Heya Forum,
I can hardly believe that I have to write this, but when it comes to bad luck I'm a real champion.
I'm still longing so badly for a really small quad to fly in the appartment or to thrash around the subterranean parking lot at night,
but fate somehow does not want me to..
The night started with trying to bind an iflight ix2,
which was sold as PNP, but that was kinda difficult without a receiver.
So I installed one, and it bound just fine, but as soon as I plugged in the Lipo, it went up in smoke.
I tried with a new one, but no talk to the FC.
Ok, so over to the next attempt, an actually nice and well made frameset/motors/pdb/fc/vtx/camera(!!) set from iflight, the ix3,
which I intended to do "quick and somewhat dirty", because by now I wanted to do some flying in the appartment before going to work.
I'm exhausted by my attempt at building, as lots of parts were missing,
like the screws for the motors and the m3 plastic mounts for the pdb/esc/fc tower were all in wrong dimensions. Lesser problems, however, they didn't stop me.
Before repeating my errors, I tried connecting and powering up the fc with a battery in order to check on the motors/esc's, and - tah-daahh,
motor 1 is not spinning.
Bl_heli does not see any esc number one. So no point in continuing..
Too bad!! The quality of the carbon fibre frame is surprisingly, actually incredibly good, edges are rounded off and parts fit nicely together, if one provides the missing screws and so on.
There is no description, leave alone pin out of the components, which makes the build an exercise of patience. Got lots of that, by now..
So beware, folks - those things are incredibly cheap, but they have some real quality control issues.
I'm crashing to bed for an hour before heading out to work..
Does anyone know a micro quad setup that works reliably??!!
I actually have three entire sets of components that don't work by now. 

Okay, this is what I've concluded - before getting back to work :-)
I still sport a "view from outside", and my deliberate hitting the head upon fpv-walls notorious to the experienced serves its function: I'm learning the ropes..
It appears that many problems originate from the fusion of constructional elements. Appearantly, they were separated for a reason.
Means that I'll be sticking to what is tested & proven, in the future. Without the knowledge of others, I'm nothing. Reinventing the wheel is incomparably harder with fpv-quads than with many other subjects.. ;-)
It is my nature to run too fast. The point with extremism is, that it often means redoubling your efforts once you've forgotten your aim.
The aim is smooth and fun flying, and enjoying it. Producing microscopic IC-toasters isn't fun.
I'll be browsing this forum for tested & proven FC's, ESC's, receivers and so forth. With the aid of those, I'll try to "frankenstein" my microquads into function. In the meantime, I'll follow the path that has worked out better than anything so far: Quality builds, quality components. As a word of excuse: It's really hard to tell whether you're falling for a knock-off, as a newbie. However, that's what the success of the established brands is based upon: Relyability.
Looking forward to that 3-inch Kraken.. ;-)

At least you now have a bunch of parts you should be able to make at least one working micro from!

Quality control is virtually non-existent when it comes to most cheap stuff from China. It's how they keep the prices so low. When you look at some of the dirt cheap micro flight controllers, it's a wonder that they work at all sometimes. The components are poor quality, the assembly is terrible and the manual is nowhere to be found.

What's worse is the fact that many of these craft are sold as being ready to fly whereas in reality, they just have some release of Betaflight or Cleanflight flashed on them with completely default settings and are not even configured to work with the rest of the parts.

The help sections of most forums are full of people who have never built a quad before and who know nothing about electricity, soldering, firmware, or anything about how a quad works. They buy the latest "ready to fly" package from Banggood or Gearbest and when it arrives, they expect to just plug in a battery and fly like Charpu.

Well, in a world that uses over 95% of computing electricity for spam, it should not surprise that equally much is produced.. ;-)
Do you wanna do wholesale??! :-):-):-)

Two suggestions for tiny and reliable (and well documented) indoor machines: Tiny Whoop (adding a camera to an Inductrix - some also add faster motors, but I didn't and mine works great), and it's Chinese cousin the Eachine E010 (sometimes lovingly called a Chiny Whoop). There are radio limitations to these (Spektrum for the Inductrix, noname for the E010), but there are also hacks and replacement FCs for these to get around that at the expense of a bit of electronics expertise. Actually, the E010 is quite fun to fly around (LOS) stock, even with the included little palm Tx.

Now for "real" quads (you know what I mean), building small is tougher than building large (I think you may have discovered that already). With the smaller AIO FCs coming out (20 x 20 form factor like PikoBLX), or the plethora of 4-in-1 ESCs (did he just use plethora?), it's getting a little better, but it still taxes a persons soldering abilities at times.

I think you did the right thing building a "big" quad that gave you some success at actual flying. And FWIW, I think you'll find that 3" Kraken is not going to spend much time "indoors". Be sure and put a good buzzer on it (or DVR record every flight) - it will be easy to lose...

I suggest for indoor LOS, get an E010 and extra batteries. For indoor FPV, build a Whoop.

Actually, the E010 is quite fun to fly around (LOS) stock, even with the included little palm Tx.


