never saw such kind of 1s cinematics befor, nice :-) how does it perform on that additional uncentered 10g?

Hey guys, sorry on the late response here. It's been fun tuning this (heavy) 1S quad, BF 4.3 is really really good and the handling is amazing given that I'm running this relatively heavy micro (approx 50g dry) on 1103 with 3" bi-blades.

It can freestyle pretty well, here is a short clip around the house. Captured on my immersionRC powerplay DVR at 50fps (The CADDX Kangaroo is a dual mode cam that can do NTSC and PAL composite video, I choose PAL 'cause I'm an aussie) and rendered in 25fps.



@iFly - Bought the house a couple of year ago H and have been slowly renovating. It's been expensive to do hence why it looks like the perpetual sh1tpile it is in all my videos, lol..

That thing flies pretty damn well.

I’m also a big fan of bf 4.3 so far. I’m still running rc3, I need to make some time to install rc4.

Im really curious how your is only 36g with some relatively heavy components in it. Mine weighs 36g and I had to jump through a few hoops to get it that light.

Its 50g, the 2nd build was 36 but failed with a bad fc.
Im prolly off by a few grams though.
Plastic screws
Light.canopy
Bugger all fastening. Ie: tape instead of cable ties etc

Whilst waiting for a bunch of parts to come in from Aliexpress, I've been toying with the idea (again) of flying at night.  I've always like the challenge of flying at night and decided to try again using some different parts to my previous attempts.

At first I'm going for a proof of concept to this idea by trying it out on one of my 1S toothpicks.   

For night flying I've noticed the following and have come up with some "recommendations" 

• The light source MUST be behind the fpv camera - you don't want the emitted light in your fpv feed, only the reflected light.
  
• The fpv camera ideally doesn't have props in view - I have found the props to reflect the light no matter what the material or colour.   (you can see this in my proof of concept video below.
  
• Reflected light is your friend and you need to design a light source that can maximize this.   What I mean by this is that you need a small angle of view lens on the light source to focus on a small(ish) area that is right in front of you.   You want that obstacle that is in your flight path to be lit up very well.   Obstacles in your periphery are important too but not as much as what is directly in front of you.
  

• Low power, safe to fly quad.  This is why I'm only doing this on 1S toothpicks.  It needs to be safe.  Flying at night is a big no no and I'm only flying on my own property in the garden etc. low to the ground.
  

• No matter how powerful your light source is, if it ain't reflecting off anything you won't see sh1t.   So don't fly high in the sky wondering why you lost your quad at night.
  

Like a lot of good ideas, I started looking for parts on aliexpress.

I found some small 1W COB leds and also some small acrylic lens to match them.  I ordered a few different lens to try and found the 20deg lens to work well.


Next I had some buck-boost DC to DC convertors lying around and connected it all up as shown below.  The DC-DC convertor takes the 3.7v supply from the 1S lipo and changes it to 5V to drive the LEDs.   For my test setup I will be overloading the 1S quad with an extra 1S battery to drive the LEDs separately.   The quad handles poorly due to the weight but this is just a test to see how the fpv camera reacts to the LEDs lighting up the area.



In mounting the LEDS I'm going for a focal point at approx 3 - 4 metres in front of me.  Having said that I feel I got lucky with this first attempt.  In the picture below I have the LEDS mounted on the canopy and the LED driver pcb is taped to one of the arms of the quad.   I put black fabric tape around the LEDs to keep the majority of the emitted light only visible through the lens.



Testing them out, they seem to work 


Here is a short video showing you how well these two little 1W LEDs with a 20deg lens work.   It is dark outside on the night this video was taken.


I'm currently working an a new build that will incorporate the LEDs driver and run off the same 1S supply as the quad.  Yes it will eat into fly time by draining the battery faster but it's quite fun to work through this challenge of flying at night but it also allows me to fly more!

That looks adorable. Those leds are surprisingly bright- do you have any cooling issues with them?

You’re gonna have the neighbors thinking a police helicopter is searching your yard with a spotlight.

Wow, yes those LEDs are a lot brighter than I anticipated.

It is fairly evident that the placement of the light source behind with reference to the camera is very important as you mention.

Hi ph2t,

WOW      I am IMPRESSED !!  

Do you have a link to those lights and lenses ??

Is that a BT 2.0 connector on that BEC ??

Also (for a new build), you might consider an AIO FC board that has a 5 Volt rail
which would eliminate the need for a BEC. Some of these new 1S-2S boards even
come with ELRS or SPI FrSky receivers. Just thinking 


Even though my rescue mission will be during the day,
the lights might be a good addition to eliminate shadows
in the tree when I go after the Unsanctioned-1.

I might even try flying at night.  

A whole NEW set of possibilities. 

Hey guys thank you for the comments. 

