250 FPV Racer

[camss69]

Sooo.... I've been itching to do a FPV 250 quad.. It will more than likely be strictly for messing around and flying for fun, I probably won't get into racing with it. (I said probably! )There are a ton of RTF available now but I'm wanting to piece one together picking my own components. I've started buying the parts already and kind of started some assembly today. I bought a ZMR 250 frame from readymaderc. I ordered an Overcraft PDB from team-legit RC. It's not here yet I thought it would be here today but according to tracking it won't be here until Saturday. There's a local quad parts shop that I went to yesterday, multirotormania and the guys helped me pick out a flight controller, motors, and props as well as an minimosd board. I figured I'd get the quad up and flying and then go back and add the FPV gear. Would anybody be interested in following along the build if I posted some info here? I'm kind of at a standstill until the PDB board gets here though.

 

[camss69]

I'm running some MRM house brand stuff...

MRM Mini Titan 2204-2300 motors.
MRM MinimOSD
MRM Dragonfly 32 Flight Controller (Naze32)
I'll be running Cleanflight firmware in the FC.

I'm also running some Readymade RC 15Amp ESC's. (should have got 20Amp to be 4s ready). These are running BLHeli firmware with Oneshot and Active Dampening.

These parts are Tiny!! This is also kind of out of the normal for me, I have 3 projects going on at once. I'm going to try to have this flying by the end of next week and then I'll be looking at getting the FPV gear for it.

 

[camss69]

My pics suck, I need to get better lighting... I'll get better ones tomorrow.

 

[camss69]

The Overcraft PDB showed up today, should make for a nice clean setup. Built in LED's in the front and back, on board 5v regulator, OSD support, pretty nice board.

 

[camss69]

I still have this project and have started working on it again. Buuuutttt I was telling a guy at work about these and I got his kids into RC. They built a couple and got them flying so I decided to go the quick route.. I bought a Immersionrc Vortex 250 Pro Ummagawd edition with a set of Fatshark Dominator SE goggles. I figured why not just go all in... the Vortex even if you aren't into quads or FPV or any of it are still a pretty amazing product. The build quality is very impressive and list of features and customizeability... well like it or not, it's the pennical of technology in the RC industry right now. New products and updates to existing products are released almost daily. Don't like the way it flys? Plug your laptop in and adjust until your hearts content. Although the vortex comes with "pro-tunes" which are tunes setup by pro flyers you can just load into your vortex and instantly have yours setup like theirs. The thing flys pretty damn good right out of the box.

Anyway here's a couple pics of my setup, it takes a few flights to get used to FPV but is sure is fun and refreshing to do something different with RC. Interestingly enough, I thought after buying the ready to fly Vortex I wouldn't be interested in finishing my built up quad but now I seem more motivated to finish it.. so back to the front of the line for this project.

 

[2walla]

The zmr is a good first build and should give you plenty of enjoyment-- make sure when you are soldering you have a good iron and some flux does help.. figure out what pins you need and try to only install them to keep it smaller and cleaner. Also some liquid tape from Walmart is good to cover the exposed solder pads..I have gotten away from using the integrated PDB that is the full size of the frame as after a few good crashes I was having traces in the board break and cause issues.. I use the smaller PDB boards now that will fit into a stack with the flight controller. Also good video filter is a must if you go to higher amp setups and start using the features of BLheli such as dampen light..Also recommend using the lemon diversity satellites with the longer antennas over the spectrum ones.. Readymade is a great vendor They were good enough to send our group a set of gates a few months ago! I really didn't think I would like building my own but after 3-4 builds and figuring out BLHeli programming and cleanflight and going out and hitting 100mph on the first flight with no further adjustments needed was a huge rush!

 

[camss69]

I have completed the ZMR 250 and have about 20 flights on it now. I'm 100% in soldering skills so no problem there. I ended up shelving my 12Amp esc's and bought a set of 20Amp DYS with BLheli. It flys great and I'm really impressed with the performance. I'm running Betaflight firmware instead of Cleanflight but the Naze32 Rev6 gyro is really sensitive to vibration. I've used rubber o-rings to mount the FC but still getting what I think is vibration induced oscillations I can't seem to tune out. I have to look up how to set the filter for the gyro (can't remember the specific term) and then see if I can tune it.

I'm also considering picking up the HD3 Fat Shark goggles for Black Friday and selling my SE's.

Overall it's really fun, it's easier to fly than I thought but I'm still working on being able to put it exactly where I want it. It would be nice if I could get the tune close, right now it's tuned well enough to fly it but I'd say it's at about 70% of where it should be.

 

[camss69]

Already thinking about the next build, it will probably be a smaller 180 size frame, no full size PDB.

Multirotormania is local for me, I've been to their shop several times, good guys! Their frames are really nice so the next one will probably come from there.

Also I ended up installing a Hawkeye 200mw VTX in the ZMR and the performance is great! Better than my Vortex actually.

 

[Alex_RC]

I'm flying the Eachine 250 right now but I'm itching to build one myself. About how long from sourcing parts to final product does it take to finish? Any tutorials you would recommend? Thanks.

 

[camss69]

There's quite a few full build tutorial videos over on Flite Test, all the way from basic soldering, to full in-depth racing quad build videos and then videos how to program the flight controller. On your first one it may take you a couple evenings, figuring out which pins you need to solder on the flight controller and what you need to use and don't need took some research. My second one I'm sure I could build in an evening, there's really not a lot to them and once you learn what's out there and what you actually want, putting the thing together is fun and easy.

If you have any specific questions on components I'm pretty well into it now and might be able to save you some time, fire away.