xy666
3S LiPo, HobbyKing X666 frame
Project started on September 28, 2015....back to Flying RC Vehicles overview
After my failed attempts of completely making my own Quadcopter (including Software) I kinda forgot about the whole topic for a while. But a couple of years later, shortly after starting my first real programming work as a student, a colleague of mine introduced me to the world of open-source racing copters. So, with his help, I started to build my first real, working, quadcopter.
Here are some recordings of the FPV footage. Be aware that these videos are recorded from the received signal on the ground. Not only can you see lots of interference and other HF problems, the loss of quality from the video recorder and the YouTube encoding is also very noticeable. In real-life, the picture doesn't look that bad.
Initially I got the CC3D Flight Controller, running the OpenPilot Software. This worked, but I had some problems with the hardware and/or software (I don't really remember), which caused me to switch to a Naze32, running on the Baseflight / Cleanflight / Betaflight family of firmwares.
Parts of the Hardware, mainly the Tx/Rx, Motors, ESCs and Battery, I reused from my previous xyCopter attempts.
Of course, the huge X666 frame from HobbyKing, with a 666mm span, turned out to be far too huge for my first attempts. I also took spare arms from the X550 and X525 frames from HobbyKing, which were still too big. So after only a short time I tore down this copter and used the parts to build a smaller Tricopter.
I also got carried away slightly with this build after looking at the features supported by Cleanflight. So it not only had the bare necessities but also GPS, a Compass, an Altimeter and an OLED display (that I all already had), which mostly never really worked, except for the display. I also mounted a Xiaomi Yi action cam to it and experimented a little bit with simple servo gimbals.
Parts List
The prices listed below are just what I found while doing this page some years later, not the real prices I paid back then.
| Part | Description | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Frame | HobbyKing X666 Glass Fiber Quadcopter Frame 666mm | 17.88€ |
| FC | Openpilot CC3D Flight Controller With Cable Set | 17.39€ |
| ESCs | € | |
| Motors | 4x Robbe Roxxy 2824-34 1100KV | 113.60€ |
| Props | € | |
| Cam | Sony 700TVL PAL FPV Camera | 15.00€ |
| VTx | Boscam 5.8Ghz 200mW FPV Transmitter | 22.79€ |
| OSD | Minim OSD v1.1 | 19.79€ |
| Rx | FrSky D8R-XP 2.4Ghz Receiver (w/telemetry & CPPM) | 25.66€ |
| Battery | Turnigy 4000mAh 3S 30C Lipo Pack w/XT-60 | 26.09€ |
| Sum | € |
You can find my Betaflight configuration dumps here.