Need help with My first Build

[BudManLXXIX]

Guys I really need your help. I just want a drone like the bug 3. I'm not into FPV, it makes me dizzy and I'm not into areal photography. All the information I can find on building DIY drones seems to focus on these two categories. I just like flying around at moderately descent speeds, above the tree lines and possibly doing the occasional flip with the flip button. I just want a safety net where if the unforeseen happens I can flick a switch and activate the GPS to return to home and keep from losing it. I used to do it all the time on my Hubsan X4. It just wasn't fast enough for my tastes. Last time I asked for help with this they had me building a monster that probably could keep up with a jet. And it was stating to add up to over $700. There are just so my options for autopilots flight controllers out the and It's all so confusing. I definitely want at least a 7'' prop build. I like the stability of a larger drone. I even thought about if I could find the right flight controller maybe I could even retrofit it inside a bug 3 and use a 3S battery to offset the added weight, to achieve my goal. Because the carbon fiber frames are so heavy, which makes it where you have to get bigger motors, batteries, ESC's and so on to get the same performance. which is why people usually go for smaller builds. You see where I'm going with this. I fit in this weird category in between a FPV racing/freestyle pilot and a long range photography pilot. I don't even want a camera on my drone, I intent to not let it out of my sight. But that is not working out to well for me. My problem is not crashing just losing it into the wind.

Anyways I'm asking for your help on suggestions. on what parts to get for a bug 3 replica that just has a GPS flight controller just for emergency purposes. I don't need nothing to fancy . Just telemetry data and a RTH function. Don't need any of that follow me and orbit me modes. No FPV or cameras. I just want it to have a little power under the hood, but not a freaking rocket. I will mainly be flying only in horizon mode. But as I get more familiar with fling a DIY drone I may switch to angle mode for small tricks. Because I don't think any DIY FC have a flip option like the bug 3 has with a single tap of a button. I already have a FlySky FS-16 with an extra receiver. So basic I just need to know what a good choice on a cheap but reliable Flight controller with autopilot and GPS module and I guess a telemetry doohickey. Like I said I'm a bit confused on how all this fits together. I do have a few things given to me by my dad that gave up drone piloting that may be useful to me like a PDB-XT60 and a FS-AVT01, which I'm told has something to do with sending telemetry data. I also have 4 working ESC's from an old bug 3 that I could possibly be reuse. I've already spent so much on replacing lost drones that I'm kinda strapped for cash. So I'm trying to keep the cost down to a bear minimal.

But I figure I shouldn't be that hard to build a DIY drone with around the same level of performance as a bug 3 but with GPS RTH added as a safety net. Like I said earlier it would be nice if I could find a PDB, auto pilot Flight controller combo that is small enough to fit inside the bug 3 body, cuz I do like the look of it. And yes I saw the YouTube video where the guy put a bug 2 flight controller into a bug 3 , which I considered doing until I realized the bug 2 it extremely slow compared to the bug 3. Flying my drone around is almost a therapeutic hobby ordered my my doctor to help with my anxiety. But at this rate it's going to make me homeless if I can't solve my run away drone problem. Any suggestion would greatly be appreciated. And thank you for taking the time to read all my ramblings.

Spoiler: No longer relevant.

I've been working on this quad for over 3 months now. I like to try to figure thing out on my own first , but I,m at my wits end here. I had one successful flight when I first got it all together then after a small crash because I forgot to take it out of Acro mode and it immediately flipped and crashed after take off. I really can't see how anyone can fly these thing in acro mode. That take some amazing skill. My hats off to those of you that can. After this small crash witch was literally no more than 2 feet off the ground it would fly no more and the remote was making weird noises. After going over it I found out the flight controller was not getting any poer from the 5v power supply off the PDB. So naturally I assumed the PDB was some how damaged and purchased an exact replacement. After re soldering everything with the new PDB I took it outside to test it and making sure to put it in horizon mode this time I started to hover for a bit and then tried to give it a little throttle strait up and it immediately started flipping out of control and crashed. Here is a video of it doing the flipping thing.

Quad Flipping during Punch test

And then started to do what happened after that last crash and wouldn't fly again. I then figured out this was some sort of safe mode, with I still haven't found any reference on. I did figure out how to trick it out of the safe mode by hooking up a 2s batt and switching back and forth between the 2s and 3s a few time and it would fully power up again. Witch why I temporally wired in a 2s batt connector to it until I can figure out how to fix my problem.



But it would still only allow me to hover, the moment I added a little throttle it would start flipping out of control. I figured I may have messed something up in one of the setting In betaflight when I was trying to figure out how to assign new buttons to switch between modes and different features. So I thought I would start from scratch and try again from the beginning. So I cleared every thing to default settings and just encase re-flashed the firmware and did a full chip erase. Everything went successful or so it said. And I reset up the setting in betaflight to the most basic settings. Here is a video of those setting for you viewing pleasure.

