used it for most of the gta vids I did.
Yeah the Battery that came with the thing is rebranded eachine so no idea what it actually is. The ones I got in addition were venom rc ones which seems an ok brand I'm not sure the burst on those some of the sites list 50c. I ordered some eachine branded 80/160c batteries from china as nowhere local stocks anything above 20c. I looked at getting some more recognized brand like turnigy but they were all sold out or impractical combinations of mah/c rating so we'll see how that goes. Other options were an unknown chinese manufacturer but the eachine ones were on offer.
Yeah I'm considering the taranis the new one that is cheaper than the 9dplus (xq7?) it has all the features as the more expensive unit but is lighter and cheaper still the same opentx frsky protocol. The other option I'm considering is the Turnigy Evolution which has a lot of very favourable reviews uses the newer Flysky protocol (AFHDS 2A). Both would be a big step up from the orangeT6 and both have options for tiny SBUS or IBUS receivers.
got the new higher C batteries in and gave them a go seems to have done the trick as I don't get any voltage alarms when flying now.
I did manage to do this to my arm and break a prop when trying some FPV but such is life. Probably need to find a source of replacement props that fit this tiny thing.
