I bought 3 FPVCycle 4” PowerPick frames for $3 each during a TBS blowout clearance sale- thank you Hugnosed_bat for posting about the sale.

My plan is/was to build one as originally designed, heavily modify one, and keep one for spare parts.
For the modified one, I was originally planning on flipping it upside down to make it a pusher with a top mount battery, and replacing two of the front standoffs with an aluminum camera cage- but after looking at the frame on my bench that’s just not going to work. There’s not enough room. So, I’m going to start with a build as originally designed.

The original design is ugly (IMHO- but it’s not like I’m looking at it while it’s in the air so looks don’t really matter), and the carbon fiber camera cage looks like it’ll fail after a good crash. Ideally I’d 3d print a canopy, but, I don’t have the skills to design one and the only filament that I can consistently print in is PLA. PLA wouldn’t last any longer than the original carbon frame. I’ve got some TPU, but every time I try to print with it it ends up being a two week long frustration that ends in either one good print or me wanting to take a sledgehammer to my 3d printer.
My hobbies are a way to get a break from life stress and frustration, so I have a very limited tolerance for my hobbies causing a headache.

Finances are tight these days, so this is going to be a budget build primarily using stuff I already have.

This is a 4s build because my batteries are all 1s to 4s.

Motors: Diatone Mamba Toka 2004 2900kv- I got a great deal on these used, but I haven’t tried them yet. I love my Mamba Toka 1408s- I’ve used and abused the hell out of them, and other than having to replace every bearing they are still running strong. I’m hoping that these will be just as awesome. I bought them thinking that they would be big enough for 3.5” to 4” build, but not so big and heavy that I couldn’t use them on a 3” (3” is my preferred/ideal size for where I fly- big enough to build with some power, but not so big that I can’t go all out without worrying about damaging something or someone).

FC/ESC: JHEMCU GHF411AIO Pro- I picked this up for $35 during RDQ’s Black Friday sale. I’m a bit concerned because I don’t know how much I can trust the manufacturer’s specs. It’s labeled as 35A, and my motors pull 31.63A peak. But, it’s what I have available without pulling something from a flying build. Maybe I should put a 85% or 90% throttle limit on it?

VTX: Haven’t decided. I’ve got a spare Flywoo Goku vtx625, a TBS Unify Pro 5g8 HV, or various much older but still working vtx’s.

Camera: I’m pretty sure I’ve got a Caddx Ant Nano around here somewhere. If I can’t find it, then it will get an older 600tvl camera.

Antenna: I think I still have one more mislabeled Flywoo Atomic antenna that I scored from RDQ’s as-is section. If not, I’ve got a variety of sigma, crazy bee, and unbranded antennas.

A small part of me feels like I shouldn’t complain about a frame that I paid $3 for- it would have cost me more just to buy the bolts and standoffs.

…but, I gotta say, if I had paid full price for these frames I’d be pissed, and I personally won’t buy another frame from this manufacturer. I’m pretty sure that pre-installed press nuts aren’t supposed to cause the carbon fiber layers around it to bulge up and that there shouldn’t be cracks around the motor screw holes prior to installing anything.

But dude, $3.

More to come.

Edit: the Matek R24-D ELRS rx I ended up using in this bird can suffer from that crystal offset issue that some other ELRS rx’s also have- it’s got two smd capacitors on it that should probably be removed.
https://github.com/ExpressLRS/ExpressLRS...ency-Error

I will follow along.
Yep those press nuts were pressed into a hole just a touch to small. But as you say $3.

Looking at the "flaws" I would say those are probably "factory seconds". Probably the reason that TBS were selling them off cheap. It will be interesting to see if anyone else who bought some of those blow-out sale frames has the same defects on theirs too. But as you say, for $3 no-one can really complain.

" I’m pretty sure that pre-installed press nuts aren’t supposed to cause the carbon fiber layers around it to bulge up and that there shouldn’t be cracks around the motor screw holes prior to installing anything"
uff that sounds bad

about the top, it is designed by diatone. kabab gave his design, diatone did a pnp with their own top. kabab took the top design to his own version too.
its oldfashen top design, it takes about half of the frameweight, not? so i thought it will be very durable and a canopy could shrink the weight. are you sure the top wont hold up?

very nice there is a build thread :-) 2004 2900kv sounds very nice, a throttle or motoroutput might be nice to improve precision on higher rpms and battery performance, but i wouldnt set one and enjoy some "to the moon"-punches :-)
i believe the motors peak ratings are for a 5inch blade? i didnt reaserch.
i guess you will stay under 25amps on some lightweight low piched t-mount 4inch blades, there arent any high pitched t-mount 4inch rotors available.

The actual top plate is beefy, it will hold up fine- it’s the two vertical pieces above it that hold the camera that concern me. My super inaccurate digital calipers measure the carbon fiber as 1.3mm thick.

You’re correct, that 31.63A peak was with 5125 props.
There aren’t a whole lot of t-mount 4” props. This guy will get either 4x2x3 or 3.5x2.8x3.
Do you think I’ll be well within my esc’s safe margins with those props?

I’ll have to take a look at the other two frames and see if they have similar issues.

I have several 4" toothpicks and a regular... 1404, 1504.5, 1507

I mostly use HQ4025 and GF4023*3, but also have 4024 and 4032 and a couple heavier pitch.

Ofcourse never as many options as 5", but there are like 5+ TMount 4" options. Also, maybe consider 1507 or 1607 motor. 2004 have weak bell.

I’m taking my sweet time on this build- because I can. I’ve got multiple other quads working, so I don’t feel a rush to slap it together to get it in the air.

I did a mock up tonight to figure out how to route and how long my wires should be. That’s a first for me- all of my previous builds have been a rats nest of wires that introduces noise in my video feed and/or has random long bits of wires that are prone to breakage from movement or getting caught up in a prop.