> *haaaahh, I already did some time ago and I own smt like 8 tiny lipos for those :-):-):-) They're not that slow after all and the appartment becomes quickly smaller.. Was trying to fly out of the balcony window onto the city, but have been immediately sweating blood in order to make it back against the wind. They're tiny leaves in the wind..
Rigging one of the tiny vtx/cam units of the "hangar" brushless micros is a >GRAND idea, though!! THANK YOU!! *smooch!
How didn't I think of that.. probably was too busy commiserating myself, *tsss..
I got an external RF module 4 my taranis which works just great.

Now for "real" quads (you know what I mean),  building small is tougher than building large (I think you may have discovered that already).  

>You bet..

With the smaller AIO FCs coming out (20 x 20 form factor like PikoBLX), or the plethora of 4-in-1 ESCs (did he just use plethora?), it's getting a little better, but it still taxes a persons soldering abilities at times.

>I'm used to suture nerves 1/3 mm diameter under the microscope. Soldering small stuff's not really a problem  
Thanx for the suggestions, though! I'll be looking into those gree-di-lyyyy  


I think you did the right thing building a "big" quad that gave you some success at actual flying.  And FWIW, I think you'll find that 3" Kraken is not going to spend much time "indoors".  Be sure and put a good buzzer on it (or DVR record every flight) - it will be easy to lose...

>That's just what I thought yesterday, "playing in the high grass field" (..my ass still hurts from zig-zagging my mountainbike across it on pursuit of my helix  ): I need to turn up my buzzer, *darn.. - Thx for reminding me!!


I suggest for indoor LOS, get an E010 and extra batteries.  For indoor FPV, build a Whoop.
>Gotcha!

As always, thanx for the input. You guys are Ga-reaaat!!!

Sooo...
Facing real-world-problems for a day has done me good. Self-pitying is disgusting, I'd like to apologize for the tone of my first post. On the other hand, it seems I'm not the only one hitting my head on "tiny" and "pnp". Not all bad comes to harm: I realized I need to take an in-depth look at the functioning of FC's (..got the ESC-part done :-) and their respective characteristics. It's a fastly revolving market, developing into all sorts of directions, and my fury about the sloppy silk screen printing on the FC's (..do they really all print that stuff on the back? Why??!!) made me forget about learning the ropes of FC's. There's quite a lot to it, I must admit.
With due and (more) objective observing distance, things sort of settle into place,
and once more, some "unhooking" the subject for a couple of hours (..and some rest, maybe..) bends perspectives into proportion. All this is very inspiring to me, as I've always been "shopping" for surgery tools & procedures outside of the field. Staying too close to a problem will cast a veil on the obvious. I realized that, while societies on the surge like China face production QC issues, the "old continent" of Europe is facing a CS QC issue. Our society takes high vages and sloppy customer service for granted. This cuts off the branch we're sitting on, and if we don't watch out, the pluralization of the Asian societies will soon pass us by. I don't see it as a competition, though. I have many colleagues in Shanghai and Macau, and I absolutely adore their attitudes. We could use a good share of that.
What drives me nuts every day is the inherent sloth and self-complacency of established European societies, where basically, since the middle-ages, only terminology, but not social mobility and equality has evolved: We don't call them kings anymore, but CEO's, COO's, CTO's, CFO's, or whichever acronym they come up with. After all, it's just legitimization rethorics, and we know very well from WWII where this may lead..
I'm a convinced defender of meritocracy, and I'm a technocrat. I believe whoever has the persevearance to develop and come up with a new technology that makes mankind evolve, has the right to profit from it - without limitations. What I don't approve is taking advantage of volatility on stock markets, investing without risk, ruining existencies and having honest workers in factories working 75% of their time in order to compensate for the stock-play of the management. My solution to this problem involves semtex. But that's another subject.. :-)

However, there's soooo much more to FPV and quads than "boys with toys", and how a person faces the subject, at least to my humble self, appears to be a pretty good indicator of the inherent intellect and mental bandwith. Both goods on the way of extinction, as it appears..

So my next "mental crusade" is on FC's, *beware. I reckon this will keep me busy for a while, especially since this month I'll be teaching all over the middle east and my time will be very limited. But hotels have Inet ;-)
The more I learn about this whole RC-community, the greater my admiration becomes, and the more I whiplash myself for not having realized this earlier. There is such an enormous potential inside this which trespasses the mere analog-I/O-interface by oh-so much. The PID-control-loop is such a universal theoreme, and its applications are so widespread, it's mind-boggling..
I love this shit!
You guys are great,
please pat yourself on the shoulder from me, I'd love to do that myself, but I guess that paying for all those plane-tickets would bust my budget. Would be epical to meet up somewhere, sometime, though. I'd willingly slaughter my practice's budget for that.
In the meantime, I'll be your soldier. Already today, I don't allow anyone call what we do "playing with toys". My reaction to such has become quite comical, *hehehhh..
Happy flying, guys, here it's still raining...