GBX210 racing drone Upgraded 1200TVL camera, A LIGHTNING IN A CLEAR SKY!!!
I ask you to follow this LINK for the purchase of this product, in this way at no extra cost, you will support this and my future reviews. Thank You.
In this review we will take in exam one of the better models of competition drones.. It deals with GBX210, sold in a DIY kit to assemble. It may seem difficult if not impossible for the first time to assemble a drone because of the many components, but i did it
and following my instructions You will also succeed and you will be satisfied of the result. It is one of the fastest drone on the market, and the better drones are those assembled by self, with selected components to have a good performance during the flight. If you have intention to buy a drone to assemble, i cannot suggest you better choise. It will be very simple to assemble if you follow carefully my tutorial. In the eventuality of EVERY problem or doubt during the build, you can comment the thread, i will give you useful explainations and suggestions for your project. Have Fun! 
Unboxing
The kit was shipped through Italy Express, and received without any customs fee to pay.
The content, well placed inside the box, occupies a reduced volume.
It consists of:
4x BLHelis OneShot42 dys XS30A ESCs
2x dys Fire 2300kv CCW Motors
2x dys Fire 2300kv CW Motors
1x SP Racing F3 OSD Acro Flight Controller
1x Foxeer 5.8G 40CH 25mW/200mW/600mW FPV transmitter
1x Foxeer Monster 1200TVL 16:9 Widescreen FPV Camera
10x 3 Leaf Unbreakable CW Propellers
10x 3 Leaf Unbreakable CCW Propellers
1x Foxeer 5.8GHz 3dBi Mushroom Antenna (RP SMA Male connector not compatible with SMA Female connector of the FPV transmitter. It is recommended the purchase of a RP SMA Male-SMA Male adapter).
1x GEP-RX5 Hawk 210mm Carbon Fiber Frame
1x Battery Strap
5x Cable Ties
1x GEPRC GEP-TX Configurable LED Board
1x XT60 Battery Connector and layer board
1x Frame Assembly Schematic
Some screws
Aluminum supports
Adhesives
How to Build
I advise to use a solder tin with the following features for making welds. Those in this tutorial are cold because of the unsuitable pond, and i had to do them again for obtain the desired result.
You can start mounting the motors using the appropriate screws. Inside the box of the motors you will find all the needed: the wrench to screw the 8mm nuts, also included within the package, of a different coloration to distinguish the direction of rotation of the motor, CW Purple - CCW Black, which allows to tighten the propellers to the motors, and the screws for fastening the motors in the frame.
Done this extract the ESCs from the envelopes and solder their pitches to the black motor cables, for the motors marked by black dice of CCW direction we must solder the 3 cables in order of position, for those marked by purple dice of CW direction we must invert the position of the first 2 left cables so that they can rotate in the direction they are predisposed for. Take attention to the position of the motors and dispose them as in the following photo so that the work done by the rotation of the same favor the fastening of the nut to the crankshaft. The incision GEP RC determines the anterior side of the frame, surmounted from the camera.
Proceed inserting the strap in the slots below for the fixing of the battery. The knurled part and the most of that spongy will have to stay outside to ensure perfect adherence.
Solder the XT60 battery connector to the PDB and proceed fixing it into the frame using the traditional cross screws which will adhere underneath. It will serve as the basis for fixing the layer board, which will transfer the current provided from the battery at the right voltage to the different components. Enter the heat shrink around the ESCs and warm them to protect the contacts from moisture and dust. Solder the ESCs black cable in the negative and the red cable in the positive, as shows the second photo. Still do not restrain them with straps, as we will need to move them for fit the support of the FPV camera. Do not throw the leftovers of the red and black cables, they will be useful later.
Solder the red cables of the LEDs near the 5V pitch to provide it a right supply, and on the next pitch of the GND soldier the black cable which will serve to complete the circuit of the electrical current. Plugging in the battery you will see that the LEDs will turn on and that the PDB will show signs of life thanks to the leds disposed on it.