I’ve got two options for the rx on this build- a Matek r24-d or a Happymodel ep1. My ELRS experience so far has been Happymodel and JHEMCU ep1 & ep2- I have the Matek because when I placed an order last year, everyone was out of stock of the hm and JHEMCU.

The Matek is about twice the weight and twice the size, and I really don’t need any additional range that a switching diversity rx might give me- so I’ll probably use the ep1.

The camera is offset 1mm to the left because it needed a washer to make things tight. I don’t know if that’s gonna bug me or not, it shouldn’t be noticeable in flight.

My standoffs are not color coordinated- as everything else, I’m using what I’ve got. It came with some black standoffs, but I needed taller ones for the main vertical standoffs, and once I added color, I decided to make it a rainbow.

I was initially planning on using some Pyrodrone led racewire, but the ones I have are 35mm and they’re just too long- so I’m gonna have to just extend the motor wires.

The micro USB port is going to be blocked by a standoff, and that really annoys me. There’s not enough clearance for any 90 degree adapter that I’ve found so far. It’s been about two decades since I last etched a pcb, but I’m seriously considering getting some surface mount male micro usb plugs and some  bare boards and acid so that I can make flush mount micro usb extensions at whatever length and angle I need.

That USB socket is a PITA. I guess with those type of frames that have a very small flight stack footprint in a diamond configuration, you just have to accept that you will need to remove one of the stand-offs every time you need to make a firmware configuration change or update the firmware. Looking at the PowerPick builds on Rotorbuilds they all seem to suffer from the same USB socket accessibility issue so you're not alone. I'm not sure if there are even any flight control stacks where the USB socket is located right at the very corner. I don't recall seeing any.

With the diamond configuration in a square, I don’t know that there’s any suitable usb jack placement where it won’t get blocked by something without putting a set of motor wires in an unnatural position- at which point I’d probably complain about how a standoff is in the way of my motor wires.

I find myself regularly plugging in to fiddle with things and play with settings, so I might have to just make my own extension board. My biggest concern there is that it would be like putting a breaker bar on the usb jack if it hit right.

Maybe I should just be more methodical in my setting changes so that I don’t need to plug it into my laptop once a week.

Looking good

I ran into a similar usb situation on my big whoop, the ducts are in the way of straight usb C so I bought a 90 and ground the corner off to be able to get in there. Still really tight and a PIA, but for INAV I will be plugging it in more often.

I like the colored standoffs

Definitely take your time with the wiring, it will save you time and problems down the line trying to work around your mess or figuring out what came off.

Scott

looks very nice! i would like to try :-)
what weight do you actual have? i beleive you are around 150g?

i can not understand why us boards have that bulky usb, when i started my eachine aurora 90 had a simple molex 4cable plug and it came with an usb adapter. might be a risk to damage the board but maybe you can remove the usb plug and replace it with an adapter?
while we had micro usb, i beleive usb-c is even more heavy... sometimes there isnt a technical reason for the way the market turns
while we choose the matching size for all us cables, that bulky usbs stays as the standart
that 25mm aio boards have downsides, any 20x20mm aio wouldnt have that problem... but 20x20mm aios suffer in popularity, the hype on the 25mm mount layout never made sense to me...

Hugnosed- I’m at 128g, but that’s not including the four m3 bolts that hold the top plate in place, the motor bolts, props and prop bolts, the motor wire extensions, the wiring between the vtx and fc, and the vtx antenna.

My Eachine Aurora 90’s had micro USB ports- in order to plug in, I hade to completely remove the ducts and top end/camera & mount. I’m pretty sure that’s where my aggravation with difficult usb access began. On my HGRLC Sector25CR, I just left the offending standoff out. This guy I’m thinking needs all four main standoffs for strength.

(27-Jan-2022, 01:46 PM)Scott_M Wrote: Definitely take your time with the wiring, it will save you time and problems down the line trying to work around your mess or figuring out what came off.

This is just a start- (first pic) camera to fc wiring, twisted, shrink wrapped and shaped, with enough play to be moved and disconnected, but not so much excess length to get in the way. It’s a far cry from my past builds (second pic).

Hopefully I’ll be patient enough to do the same to all of the other wiring.

The last week or so we’ve actually had semi-decent weather, so I’ve spent my free time flying.

But tonight the the fog rolled back in around 8pm. I have no problem flying at night, in the rain, in the snow- but fog is the one thing I can’t fly in- every source of light becomes this giant glowing orb and I can’t see trees or tell where the hell I am. Okay, I haven’t tried flying in hail- that would probably also be a no go. No fog, no hail.

Anyhow, fog rolled in, so it became a build night.

I’ve decided to use the Matek rx- at 3g with antennas it’s heavier than an ep1 or ep2, but, it can handle 9v- and my goku vtx can only handle 5v. What that means is that I can wire my rx to tx/rx 1, my vtx to   2, and I don’t have to run wires all across the board- everything lines up nicely.

Here’s some pictures of the uninstalled guts.

Also, ignore the red vs black motor lead extensions- they don’t mean anything. I’ve got spools of wire from 00 gauge to 26 gauge, except for 20 gauge. For some reason I only had a foot of red and a foot of black in 20 gauge- I tried using 18 gauge but it was way too bulky.

Here is the solution to the USB location issue.

The iFlight Beast STD F7 45A AIO has the USB mounted on a separate plate
that is connected to the FC so  you can mount the USB connector in any
convenient location.  

This Diatone Mamba F411 25A AIO also has remote
USB location and 2 different USB options. 

I suppose one could also fabricate an extension using raw USB connectors
that would allow access without dismantling the quad.