The parts used were these:

The LEDS:      https://www.aliexpress.com/item/40011974...f19c5SFOKD
LEDS lenses:   https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10050029...f19c5SFOKD 

Yes I'm using BT2.0 connectors, there was a study comparison made by MUTEFPV on you tube betweenXT30, GNB27 and the BT2.0.  Ultimately for weight versus performance, the GNB27 connectors win, but not by much.  So for me BT2.0 (especially on 1S) is the winner as it wouldn't be worth reinvesting all that time and labour into converting my 1S lipos over to GNB27.   For pure performance XT30 wins every time, heavy buggers though so not for me.

The LEDS do get hot, I really should have a current limiting resistor in series with the LEDS as the 3v to 5V buck boost convertor I'm using isn't a constant current, regulated LED driver.   As I've added more LEDS in parallel the LEDS are less hot but the 5V convertor gets quite warm now as it has to provide current to four 1W LEDs.

Having said that, using the onboard 5V source of the flight controller, well, I would probably burn it out.  These LEDS are sinking a fair bit of current, at least 1A I would think.  I haven't measured it though.

Yes, four LEDS.   I added two more LEDS, this time the lens is 100deg for a wider FOV.   The reasoning here is to work on reflecting light from the periphery of one's video feed.   I got to say it works a treat!

Here's a sketch of what I mean, how the LEDS overlap their respective FOVs to create a better night view.   The focal point right in front of the camera becomes very bright with the additive nature of light with four sources.   Once you review the video below you will see the slightly brighter centre ring of light versus the not as bright outer ring of light.   Very interesting!


Going off what I learnt from the first version of the fly at night tryouts I have changed canopy and raised it off the frame so the props aren't in view.

Here's the new canopy with the two original LEDS from the first attempt.   The 3V to 5C DCDC convertor is conveniently mounted on the underside of the canopy.  Clearing the FC easily.


Here's what it looks like now with four LEDS.  Notice the yellow led die element and how it's fully distorted on the 15 degree lens versus the outer 100 degree lens.

I got to admit, this next photo reminds me of my aunt and mothers when I was younger when they would get their hair done with curlers, lol....


FC is the betaFPV V1 ELRS 1S board.  It's still working after several motor and frame changes.  Most resilient betafpv FC I've ever had!

I've swapped out the fpv camera as well from the CADDX kangaroo to the FOXEER toothless nano.   Wanted to see how this low light camera would react.

Dry weight is 60G with all the tomfoolery. 


Mission was a success, I can pretty much freestyle now, maybe it's time for 2S!

The first 20 seconds its shot from my phone's camera, the rest is the FPV feed viewed from my goggles.

Very nice!
I dig the curlers look. It just needs a cigarette hanging out of a mouth.
The two additional leds definitely brightened it up a bit.

Wow, now that is some night flying. 

(25-Apr-2022, 03:36 AM)Lemonyleprosy Wrote: Very nice!
I dig the curlers look. It just needs a cigarette hanging out of a mouth.

lol, very true mate!

My happymodel X12 AIO arrived.    I got the version with ELRS (spi rx) and OpenVTX included in the AIO.

This is a pretty cool AIO for 1S rigs.  Has all the bells and whistles with ELRS v2 and OpenVTX up to 300mW.
With the ELRS antenna the surface mount version, all I had to add was a camera and vtx antenna. 


I got the V2 ELRS board in the table below:


A quick STATUS check in the cli confirms the version of gyro and accelerometer.   Also CPU is a healthy 28% with RPM filtering on, a 2K PID loop and DSHOT300.

Quote:# 

# status
MCU F411 Clock=108MHz (PLLP-HSE), Vref=3.32V, Core temp=26degC
Stack size: 2048, Stack address: 0x2001fff0
Configuration: CONFIGURED, size: 3771, max available: 16384
Devices detected: SPI:1
Gyros detected: gyro 1 locked dma
GYRO=ICM20689, ACC=ICM20689
OSD: MAX7456
System Uptime: 10 seconds, Current Time: 2022-06-16T10:49:50.647+00:00
CPU:28%, cycle time: 127, GYRO rate: 7874, RX rate: 15, System rate: 9
Voltage: 1 * 0.01V (0S battery - NOT PRESENT)
I2C Errors: 0
Arming disable flags: RXLOSS CLI MSP

# 

I'm running it in the following micro.

• 1S 450 - 600mAh lipo using BT2.0 connector
  
• HGLRC AEOLUS 1102 18000KV motors, 1.5mm shaft
  
• GnarlyFPV Primo 2.5" (65mm) frame
  
• X12 12A AIO with ELRS and OpenVTX
  
• HQ Prop - T65MMX3GR-PC-Tmount
  
• Foxeer Razer PICO camera
  
• TGS dipole U.FL vtx antenna
  

BF 4.3 (GA), RPM filtering, BlueJay 0.16 @ 48Khz, DSHOT300, 2K PID.

The tune is pretty aggressive, based off a toothpic preset i found in.... presets!

Very NICE