The red and black cables of the ESCs in the top half of the frame will have to pass through the rectangular slot and they have to be soldered in the same way of other 2, depending on the location. The one on the left will be soldered in the underlying pitches in the left angle, in the same way the one on the right will be soldered in the corresponding pitches.
I screwed the two ends of the frame to make you have a clearer perspective of the situation.
Now we will connect the fpv transmitter to the PDB, which will be powered at 12V. Then we will proceed in the same way of LEDs, soldering the red cable at the 12V pitch and the black cable at the GND pitch. Remove the green cable, the others yellow, black and white with the clamp will be connected to the camera, the OSD pin in the cam remains uncovered. The white cable connected in the FPV transmitter in the pin DC5V out provides the right supply to the cam, which as you can see it accepts a power supply from 5V to 22V of potential, this thanks to a 5V BEC integrated into the fpv transmitter which allows it to directly feed the camera, without the obligation to connect it to the PDB and simplifying the operation.
The fpv antenna with RP-SMA Male connector included in the kit does not fit with that SMA Female of the transmitter.
Well, you can fix the aluminum supports, if you have not already done so, through the special golden screws which will allow you to unify the top of the frame at the end of the project and will support the rear lights of our gbx210.
Now we take the bigger cables that were advanced by the ESCs, we tap and solder them in the same pitches of the LEDs, they will be needed to feed the flight controller at the same time, which we will dispose over the PDB. We will solder the red cable in the 5V pitch and that black in the GND, then now we will have 2 cables welded in the same pitch, as you can see below. Done this you can fix the PDB through the dices with threaded nut.
We can proceed extracting the Flight Controller from the case, before positioning it on the PDB we pass the 2 red and black cables below the Flight Controller and we dispose them at the sixth channel rheophores, soldering them respectively in the positive and negative for feed it.
Now we will do almost in the same way with the white and black cables of the ESCs, that we will connect at the first 4 rheophores. The result must be identic at that showed in the photo below. Follow the following scheme, after being assured that all proceed well and that the motors are disposed in the right position, solder the white and black cables of the ESCs of the first motor at the rheophore 1, the black cable in the GND and the white cable in the S (Signal), the positive will remain uncovered. Proceed in the same way with white and black cables referred at the other 3 motors, respecting the order. Connecting the battery you will notice that the Flight Controller will turn on and you will heard the ESCs beep, a sign that you have performed the procedure correctly.
You must cut the end with the clamp to solder it.
Perfect, now before "closing" all isolate the contacts, we can use a simple adhesive tape as in my case or the hot glue, not advised in that in particularly rare situations can happen that it dissolves with heat. We pierce the adhesive tape above the slots And enter the screws again so that we can fix everything.
We are at a good point, following the assembly schematic now you can screw the grid through the dices which will help to lift the FPV transmitter and to pass the SMA Male support of the antenna across the curves of the LEDs. Fix the FPV Transmitter to the grid through the appropriate electrician ties included in the package. Make sure that the configuration button of the channels and the display are properly visible and easily accessible through a toothpick from the top half of the frame. Connect the white clamp to the transmitter and, once you have screwed an FPV TX antenna with SMA Male connector, plug in the battery and check if it works. You should see the number corrispondent to the used channel, leave everything as it is, except the transmission power, which must be setted to 600mW for the achieving of great distances and to reduce interferences. To modify it hold the little white button for 2 seconds, then do it again and change the settings from 1 (25mW of default) to 3 which means 600mW, now keep pressed the button for 2 seconds to quit from the configuration menu of the FPV transmitter.
Now insert the camera into the 2 suited supports, which will be embed in the top of the frame. Alongside them 2 supports should be fixed which i used to place the receiver above, but which actually are predisposed to support an action cam, to use for recording your fpv flights at a better quality than that of the cam of the quadcopter. The 2 aluminum "tubes" will be fixed in correspondence of the holes of the little supports using the golden screws, like before, which will sustain the receiver in my case and that will set a limit at the rotation of the FPV cam of the quadcopter.
