Quad Eye's WASP 280 Mini FPV Quad

[EyeStation]

I could not hold off any longer. The mini Quad Racing just looks too much fun to miss out on.
Watching the builds of various mini's around here I opted for the Wasp 280. I downloaded the manual before I bought it and saw how simple and unique the design was. But for me, a wooden frame means a disposable aircraft frame.
When I saw there was very little glued in this frame and the repairs would be easy, I had no more excuses.
ESC's and CC3d OpenPilot cane in on Thursday. Had a 6 ch receiver already, so spent THursday night and Friday programming the DX6, and running through the OpenPilot GCS software. Updated the controller to the latest software and waited for Saturdays postman.
Saturday did indeed, bring the goods. Got the frame dry fitted and went through possible electronics layouts in the frame. Installed the Sony 600 cam into the nose. Put the FPV TX and PD board into place. Dropped the #808 Key cam above the sony on the platform provided and stepped back to see this.




I guess it's time to go off to the paint booth.

Like TaSaJaRa, I wanted that faux Carbon Fiber look using the supplies I had at hand.
Settled on FasKolors Fasescent Purple as the base color getting the CF pattern with the drawer liner and Fasblack.
Let it dry up a bit and reassembled for another look.






Spent about an hour setting up the CC3d, which was a breeze to go through. Found I had one motor that I need to swap wires on. Resoldered them and dressed the wires. ESC servo leads shortened to length.
Now, time has come, Full battery, fully programmed Tx. Time to put the props on and see what she does.
Found out the default "unarmed" programmed into the flight controller needs a trigger to turn off.
Plug the usb cable back in and find that tab on the software. Click, send, disconnect, back to battery.
Powered her up, throttle to low, Yaw Left, and she's armed. Wipe the sweat from my hands and go for lift off.
About 2/5 throttle she starts to rock a bit, "pay attention to the roll" I tell myself. Give it a couple twitches of roll left and right to make sure it responds properly and she's good on that axis. Next a bit of pitch for and aft and she's correct there too. up to 1/2 throttle and she lifts off in a nice whirl of sound and air. Straight up with increase. Need any trim right? Hmm, no.
Not pitching forward or back either, wow. Ok lets see, forward stick and she gently goes forward. slight tick back on the elevator and she holds right there. Nice.
OK, lets see what the rudder does. Get it up about chest high and left yaw for 1/4 turn. holds!
1/2 turn Yaw Right, flat yaw and holding. Outstanding! and the first attempt at setting up this control board.
Well 2 batteries went in and got about 7 minutes hover, slow forward flight out of a a 3Cell 1300 mAh Nano-Tech that hasn't been used in 7 months.

Time for bed. Much work to to tomorrow to finish this frame off.

Sunday starts with another dis-assembly and the the cleaning and routing of cables. After that it was time to soften up the look of the Faux CF.
Not really liking the checkerboard look, and realizing my Lexan painting routine does not work for bottoms up painting, I set out to mute the outer shell with the Fasescent Purple, some Faspearl Black. With the frame stripped of electronics I put it together and started to paint the exterior while assembled.

After finishing the airbrushing part, I set off to Ace Hardware to get some Urathane spray to gloss up the finish.

Dried the pieces as long as I could and started the final assembly. Used Loctite Fun-Tack Mounting putty to put the esc's on the lower platform.
performed final wire sizing for the ESC power. Hot glue to secure the wire connections at the ESC. Mount all the FPV equipment similarly to the canopy. Final position for Rx and antenna set.
Now, this is what I got going on.

 

[Tony]

What in the hell are you guys trying to do to me???? lmao

It's the Purple People Eater hahaha.

Can't wait to see it in the air!

 

[EyeStation]

Yeah, wouldn't be a maiden day if there was no video to prove it.
Here is the second flight outside; viewpoint, my hat.

[video=youtube_share;FLSr51KgQC8]http://youtu.be/FLSr51KgQC8[/video]

Same flight from the onboard cam. I think I have it set to 4:3 for some unknown reason.

