Syma X8 upgrades to brushless motors.

Chuck

Chuck

Well-Known Member
I've been looking at the YouTube videos demonstrating various conversions of Syma X8C, G, and/or W quads to brushless motors. Some appear to be pretty successful, a couple marginal, where the pilot has difficulty maintaining altitude control being the common side effect. But none mention how long they are able to keep them airborne compared to with the original or replacement brushed motors, which had a maximum flight time of about 10 minutes. I'm curious, as that is a modification that I would be tempted to try myself, but not if there is no significant increase in performance to justify the cost of parts and labor to do the conversion. Can they run on the original 7.4 lipo batteries, or do they also have to be upgraded to 11v batteries? Presuming the control range to remain the same with the original controller and flight control board, , is there an improvement in manuerability, control, speed, a payload increase?
 
Well. I don't see any replies to your post so I will give you my experience with what I did. I did the brushless upgrade from the kit you can buy from the Syma store. It doesn't work as advertised for me. You are supposed to have 3 speeds that are selected by toggling the cam/video switch. Didn't work for me with the camera installed or not installed. Still have only 2 speeds that are selected by the regular speed select button. And, they are not near as powerful as the brushed motors. I have no problem lifting an action cam with my brushed motors in any speed but with the brushless motors it won't stay hovering and won't, or at best, struggle to gain altitude. Also with no camera on it and just flying it around, it'll only fly for 9 min. Then the lights start flashing fast for about 2 sec and then your X8 falls out of the sky. So, I tried to use an 11.1V battery. It won't even turn on. Must have some sort of voltage regulating diode in it that prevents 11v to work. I have another kit coming from another company that I am going to try. And also, I have some spare Bugs 2 motors that I am going to see if I can use in place of the Syma kit motors to see if that will work.
 
rwid said:
Well. I don't see any replies to your post so I will give you my experience with what I did. I did the brushless upgrade from the kit you can buy from the Syma store. It doesn't work as advertised for me. You are supposed to have 3 speeds that are selected by toggling the cam/video switch. Didn't work for me with the camera installed or not installed. Still have only 2 speeds that are selected by the regular speed select button. And, they are not near as powerful as the brushed motors. I have no problem lifting an action cam with my brushed motors in any speed but with the brushless motors it won't stay hovering and won't, or at best, struggle to gain altitude. Also with no camera on it and just flying it around, it'll only fly for 9 min. Then the lights start flashing fast for about 2 sec and then your X8 falls out of the sky. So, I tried to use an 11.1V battery. It won't even turn on. Must have some sort of voltage regulating diode in it that prevents 11v to work. I have another kit coming from another company that I am going to try. And also, I have some spare Bugs 2 motors that I am going to see if I can use in place of the Syma kit motors to see if that will work.
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I'll be watching for your results.
 
OK. I received my kit last week and finally installed it this past weekend. The kit, although it looked different in the pic, is the exact same kit that I bought before. I installed it anyway. This works a lot better than the other one. The other one must have something wrong in the board. I can hang my syma HD camera on it or my camera from my Bayangtoys X21 and it flies fine. Very smooth and quiet. It is sensitive to the controller I use. If I use the controller made for altitude hold, which this brushless upgrade has, it flies radically. Near impossible to land smoothly. If I use the controller for the 8XC, it flies beautifully. Much easier to land and very stable. I'll be more testing in the days to come.
 
I would have thought the flight controller would have to be switched to a brushless board,which consume more power.
So the flight time would be lower, using the same lipo. Get yourself a betaflight brushless 20x20 fcb, a few can take upto 4S now. Even an old Piko for less than £20
Just hot glue it in. Although four holes on standoffs is simple mod.
 
I assume the board is modified for brushless since this is a complete kit. You are right about the flight time. Yesterday I used a 3000mah battery and I got over 10 min of flight time. The 2200mah only did about 6 or 7 min. I haven't tried to exhaust the battery yet to see what the flight time is with that battery.
 
If you go to the syma store and look at the brushless motor upgrade kit you can see what the board looks like. It looks like they take an x8 board and wire it to another flight controller board. There are no escs. I assume it is all in the other board.
 
I love that x8 flimsy shell. It can fall 90 meters from the sky and nothing happens.
 
rwid said:
OK. I received my kit last week and finally installed it this past weekend. The kit, although it looked different in the pic, is the exact same kit that I bought before. I installed it anyway. This works a lot better than the other one. The other one must have something wrong in the board. I can hang my syma HD camera on it or my camera from my Bayangtoys X21 and it flies fine. Very smooth and quiet. It is sensitive to the controller I use. If I use the controller made for altitude hold, which this brushless upgrade has, it flies radically. Near impossible to land smoothly. If I use the controller for the 8XC, it flies beautifully. Much easier to land and very stable. I'll be more testing in the days to come.
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Well it's good to hear someone finally had some luck upgrading their syma to brushless motors.
 
I really don't see the point in this. I have an X8C myself, and I like it very much. But why try to make it something it's not? It's basically a toy quad - a giant Syma X5-C1. Like Jackson said, for the same or even less money, you can buy a Bugs 3 and it will fly way better.
 
Jeff Neese said:
I really don't see the point in this. I have an X8C myself, and I like it very much. But why try to make it something it's not? It's basically a toy quad - a giant Syma X5-C1. Like Jackson said, for the same or even less money, you can buy a Bugs 3 and it will fly way better.
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Just tinkering around and having fun with toys. Myself, I upgraded to the bugs3.
 
This thread should come with a WARNING: most people who try this end up wasting their money.
 
Timing probably isn't the correct term. They are phased. If they are wired wrong, they just turn the opposite direction. The ground, or in most cases the black wire, stays where it is. Just swap the other two wires and your good to go. Bench test before putting the quad completely together.
 
Some cases they are all black. You can cross any of them. That's old hat now because of blheli. Middle & left, right & left, left & right over middle will all make the motor turn. I just put them on neat & change direction in blheli.
 
rwid said:
I assume the board is modified for brushless since this is a complete kit. You are right about the flight time. Yesterday I used a 3000mah battery and I got over 10 min of flight time. The 2200mah only did about 6 or 7 min. I haven't tried to exhaust the battery yet to see what the flight time is with that battery.
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On a JJRC H25 which uses essentially the same motors and battery, I've experimented with wiring to aftermarket 2500 mah lipos sold on eBay for a Syma X8 in parallel to give me a full 5000 mah. So far, it appears to have longer air time ( didn't time it), although I deleted the onboard camera to mount the second lipo under the fuselage.
 
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