Very happy with my Cinelog 25 build , which i originaly bought as a BNF but rebuild/modded to my liking (partly forced as it came with a dead aio), but looking at the new Cinebot 30 frame it was tempting enough to give it a go. See how a slightly wider wheelbase, tougher frame and little bigger props give maybe more stability combined with punch and flight time. Or just , "because" (the best reasn there is for building anything).

So i bought the framekit and will see what i will do with it and log the process.

The Frame 

First impression was that it was more complex to put together than i had expected and it looked (dead simple right ?). The little leaflet , pretending to be manual , was confusing as f.
Reminded me of my IKEA days or actualy more like the Hellraiser cube. 

Just one 3d-isch perspective sideview that makes you wonder in which hole what bolt goes more then needed , which would be solved with the addition of just one extra top view. Some of the final ahaaa moments i only got after checking out a few flight videos of this ready made , to see where some of these things where put together to form a nice easy to open box .
It comes nicely with a gazillion different nuts,bolts,spacers etc etc in labeled little goodie bags , but a bit investment in some sort of instruction manual would have been nice. Feels like the kit was quickly build after the release of the full cinebot models and someone in the back office was tasked to whip up a quick manual.
But to be fair, the quality is super good and the build frame feels like it can handle some major crashing way better then my cinelog. 
So off to a good start.
(ps and no i did not get the led ring , thats just too much bling. Prob go for a small tail light)


Probable / may change components for a 4S build:
FC -  GEPRC GEP-F722-45A AIO , very happy with these AIO's (ordered  in house)
Motors - GEPRC SPEEDX2 1804 3450KV, look cool  (ordered  in house)
Props - 3'  and then we will see , but will try anything from 2-8 blades (in house)
Lipo's - Will see , ordered a bunch and will experiment whats best  (in house/ordered)

Planned components :
VTX - Runcam Vista unit . Probably keep it dressed this time as weight is not such an issue here (ordered)
RX - Crossfire Nano Pro , my old and faithfull (ordered in house)
GPS - Mateksys M10-5883 , just the best (in house)
BARO - BMP280 (in house)
CAM - Caddx polar , because i have one spare (in house)
Video - Flywoo GP9, my current workhorse (in house) 
VTX Antenna - Lumenier AXII micro long (in house)  
RX Antenna - Immortal T (in house)
TPU - Custom GPS mount / VTX holder thingymejingy tbd
 





To be continued when stuff start to be delivered..........  (part of this hobby seems to be the waiting game)

Ah, looked what the cat just dragged in from the mail ...
One down more to go

They do look niceeeeeeeeee

This will be fun to follow along with.
Those motors are quite pretty.

How strong does that duct/prop guard feel? Is it all one piece or can you replace just one of the guards if you nosedive onto concrete from a great height?

Its one piece but feels made out of nondestructanium with a little bounce. Will let you know after my 1st encounter with an amtrak head on.
For sure it will withstand more then my cinelog ducts , which snap easily on impact. Have lots of spares but than again, fly cinematic with them so i am more worried about my gopro 9 on those sort of impacts.
If i like the final build i will order at least one spare duct regardless.

Original plan was to transplant all the cinelog stuff to this frame but as i like it as well a lot i decided to just buy all new gear and see where it lands.
I found out i love the building, rebuilding and modding part so who know where it will end up.
Do have a bunch of diff props so interesting to see if i can get it more silent than the cinelog. I guess with 8 blade 3 inch prop it should be a fun flyer and compare that with a 2 blade for example

I love the building, rebuilding, modding, and experimentation as well.

My experience with props with 5 or more blades is that they’re more “floaty”. They don’t just drop like a rock when you cut your throttle. Pretty fun when that’s what you’re going for or expecting. They don’t have the punch of aggressively pitched tri-blades though, at least with the motor and prop combinations that I’ve tried.

I think i would like that floatiness.
How is your experience with the sound levels when going up from 3 to 5 or even 8 ?
On the 2.5 inch it did not make as much diff as expected. Maybe on bigger props the diff is bigger.
Quadmovr has some nice clips with 8 props and they sound sweet. Like turboprop engines. But thats all ductless . Gues the ducts mess up all that nice effect. Wil see. Only trying wil show and tell

It’s completely subjective because I didn’t pull out my decibel meter- but to me it sounded like 5, 6, and 8 blades were quieter than 3 or 4- they didn’t have as much of a high pitched whine. This could just be because I wasn’t revving them as high as I would tri-blades, because that floatiness is more suitable for easy flowing smooth movements than tearing up the sky.

I think bi-blades are supposed to be the quietest, but I’ve only used a few because I wasn’t getting the power I wanted out of them.

One more in house. Way faster then expected.
Of course immediately rooted and gave it the wtf-osd treatment   



Next....

Its Sunday
Its raining, cold and miserable outside
Yesterday all my remaining ordered shit arrived in the mail from China .
Wife's not home
>>>>
Its .... 

BUILDING TIME !!!!!!!

Fitting session after some puzzle work.
Already had to cut some stuff away from the center box to arrange for nice access to usb's when closed and for the aio to fit in better, but i do like the box idea. Good access from either bottom or top by just removing a few screws to open "the box".
Cam nice and snug in-between metal posts with free range adjustability.
Paired and rooted/wtf'ed the runcam unit already while outside the build , same for the crossfire nano pro. Prefer that rather than fiddling with the buttons once all nicely tucked away. Have a nice Toolkit RC P200 external adjustable power supply since a while , which helps with these sort of things. Best thing i bought in a while
It a fresh breath working on this build after working on mostly microscopic whoops till now 
Probably will not finish today though as take my time , enjoy the ride in full, and lots to do . Specially some extra work on gps / baro cables and shielding/routing etc. And getting dark soon here and prefer to work in daylight and not only artificial light . My eye are not those of a young boy anymore ...