To finish with the assembly of the frame let's screw the top of the frame to the bottom one, and fit the camera holder in the lower half of the frame, as shown in the photo. Tighten the screws and make sure that all the structure is well solid and resistant. We must make sure it is able to withstand an impact at speeds..... and mine is it as you can see in the test below..
Now we dispose the receiver, in my case a 9 channels RadioLink R9DS in place of the action-cam housing if you do not own it, and fix it with an electrician clamp. We will connect it through SBUS, in this way 3 cables will communicate with all channels, rather than a cable for each single channel (PWM). We take the white, red and black cables and we link them in the SBus pins of the receiver, you can cut or put aside all the other cables.. and connect the receiver in the IO-2 input of the Flight Controller. Pushing the button inside the receiver we will change the connection settings from PWM to SBus. Now turning on drone and radio (RadioLink AT9) you will establish a link at a 2.4GHz frequency between receiver and radio.
| GBX210 sprint iniziale per recensione (0 min 9 sec) |
In this review we will take in exam one of the better models of competition drones.. It deals with GBX210, sold in a DIY kit to assemble. It may seem difficult if not impossible for the first time to assemble a drone because of the many components, but i did it
and following my instructions You will also succeed and you will be satisfied of the result. It is one of the fastest drone on the market, and the better drones are those assembled by self, with selected components to have a good performance during the flight. If you have intention to buy a drone to assemble, i cannot suggest you better choise. It will be very simple to assemble if you follow carefully my tutorial. In the eventuality of EVERY problem or doubt during the build, you can comment the thread, i will give you useful explainations and suggestions for your project. Have Fun! Unboxing
The kit was shipped through Italy Express, and received without any customs fee to pay.
 | This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 1600x900. |
The content, well placed inside the box, occupies a reduced volume.
| This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 1600x900. |
It consists of:
4x BLHelis OneShot42 dys XS30A ESCs
2x dys Fire 2300kv CCW Motors
2x dys Fire 2300kv CW Motors
1x SP Racing F3 OSD Acro Flight Controller
1x Foxeer 5.8G 40CH 25mW/200mW/600mW FPV transmitter
1x Foxeer Monster 1200TVL 16:9 Widescreen FPV Camera
10x 3 Leaf Unbreakable CW Propellers
10x 3 Leaf Unbreakable CCW Propellers
1x Foxeer 5.8GHz 3dBi Mushroom Antenna (RP SMA Male connector not compatible with SMA Female connector of the FPV transmitter. It is recommended the purchase of a RP SMA Male-SMA Male adapter).
1x GEP-RX5 Hawk 210mm Carbon Fiber Frame
1x Battery Strap
5x Cable Ties
1x GEPRC GEP-TX Configurable LED Board
1x XT60 Battery Connector and layer board
1x Frame Assembly Schematic
Some screws
Aluminum supports
Adhesives
| This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 3264x1836. |
How to Build
I advise to use a solder tin with the following features for making welds. Those in this tutorial are cold because of the unsuitable pond, and i had to do them again for obtain the desired result.
You can start mounting the motors using the appropriate screws. Inside the box of the motors you will find all the needed: the wrench to screw the 8mm nuts, also included within the package, of a different coloration to distinguish the direction of rotation of the motor, CW Purple - CCW Black, which allows to tighten the propellers to the motors, and the screws for fastening the motors in the frame.
Done this extract the ESCs from the envelopes and solder their pitches to the black motor cables, for the motors marked by black dice of CCW direction we must solder the 3 cables in order of position, for those marked by purple dice of CW direction we must invert the position of the first 2 left cables so that they can rotate in the direction they are predisposed for. Take attention to the position of the motors and dispose them as in the following photo so that the work done by the rotation of the same favor the fastening of the nut to the crankshaft. The incision GEP RC determines the anterior side of the frame, surmounted from the camera.
