Newbie questions. Please help

[Jaden Ham]

So,I really want to get into this hobby, but I am still in the research phase of everything. There a few things that have confused me, and have not been answered anywhere I have seen. I would really appreciate anyone so kind as to answer these questions for me.

How do you know if your quad it's about to run out of battery? When it does, will it drop straight down, or will it start flying really slowly.

Is there any way to track your done of it does fall? I don't want to crash land and but be able to find it.

What is the best camera under $40?
Thanks

 

[Rick M]

So,I really want to get into this hobby, but I am still in the research phase of everything. There a few things that have confused me, and have not been answered anywhere I have seen. I would really appreciate anyone so kind as to answer these questions for me.

How do you know if your quad it's about to run out of battery? When it does, will it drop straight down, or will it start flying really slowly.

Is there any way to track your done of it does fall? I don't want to crash land and but be able to find it.

What is the best camera under $40?
Thanks

Knowing when the battery is about done: On most quads, especially entry-level/toy quads, you won't. Depending on the model, it may gradually settle to the ground, or fall out of the sky. You will get a sense by flying each model what its battery life is going to be, and you'll learn to bring it in close when it's near the end of its battery life. It's less of a problem with toy quads than you would think, because most of them are every durable and stand up to all but the most violent crashes very well.

 

[Squirrel1138]

I'm new too, My Syma x5c lets me know when it's low by flashing it's running light.

 

[Rick M]

I gave kind of a misleading reply to the original poster. If the quad is close to you, most will flash the LED's to let you know the battery is low. If it's far enough away to not see the flashing LED's, most don't give you any signal. If you have some experience with the individual quad you will notice some loss of power as the battery gets low, but someone new to flying would probably not pick up on this.

 

[Ryan63]

I'm also new. I just got back from my first flight of my 250 racer until now I've only flown toy grade quads. I did some research on lipo batteries before my first flight because I want to get the most out of my lipo. Not worried about it just "falling out of the sky" but rather ruining the cells by draining the battery too much. Lipo's are very high maintenance I've discovered. But here's what I came up with: my 3s lipo fully charged is at 12.6 volts. That's 4.2 volts per cell. And my 4s lipo fully charged is 16.8 volts. That's again 4.2 volts per cell. So what I did was read up a lot on a safe voltage to not ruin battery life but get the most flight time as possible. I bought a multi meter off eBay for 2 dollars. I took the multimeter to the field with me while I was flying. I set the timer on my phone for 5min to start. After five minutes I brought the quad in and checked the voltage. Set for 1 more min and flew. And so on with both my 3s and 4s batteries. With the research I did I found that for a 3s lipo you don't want to let it get below 10.5 volts. That was 9 min of flying! And the 4s you don't wanna go below 14 volts. And that was about 10 min of flying. Not ripping up the sky constantly but dipping a fair share of punches and rips. But if you don't have a voltage buzzer on your quad, I would seriously invest in a multi meter. I will continue to use mine so I can get the most out of my Lipo's. And to answer your question will the quad just fall out of the sky when your battery is low? No, you will feel it get sluggish with the response. And if your quad DOES fall out of the sky, chances are your lipo is toast and unsafe to charge back up!

 

[Gyro Doctor]

Do yourself a favor and invest in a battery monitor/beeper for a few bucks.

They will not only let you know when your battery is low and you should land before it gets damaged, ALSO they will continue beeping
long after the battery has become too low (causing the quad to drop some where) and help in finding it

 

[Ryan63]

Do yourself a favor and invest in a battery monitor/beeper for a few bucks.

They will not only let you know when your battery is low and you should land before it gets damaged, ALSO they will continue beeping
long after the battery has become too low (causing the quad to drop some where) and help in finding it

If I were to get a voltage buzzer, where do I hook up at? And how do I set it to the voltage I need it to "buzz" at?

 

[GlassKnees]

Depends on what size battery pack you are using. 2S lipos have two cells, 3S have three cells, etc. You should not go below 3 V. per cell and you should not charge up more than 4.2 V per cell. For my 3S lipos, I set the voltage failsafe to 11.5 V and for 4S I set it to 14.5 V. For my 6S I plan to set it to 21 V.

My flight controller allows me to set a voltage failsafe - when the voltage drops to the specified value, the autopilot takes over and either lands or returns to the launch point, depending on the action I specified. No all controllers have this functionality.

 

[RENOV8R]

If your system doesn't have voltage monitoring, you can get a buzzer like this that plugs into the balance plug of your lipo. It will give you a loud warning when it's time to land. it also shows individual cell voltage so you know your battery is balanced. And it's cheap!
http://www.getfpv.com/1-8s-lipo-battery-voltage-tester-low-voltage-buzzer-alarm.html

 

[Michael Doll]

Just received my new ideafly mars 350 and went out for my maiden launching. Preflight went well, had good satelite coverage and launched..... Bummer... major oscillation and shimmy. Had to bring it down and put it away. Anyone know what causes that?

 

[Jackson]

Well I'll throw in my 2¢. First it's best to actually determine, against a decent meter how acute the gizmo's reading is. You also need to take into consideration normal voltage sag under load when flying.

This is a test of 2 High Drain IMR Li-ions.



These were both 4.2V when the test started. Note the immediate voltage sag under a continuous 10A load. Here's another not continuous load test.



This is 6s on then off. Notice how they bounce back up when not under load.

Why am I showing this? When flying my tricopter (using a 3S pack) I found 3.2V (on the gizmo) worked fine, any higher and I was getting too many sag induced beeps when I punched it. At 3.2V setting, by the time I landed and got to the tri and was able to meter the pack it was never below ~3.6V.