Basic setting for Ibus in betaflight. No switches set yet

But now I ran into a new problem. I noticed it wasn't getting any input from my remote so I looked at my receiver and saw it was not powered on. I tried putting power to it manually and still it would not power on. So some how I fried it or it just broke, who knows. luckily I had an extra one. After binding it and hooking it up to the FC I tried once more to see if I could receive input from my transmitter. when I powered on the quad with the batt all hell broke loose. transmitter started making a buch of noises I never heard before as well as the FC. At this put I told my self I need help. Here is a video of me showing you what its doing with also a little more in depth explanation of what I've done so far. I apologize for all my "huhs", I'm not a very good speaker

Drone freaking out

I Thank you you any help you can provide me. Also if I've left out any info that you may need please let me know. Good day and good flying.

 

[GJH105775]

Do you have any datalogs? Sounds like your BEC voltage might be dropping during punchout (brownouts). You should be sending 5V regulated to anything with a computer in it, with the exception of the ESCs.

 

[GJH105775]

Forgot to mention that it would be good to test your output to the flight controller to make sure you have 5V if you have a multimeter.

 

[BudManLXXIX]

Not sure what you mean by BEC voltage might be dropping during punch out (brownouts). But you were correct about the 5 volts. I tested the 5v out put from the PDB and I read only 1.5 +/- .3 because it was jumping around. Does this mean My PDB is bad?. Because I still have the original one I thought was was bad. That was me testing it on table w/o the transmitter on. But I think you may have been referring to the flipping problem I was happening. And I was having that flipping problem on two separate PDB's. But this just now got me to thinking I would try something. So I just now checked the resistant between the positive and negative on the 5 volt outputs from my PDB has a straight short. Well that's not good. I think we found my current problem with every thing going crazy when I plug in the batt. Tomorrow I will pull out my original PDB and re-solder it all back together and try that. Obviously something is wrong with this PDB, thank for your help. Will let you know how it goes.

 

[BudManLXXIX]

I found the short . It is in my lighting wiring. So I guess I will take all that apart and fix that and go from there. Hopefully the short didn't ruin anything else.

Looks like one of my lights is bad. for now I'm just gona disconnect ALL the lights until I can get some replacements. Still have to put back together and test, but it's past 1am here gona leave the rest for tomorrow. Will let you know how everything goes. The short is probably what fried my reciver too.

This is a cheep DIY build kit I bought to learn from before I get into the more expensive builds. I'm not surprised it has some cheap parts that have some sort of defects. Again thanks for your help GJH105775

 

[RENOV8R]

Sounds like you're on your way to getting your issues worked out, good news! As for the "freaking out" yes this is a fairly new safety feature in Betaflight (I think it was implemented around 3.0) called Anti-Taz, named after the Tazmanian Devil hahah. Prior to this, if there was something wrong with your quad, it would just go crazy until you disarmed it or an ESC burned up. The main causes of this are: Incorrect motor rotation, props on wrong and the #1 cause, improper flight controller orientation. So when you get your quad back up and running and it's still going into anti-taz, check these 3 things

 

[Dugdog47]

Careful I shorted a buzzer and fried an f4 board before, funny though it will still light up with USB power. I've heard there's a way to make it work like that

 

[GJH105775]

I found the short . It is in my lighting wiring. So I guess I will take all that apart and fix that and go from there. Hopefully the short didn't ruin anything else.

Looks like one of my lights is bad. for now I'm just gona disconnect ALL the lights until I can get some replacements. Still have to put back together and test, but it's past 1am here gona leave the rest for tomorrow. Will let you know how everything goes. The short is probably what fried my reciver too.

This is a cheep DIY build kit I bought to learn from before I get into the more expensive builds. I'm not surprised it has some cheap parts that have some sort of defects. Again thanks for your help GJH105775

I'd start from the battery to the PDB and make sure there are no shorts as you add parts. Where was the short exactly? If it was on the PDB, it probably didn't damage anything beyond the PDB's step down. The other parts having problems is likely due to voltage drop.

Wherever the short started is probably the damaged part.

 

[BudManLXXIX]

Well I lost the drone to the woods. It had some sort of wobbling effect going when I tried going forward. By the time I realized this I was already over the woods because of the wind mad it drift over the woods faster then I thought it would. Must have been higher winds about 40 ft above me. Oh well because I will never lose a drone again. I purchased a GPS tracker device that only cost $3 each time I need to use it. No monthly service fee, which most other tracking device do. And it has LED lights on it which I can activate from the App. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QTQ251P/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=AIBA2JO11D968&psc=1

 

[wafflejock]

Well I lost the drone to the woods. It had some sort of wobbling effect going when I tried going forward. By the time I realized this I was already over the woods because of the wind mad it drift over the woods faster then I thought it would. Must have been higher winds about 40 ft above me. Oh well because I will never lose a drone again. I purchased a GPS tracker device that only cost $3 each time I need to use it. No monthly service fee, which most other tracking device do. And it has LED lights on it which I can activate from the App. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QTQ251P/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=AIBA2JO11D968&psc=1