Proceed inserting the strap in the slots below for the fixing of the battery. The knurled part and the most of that spongy will have to stay outside to ensure perfect adherence.
Solder the XT60 battery connector to the PDB and proceed fixing it into the frame using the traditional cross screws which will adhere underneath. It will serve as the basis for fixing the layer board, which will transfer the current provided from the battery at the right voltage to the different components. Enter the heat shrink around the ESCs and warm them to protect the contacts from moisture and dust. Solder the ESCs black cable in the negative and the red cable in the positive, as shows the second photo. Still do not restrain them with straps, as we will need to move them for fit the support of the FPV camera. Do not throw the leftovers of the red and black cables, they will be useful later.
Solder the red cables of the LEDs near the 5V pitch to provide it a right supply, and on the next pitch of the GND soldier the black cable which will serve to complete the circuit of the electrical current. Plugging in the battery you will see that the LEDs will turn on and that the PDB will show signs of life thanks to the leds disposed on it.
The red and black cables of the ESCs in the top half of the frame will have to pass through the rectangular slot and they have to be soldered in the same way of other 2, depending on the location. The one on the left will be soldered in the underlying pitches in the left angle, in the same way the one on the right will be soldered in the corresponding pitches.
I screwed the two ends of the frame to make you have a clearer perspective of the situation.
Now we will connect the fpv transmitter to the PDB, which will be powered at 12V. Then we will proceed in the same way of LEDs, soldering the red cable at the 12V pitch and the black cable at the GND pitch. Remove the green cable, the others yellow, black and white with the clamp will be connected to the camera, the OSD pin in the cam remains uncovered. The white cable connected in the FPV transmitter in the pin DC5V out provides the right supply to the cam, which as you can see it accepts a power supply from 5V to 22V of potential, this thanks to a 5V BEC integrated into the fpv transmitter which allows it to directly feed the camera, without the obligation to connect it to the PDB and simplifying the operation.
The fpv antenna with RP-SMA Male connector included in the kit does not fit with that SMA Female of the transmitter.
Well, you can fix the aluminum supports, if you have not already done so, through the special golden screws which will allow you to unify the top of the frame at the end of the project and will support the rear lights of our gbx210.
Now we take the bigger cables that were advanced by the ESCs, we tap and solder them in the same pitches of the LEDs, they will be needed to feed the flight controller at the same time, which we will dispose over the PDB. We will solder the red cable in the 5V pitch and that black in the GND, then now we will have 2 cables welded in the same pitch, as you can see below. Done this you can fix the PDB through the dices with threaded nut.
We can proceed extracting the Flight Controller from the case, before positioning it on the PDB we pass the 2 red and black cables below the Flight Controller and we dispose them at the sixth channel rheophores, soldering them respectively in the positive and negative for feed it.
Now we will do almost in the same way with the white and black cables of the ESCs, that we will connect at the first 4 rheophores. The result must be identic at that showed in the photo below. Follow the following scheme, after being assured that all proceed well and that the motors are disposed in the right position, solder the white and black cables of the ESCs of the first motor at the rheophore 1, the black cable in the GND and the white cable in the S (Signal), the positive will remain uncovered. Proceed in the same way with white and black cables referred at the other 3 motors, respecting the order. Connecting the battery you will notice that the Flight Controller will turn on and you will heard the ESCs beep, a sign that you have performed the procedure correctly.
You must cut the end with the clamp to solder it.
Perfect, now before "closing" all isolate the contacts, we can use a simple adhesive tape as in my case or the hot glue, not advised in that in particularly rare situations can happen that it dissolves with heat. We pierce the adhesive tape above the slots And enter the screws again so that we can fix everything.