[video=youtube_share;4oOR1v2VxNc]http://youtu.be/4oOR1v2VxNc[/video]

 

[Tony]

That thing seems really smooth and stable. Damn, I'm going to have to get one of these things and join teh fun!!!

 

[EyeStation]

I don't know if it is the frame or the CC3d OpenPilot controller and software. I believe it is the later. Quite a bit more stable than I thought it was gonna be "out of the box".
If you have the FPV stuff around already, the rest is chump change.

 

[Tony]

I actually have nothing for a quad. Would need it all unfortunately. Which is why I have not done it yet. But, I guess there is always that first step lol. ,

 

[EyeStation]

Had my first ever FPV flight during my afternoon break. This thing is stable enough to give me confidence to don the goggles. I pulled a chair out of a vacant office and into the empty machine shop floor.
Powered up the FPV equipment and DX6. Put the goggles at the top of my head and leaned over to power up the quad.
Sat back and armed the Wasp while the goggles were still atop my head. Did a quick liftoff to see she was still as I expected. Put her back on the ground and pulled down the goggles.
My how perspective changes. I will have to learn how big my vehicle is from that view. One thing I did notice, the ground comes up awful fast....
Last night I took the time to dial down my Dual Rates to around 45 for all 3 channels. Made the quad much less responsive. Which turned out to be just what I needed to help pull off the FPV flight today.
Only one battery, about 3 belly rubs on the ground. Once almost to the support spans in the ceiling. Managed to get about 4 circuits in after getting my bearings. The quad is so smooth that I barely got sweaty palms. Oh I did! But not as bad as I had thought.
Kinda weird to hear the quad pass your chair in stereo and see the view of me sitting on the chair on my right side of the screen.
Not sure if it was the metal building I was in or some other vibrations, but I saw more static on the display than I expected.
Never lost my position in flight due to the static. It being my first FPV experience wasn't sure how it would turn out.
All Good I suppose. Can't wait for an outdoor try.

 

[Tony]

Right on bro! Outdoor should be a lot more fun.

 

[EyeStation]

OK. Second FPV. Showing the learning curve. One Onboard camera, One behind me on a 55Gal drum.
I have them cued up in the links below. If you start them both at the same time, you get simultaneous dual perspective.
I fly way too low now and have to feel out the ceiling. If I look at the windows in the back of the room, I can almost judge my height.
Onboard,
Start at 1:05
[video=youtube_share;NBben6c-E-U]http://youtu.be/NBben6c-E-U?t=1m5s[/video]


Drum Cam,
Start at 1:23
[video=youtube_share;9YyP2_pPodM]http://youtu.be/9YyP2_pPodM?t=1m23s[/video]

 

[Stambo]

Dude that sounds awful.
Is that just the camera or does it really sound like that.
I feel a few drops of oil in the motor bearings might be in order.

Really hard to learn FPV when you are so restricted.
You need to get outside so it can stretch it's wings a bit.

All in all a good effort for a second FPV flight.

 

[EyeStation]

I am not sure if it is the camera or not. I heard that on my outdoor onboard camera too. But the hat cam does not seem to sound like that. At least from afar. I will swap the cameras around and see if there is a difference.
The motors spin freely, but I do get a high pitch when powered. Figured it was the combo sound of 4 esc's.
Thanks for the input though.

 

[EyeStation]

Hey there Stambo, I found out it's the wide angle camera that has some vibrations sounds in it.
Here is the wide angle camera,
[video=youtube_share;9AGUdbg-6hY]http://youtu.be/9AGUdbg-6hY[/video]

And the narrow view camera in the same spot. Both are #808 keycams.

[video=youtube_share;TeL6yAVtwU8]http://youtu.be/TeL6yAVtwU8[/video]


Time to dig into that Wide Angle one and see what's the dealio.

 

[Stambo]

That's good to hear, I was hoping it was not the quad.
I actually prefer the view from the narrow cam, better colours and less distortion.
Although you may be able to adjust the other one in software.

 

[EyeStation]

Got my first FPV Ground Station set up. Contained within a 13"x13"x7" deep flight case.
TFT 7" color LCD monitor
Immersion RC Uno 5800 V2 5.8 Ghz rx
FatShark Teleporter V2 goggles
3 Cell 2200 Battery for Screen
2 Cell 1000 Batteries for the rx supply
Monitor clamp is actually a microphone clamp meant to clamp to a round pole.
I also have a boom microphone stand to be used when a table top is not available.