Looks like it’s coming along nicely!

Ok, after finishing most of the solder work last night, this morning was final assembly and trying to fit an elephant into an inverted matchbox while connecting the trunk deep inside the matchbox to a connector and not break the delicate glass in the matchbox. Sort of how it felt 
No matter how big you think the space is you have for all the component and wiring, you never seem to have enough.... 
I used a little piece of leftover tpu mount i had laying around to bind the stuff together on top of the AIO , which helped a lot in the end.
Connecting the ufl to the vista , only possible when almost closed, was the biggest challenge, but patience and no violence this time did the trick...

I build it in stages and after each stage , did a short check with multi meter and testing on power from external power unit (with limit set to 1 amp) . This to make sure that if there was an issue , i discover it "before" all is build snug together. I learned my lessons after several other builds ;-)
I already am used to this AIO so was easy to wire everything up in the right place and use a BF 4.4 dump from my cinelog 25 , which has this AIO and identical gps/baro/everythingelse setup. Takes away the guesswork.
- Vista(runcam) unit on the inbuild plug (UART 1) and gets vbat (so only active with lipo and not with usb)
- Crossfire on UART 2
- Baro on pins of UART 3 with UART 3 RX/TX disabled (using i2c , scl/sda already mapped by default to these pins )
rem:  uart 3 is special and with gps or crossfire on 3 you can not flash firmware. Its some funky thing not specific to this aio that prevents a reboot in dfu with serial device on this uart.
- GPS on uart 5  (and as this board activates the 5v pads on usb power, that is perfect for pre lipo connect cold boot satellite fix)
- Spare UART 4 , for bluetooth likely (in the mail) so i can use speedybee app on phone
- GP9 connected to lipo balance lead via own build custom cable with micro matek bec in there.
- leds and buzzer to their dedicated pads.

GPS kabel i did like my previous builds with a custom copper foil shielded cable where i first twist the 5v/gnd together and separately also the sda/scl leads together. Then wrap them together in 2 layers of copper foil. Then solder the coper foil to the same ground lead as the gps itself.
Then shrinkwrap the bunch over the full length. (see photo where i have not yet pot the bottom shrink wrap on)
This way i dont have to worry about any sort of interference in the cables from the vista/esc's along its way. And even if it does not matter (as some say) it wont hurt.
Easily got a fix from cold boot within 30 seconds and not long after 12 sats when i held it over the balcony so thats fine and did not expect anything else from this not so cheap gps unit. And i live sort of inside a microwave, stored inside a bigger microwave, inside a nuclear reactor at the moment of an EMP blast (=Amsterdam city center) so in the field that will be easy peasy (on the cheaper matek model i got 20+sats within less then a minute on my last field test with cinelog 25)  

For easy usb access i put in a magnetic usb connector which i have on 2 other quads and works like a charm. Just hold the cable close to the quad and its sucks itself in the right spot. Did had to cut out some more of the plastic center box of the frame but who cares. A few more ventilation holes never hurt any quad 

Only did a quick hover test indoors on a throttle limit (in acro , as is my new permanent mode and cant even operate in autolevel anymore hahaha).
Perfect on first attempt, stable as my (hardly used anymore) dji mini 2, wow, just wow. Did i say wow ? I mean WWWWWWWWOOOOOOOWWWWWW
So no brainer, this will replace my cinelog 25 , which i also loved btw, but lacked some power and flight time .
Hover without cam and 3 bladed props gave me a solid 9 minutes on a 4s GNB 1350Mah  (Yeah i finally managed to get my fisrt small batch of GNB's from china here in NL. This was ordered months back already. )
I wanted to experiment this with 8 bladed props originally  (for the sound) but discovered i had ordered the wrong props. Right size wrong mount. Damn. Have to order some more. Will try out al different number of blades to find the perfect match for different flight types and sound levels .

Going to have some fun with this baby . May have to wait a while as weather suuuuuuuucks now when we are hitting winter here. Next few weeks only rain hard wind and close to zero degrees C. Have to be patient ..... 
p.s. The old faithfull cinelog 25 will have its organs donated to a new planned micro long range build. Something to do in the dark days coming ahead..



Some more pics below
                                       

Hmm, cant find much props with more than 3 blades for 3inch and 1.5mm shaft push/screw on (t-mount)
Ordered some 2 blades which could be interesting for flight time and some alternative gemfan 3 blades, but thats about it.
Are there some sort of adapters i can use ? The 8 blades hqprops have a 5mm hole.
Will need to do more googling but any tips ?

These:
https://www.hqprop.com/hqprop-duct-t75mm...p0281.html

Or these (they fit t mount and 5mm):
https://www.gemfanhobby.com/show.aspx?id=279&cid=45

Build looks great, btw.
That enclosed box looks like a PIA.

(28-Nov-2022, 07:56 PM)Lemonyleprosy Wrote: These:
https://www.hqprop.com/hqprop-duct-t75mm...p0281.html

Or these (they fit t mount and 5mm):
https://www.gemfanhobby.com/show.aspx?id=279&cid=45

Build looks great, btw.
That enclosed box looks like a PIA.

Thanks for the links.  I did see those gemfans from the second link before with the wierd shaped square hole. I did not understand but i guess its to fit both mount types right ?

Regarding the box, i guess if you stick to the standard build as it is sold in BNf mode you are probably fine, but anything else its getting crowded soon. But nothing a little cutter cant solve. And to be fair, it does offer some protection to the insides. 
In the end , i am loving this quad. It feels solid, stable and fast all at the same time. My cinelog feels flimsy and breakable in comparison. Have some interesting ideas with it. For another build log for sure.......