Just one point of scale. The old flamewheels are well known, but many people are now choosing the 250 class “racer” quadcopters, especially after watching all the Charpu videos. The motors and ESC combo here are slower turning with larger blades for a larger copter (lower KV). If you want to make something which looks like the picture on the start page of Emlid Navio+ that’s the Hobby King/Banggood Diatone FPV250 frame with some smaller but faster motors (higher KV) like the Baby Beast V2 and AFro 12A ESCs.
One tip with the Baby Beasts, make sure you get the combo pack because that’s the only way to get hold of the CW/CCW prop adapters. My personal favourite is the FPV250LH (“low hung / clean-and-dirty”) which is especially good because it’s one of a few designs where the whole electronics carrying chassis is vibration isolated. With a Mobius stuck straight inside the lower frame I get gimbal like (smooth, jelly free) FPV and HD recordings, just on velcro, no additional vibration pads necessary.
FPV250LH Frame:
Baby Beast V2 Motors, 12A ESC and CW/CCW prop adapters combo:
Pixhawk compatible PDB (built-in volt+amp sensor, fits perfectly in top/centre of FPV250):
For radio I recommend the open source FrSky gear, i.e. current price performance model is Taranis Plus radio then. However as Navio+ only support CPPM rather than the newer SBUS you would need an SBUS to CPPM adapter for any of the preferred radio receivers like the X4RSB or X8R.
If you go the Futaba route then as far as I am aware it’s primarily CPPM. Seems like the whole Taranis thing is better from what I have seen so far, but don’t have one so can’t comment on how open their firmware/hardware-hacking/add-ons are. When you get the telemetry working on the Taranis it’s great and there is a long list of upgrades I can do.
As I also had Pixhawk which already supports SBUS on the RC connector (and Emlid say maybe it’s possible later on Navio+) I just got the X4RSB so all my quadcopters will be controlled by the Taranis and SBUS capable/future proof 16 channels. However if you decide you don’t need telemetry then you can get some real cheapo stuff and just use the radio to takeoff and land or backup (so I heard the people using cellular/wifi joystick control do).
This Taranis Plus combo is only 8 dollars more including the X8R which is a bit of overkill but great:
And the CPPM converter until when/if Emlid get SBUS working on the RC port of Navio+:
Regarding ESCs I tested both Afro 12A and 20A ESCs and the 12A won because the battery lasts up to a minute longer. The motors put out between over 600g of thrust each with 6045 3-blade props (!!!). But NOT with 30 pitch props (not with the standard 5030) which is less than 300g each, not good when fully loaded with computers and FPV equipment. When you use 6 inch props on this frame, there’s no room for the Navio+ on top, so you need the Low-Hung frame then or some other solution. I’m also testing the lower part of the FPV250LH with the upper part of the new FPV260 “upswept” variant as I want to eliminate prop-wash when descending and increase stability.
It’s a real racer, I’m building a whole fleet of them for some experimentation. The thing shoots up into the air like a rocket, to 300m from ground height in just a few seconds. Larger ESC is not always better, 20% more than specification is the rule, so 12A on Baby Beast v2 is perfect.
p.s. I’ve already documented the build with photos and am about to upload it all to a new web site I’m building. I’ll post back here when it’s ready.