I like the sensitivity of the Immersion rx and will probably toss the second video output into a FatShark repeater for the goggles reception later.

I find it difficult to keep my eyes on the screen when my natural reaction is to keep an eye on the bird. The goggles keep you from dealing with this choice.

Here is my FPV EyeStation !

 

[Tony]

Damn, you are just going whole hog at this FPV thing aren't ya lol. Setup looks great though. Love the monitor as well as the goggles.

 

[Tasajara]

Nice Wasp build... Glad to see your having fun with it. It is my favorite Mini Quad. I like it much better than my RCX 250 It just seems to fly smoother given the longer lenght.
I bought 2 More Wasp 280's to build, I bought the V2 and a V1 The V1 is still on sale 38% off $24.99.
Here is the link Wasp 280 V1

 

[Stambo]

I find I cannot fly FPV with a screen.
I wear glasses for close up stuff, reading etc and I need them on when watching the screen.
If I look to the aircraft it takes a while for my eyes to adjust after taking the glasses off.
By then it may already be too late.
I don't need my glasses with the goggles for some reason and it is much more immersive.

 

[EyeStation]

So I wake up Super Bowl morning and see +12" of fresh snow that fell overnight. It looked great on the trees, hanging thick on each branch.
Hmmm, I should stick the Keycam on the Wasp and try to get some nice Sno-video.
Here is my back yard area. I figured get a couple of the close trees then go over the field area for a nice little pan.

View attachment 13828

Well, I got her up and headed towards the nearest tree, but realized I was too close to the building and did not want to be "the creep" , so I moved her out to the field.
This thing gets small quick and I am flying LOS.
Luckily I did have the tail lights on.

As she was heading out, she was fading into the snowfall. The purple lights did not show up well in the white haze of the snowfall. So I pull back on the pitch to see if I can pull her back. Not "seeing" much correction I start to throttle down to see if she responded to that, and she did.
At this point I was already heading towards the end of the property and near to the grocery store behind the field. I have to bail.
Started to lower the throttle and watched as she headed away from the Apartments to the left and parallel with the store property.
Dropped the throttle and watched her fall, and the final resting point obscured by the tree directly behind my patio.....

Search Party Party!

I pulled up into the unplowed lot between the store and our common area. Walked up the hill to view the field in front of me. I looked across and saw my patio and did a bit of lining up my last view. But looking out into that field all I could see was last years overgrown cattails all holding their own share of the snowfall. Lots of spaces without snow between the leaves and stalks. Will be impossible to see an impact zone of broken snow.
Time to grab the TX and pray for a miracle. Mind you, I have been laughing to myself ever since this thing went down. All I can think of is, "the forum is gonna laugh with me on this one".
I push the throttle stick down and to the left to arm the quad, I don't hear beeps from the onboard. Give a bit of throttle and I hear something to my right. Yeah Baby.
Turn my attention to my 2 o'clock and give another throttle tap. I hear blades spinning!
Getting ready to take a walk into the field I look a bit to the right for a better way in when I see an impact zone at the top of the dividing hill.
Walk over the 10 steps and reach in to pull out a purple plum.
As you will see in the video after the snow immersion.

Here is the onboard keycam. You can tell when I start to freak out.


[video=youtube_share;r7_-c2bpTS8]http://youtu.be/r7_-c2bpTS8[/video]

I am happy that the battery did not come disconnected. Because of this I was able to keep my TX powered and try to get the quad to emit a tone or turn a motor.


View attachment 13829

If you look towards the back hill you will see a yellow guard rail. The quad landed in the hill just in front of that.


(Seems YouTube is having some issues this morning....Processing 0% )

No damage to quad or pride.

 

[Tony]

Haha, love the second flight and the catch at the end. But man that thing just immediately flipped inverted when you cut the power.

 

[Stambo]

Trying to fly these LOS is almost pointless, even with LEDs all over them.
You NEED FPV!!