We are at a good point, following the assembly schematic now you can screw the grid through the dices which will help to lift the FPV transmitter and to pass the SMA Male support of the antenna across the curves of the LEDs. Fix the FPV Transmitter to the grid through the appropriate electrician ties included in the package. Make sure that the configuration button of the channels and the display are properly visible and easily accessible through a toothpick from the top half of the frame. Connect the white clamp to the transmitter and, once you have screwed an FPV TX antenna with SMA Male connector, plug in the battery and check if it works. You should see the number corrispondent to the used channel, leave everything as it is, except the transmission power, which must be setted to 600mW for the achieving of great distances and to reduce interferences. To modify it hold the little white button for 2 seconds, then do it again and change the settings from 1 (25mW of default) to 3 which means 600mW, now keep pressed the button for 2 seconds to quit from the configuration menu of the FPV transmitter.
Now insert the camera into the 2 suited supports, which will be embed in the top of the frame. Alongside them 2 supports should be fixed which i used to place the receiver above, but which actually are predisposed to support an action cam, to use for recording your fpv flights at a better quality than that of the cam of the quadcopter. The 2 aluminum "tubes" will be fixed in correspondence of the holes of the little supports using the golden screws, like before, which will sustain the receiver in my case and that will set a limit at the rotation of the FPV cam of the quadcopter.
To finish with the assembly of the frame let's screw the top of the frame to the bottom one, and fit the camera holder in the lower half of the frame, as shown in the photo. Tighten the screws and make sure that all the structure is well solid and resistant. We must make sure it is able to withstand an impact at speeds..... and mine is it
as you can see in the test below..| GBX210 racing drone Crash Test (0 min 19 sec) |
Now we dispose the receiver, in my case a 9 channels RadioLink R9DS in place of the action-cam housing if you do not own it, and fix it with an electrician clamp. We will connect it through SBUS, in this way 3 cables will communicate with all channels, rather than a cable for each single channel (PWM). We take the white, red and black cables and we link them in the SBus pins of the receiver, you can cut or put aside all the other cables.. and connect the receiver in the IO-2 input of the Flight Controller. Pushing the button inside the receiver we will change the connection settings from PWM to SBus. Now turning on drone and radio (RadioLink AT9) you will establish a link at a 2.4GHz frequency between receiver and radio.
  Now you can fix the ESCs with the electrician ties, enter the battery strap in the slots of the carbon fiber plate which will be useful to contain and protect the battery, stick the antislip double-sided for a better adherence and you will have completed the practical part of your project.    Configuration At this point we can finally proceed with the configuration of our model, using the software CleanFlight and BLHeliSuite, respectively to configure the Flight Controller and for handle the ESCs parameters. For connecting the Flight Controller to PC we must use a special adapter USB-TTL CP2104 included in the kit, connect the plugs as in the following photos and link the clamp in the input below at right of the Flight Controller named "F3".   Below i show you the configuration of my Flight Controller.  In the "Configuration" widget set the yaw degrees to 270°, the ESCs protocol to "OneShot42", disable Motor_Stop to use correctly the Air Mode and to spin at minimum the motors once armed. The "Minimum Throttle", "Maximum Throttle" and "Minimum Command" will have to be set according to the "sensibility"of your radio. They anyway will corresponds to mine in that, as you will see later, we will set manually the minimum to 1000 and the maximum to 2000 in the "Receiver" widget, so that the stick will be calibrated during the flight and that the minimum will correspond to the lower position of the Throttle stick. We enable the accelerometer in the "System Configuration" widget and we disable any active parameter in the "Other Features" widget. Now we can give a name to our model in the "Personalization" field and set the angle of the camera, if you are going to tilt it. Lastly we configure the connection mode of the receiver selecting "Serial-Based Receiver" ans "SBUS" if your receiver is compatible. We skip the "Power & Battery" widget and we go directly to the configuration of the "FailSafe".    