Looks like comes with a SIM card and some free data to test but wonder how much that really ends up costing and if you can easily activate or deactivate the plan so can just turn it on in the case I actually lose a quad. Typically I fly really low and stay in parks so hasn't been an issue yet but would be nice to have if I do any longer range or higher flying (assuming I get away from the city)

 

[BudManLXXIX]

Looks like comes with a SIM card and some free data to test but wonder how much that really ends up costing and if you can easily activate or deactivate the plan so can just turn it on in the case I actually lose a quad. Typically I fly really low and stay in parks so hasn't been an issue yet but would be nice to have if I do any longer range or higher flying (assuming I get away from the city)

That's what it says. If you need it you can buy 10 min of air time for $3. All the other ones I looked at want a month service on 2g/3g service. Cheapest I found was $5 a month, which still is not bad. What sold me was the LED's installed in the one I linked. And the LED's can be remotely activated via App on your phone. Don't know if it supports IOS.

 

[BudManLXXIX]

Looks like comes with a SIM card and some free data to test but wonder how much that really ends up costing and if you can easily activate or deactivate the plan so can just turn it on in the case I actually lose a quad. Typically I fly really low and stay in parks so hasn't been an issue yet but would be nice to have if I do any longer range or higher flying (assuming I get away from the city)

yea well it evidently only has a 100m accuracy. and runs on a 2g network where I get very spotty service. So once again another drone lost. I swear I have become good enough at flying drones that this should be happening to me anymore . But all I takes is that one unforeseen moment and poof it's gone. This time my son called my name and distracted me while the drone was about 200ft right above me and I looked down for a split second. and poof it vanished. It stayed airborne for at least another 3 mins before my transmitter started warning me it was getting a low signal. I just had no idea which direction it was in. For that reason I kept it airborne and kept scanning the sky's hoping to get sight of it till I lost it for good. Tracker was of no use. It couldn't find the signal.

Guys I really need your help. I just want a drone like the bug 3. I'm not into FPV, it makes me dizzy and I'm not into areal photography. All the information I can find on building DIY drones seems to focus on these two categories. I just like flying around at moderately descent speeds, above the tree lines and possibly doing the occasional flip with the flip button. I just want a safety net where if the unforeseen happens I can flick a switch and activate the GPS to return to home and keep from losing it. I used to do it all the time on my Hubsan X4. It just wasn't fast enough for my tastes. Last time I asked for help with this they had me building a monster that probably could keep up with a jet. And it was stating to add up to over $700. There are just so my options for autopilots flight controllers out the and It's all so confusing. I definitely want at least a 7'' prop build. I like the stability of a larger drone. I even thought about if I could find the right flight controller maybe I could even retrofit it inside a bug 3 and use a 3S battery to offset the added weight, to achieve my goal. Because the carbon fiber frames are so heavy, which makes it where you have to get bigger motors, batteries, ESC's and so on to get the same performance. which is why people usually go for smaller builds. You see where I'm going with this. I fit in this weird category in between a FPV racing/freestyle pilot and a long range photography pilot. I don't even want a camera on my drone, I intent to not let it out of my sight. But that is not working out to well for me. My problem is not crashing just losing it into the wind.

Anyways I'm asking for your help on suggestions. on what parts to get for a bug 3 replica that just has a GPS flight controller just for emergency purposes. I don't need nothing to fancy . Just telemetry data and a RTH function. Don't need any of that follow me and orbit me modes. No FPV or cameras. I just want it to have a little power under the hood, but not a freaking rocket. I will mainly be flying only in horizon mode. But as I get more familiar with fling a DIY drone I may switch to angle mode for small tricks. Because I don't think any DIY FC have a flip option like the bug 3 has with a single tap of a button. I already have a FlySky FS-16 with an extra receiver. So basic I just need to know what a good choice on a cheap but reliable Flight controller with autopilot and GPS module and I guess a telemetry doohickey. Like I said I'm a bit confused on how all this fits together. I do have a few things given to me by my dad that gave up drone piloting that may be useful to me like a PDB-XT60 and a FS-AVT01, which I'm told has something to do with sending telemetry data. I also have 4 working ESC's from an old bug 3 that I could possibly be reuse. I've already spent so much on replacing lost drones that I'm kinda strapped for cash. So I'm trying to keep the cost down to a bear minimal.

But I figure I shouldn't be that hard to build a DIY drone with around the same level of performance as a bug 3 but with GPS RTH added as a safety net. Like I said earlier it would be nice if I could find a PDB, auto pilot Flight controller combo that is small enough to fit inside the bug 3 body, cuz I do like the look of it. And yes I saw the YouTube video where the guy put a bug 2 flight controller into a bug 3 , which I considered doing until I realized the bug 2 it extremely slow compared to the bug 3. Flying my drone around is almost a therapeutic hobby ordered my my doctor to help with my anxiety. But at this rate it's going to make me homeless if I can't solve my run away drone problem. Any suggestion would greatly be appreciated. And thank you for taking the time to read all my ramblings.