Here i suggest you to set the "FailSafe Procedure" to Drop in that, especially if you flight in a countryside, it might happen that the motors keep spinning after the landing entangle the propellers into the grass and damaging the ESCs or the motors. Anyway the choice is personal if activate the automatic landing or not, setting it as in my case the quadcopter will fall once lost the signal, setting it to Land you can adjust the Throttle when landing and after how much time turn off the motors, expressed in tenths of a second. For the rest you can leave all as it is.   Below you can find my PID settings, that will allow you to have a more stable and smooth flight.   Now plug in the battery and we enter into the "Receiver" widget to verify if effectively the indicator marks the right movement of the directional sticks. In the case in which the indicator displays the minimum instead of maximum you must invert the position of them from the settings of the radio, as it is shown below. The minimum must corresponds to 1000, the maximum to 2000 and the middle stick to 1500. If it doesn't correspond, you must manually set the endpoint from the "CLI" section. Note the max. and min. position of the sticks before, specifying also if it is Roll, Pitch, Yaw or Throttle to avoid confusions. Once you done that you can go into the CLI console and you digit rxrange to have the confirm of what you wrote. After that you can digit "rxrange 0 <current min. value> <current max. value>" without quotes neither major and minor signs and press Enter to configure the Roll value, do the same with Pitch, Yaw and Throttle, but replacing their respective values and substituting the 0 respectively with 1, 2 and 3. Digit "save" and press Enter. The Flight Controller will reboot and you will see that the values showed into the "Receiver" tab will match to 1000 for minimum and to 2000 for maximum.     Now open the "Modes" widget and associate the mode we intend to use to channels of our radio. Before doing this we should know to which channels the switches of the radio are associated. To modify the "position" of the channels we can enter to the settings of the RadioLink AT9, the radio which i used for this tutorial, and then select AUX-CH. Once you done that return to the configurator, the function correspondent to channel will activate when the signaller will reach the green zone. ARM indicates arming, it arms the motors and sets the Flight Mode to Acro if the other modes Angle and Horizon are disabled, depriving the drone of any stabilization. The Air Mode is useful when you are piloting the drone in Acro Mode or in Horizon, helps to keep flying your quadcopter after flips and rolls, avoiding furthermore that the drone falls accidentally after brusque maneuveurs, for this it is adviced to disable the Air Mode before landing. The Horizon mode can be enabled only if the Angle mode is disabled, and it allows to do flips and rolls during the flight, keeping it stable anyway, while the Angle Mode constantly stabilizes the drone but it prevents you from doing stunts, useful if you are flying in LOS. I will keep you up to date for the other modes, i can't wait for test them..   Disconnect the battery, skip all the other sections and we go directly to the motors configuration. Enable the box "I understand the risks, propellers are removed - Enable motor control" and adjust the speed of the motors, get up the "Master" slider to 2000 and, once done that, plug in the battery... you will hear a series of tones which will indicate that the ESCs are under "calibration" state, move it to the minimum (1000) and wait for the end of the beeps, the procedure is successfully completed! Now you can disconnect the battery and proceed analyzing the "Sensors" widget.  Here tick the boxes related to gyroscope and accelerometer to enable them.  If you want you can set a timer from the radio, indicative for the charge status of the battery, in the case you don't have a low voltage alarm buzzer.  Plug in the battery again, now close CleanFlight and open BLHeliSuite. In the top pane "Select ATMEL / SILABS Interface" select the item preceded from the letter E "SILABS BLHeli Bootloader (Cleanflight)", click on "Connect" and then on "Read Setup" to upload the ESCs configuration. Copy the configuration shown below.  Remember that the beep of the ESCs is due to beacon delay, that is the idle time which must elapse before the sound alert. It is possible to adjust the intensity of the latter through the "Beacon Strength" slider. Personally i believe very useful this option in that favors the finding of the model in case of loss, performing the function of a buzzer. The drone is now ready for the first flight!!!!!! Flight test
I ask you to follow this LINK for the purchase of this product, in this way at no extra cost, you will support this and my future reviews. Thank You. You can use the coupon " TWITTER " for a 8% discount. |
Commenti
Posta un commento