I am currently in the process of building a racing quadcopter but have not yet completed it! This space will be dedicated to my build, and will be completed once I have completed the build and have gotten the drone up and running.
The above image shows the unassembled frame with all nuts and bolts, prior to building.
On the left is the assembled 210mm frame with 4 2450KV brushless motors from DYS.
I later trimmed the wires down and prepped them for soldering.
The image on the right shows the 4 in 1 ESC board that I soldered to the motors. I later found out that this was connected incorrectly by 90 degrees, and that my front facing motors would really be at the side of the frame. To fix this I just removed the whole assemble from the motors and rotated it.
I chose the 4 in 1 ESCs because I thought it would be less soldering work and a simpler set-up. Although it is usually not advised since if one ESC malfunctions, the entire board needs to be replaced rather than just replacing a single ESC as one would do if they had 4 separate ESCs.
It was at this point that I ran into my first set of issues where the stand-offs that came with the boards were extremely cheap quality and wouldn't fit the rest of the electrical components properly, or screw into the frame correctly. I managed to go back to the shop and buy a new set of nylon standoffs that were much stronger and fit better.
I fixed up the assembly and cleaned up the wiring, then soldered three little wires to the receiver which I would need to connect to the F4A flight controller that I bought. This component was also from DYS. The next step would be to connect the flight controller with the receiver to the ESC board.
I checked that my flight controller was working by plugging it into a PC and opening Betaflight Configurator. It was recognized and seemed to be working well. I then had to leave to come back to the USA for my final semester of school, and the build had to be put on hold. What happened next was extremely irritating...
Upon arriving back to the US, I plugged the flight controller into my PC to check if all was fine. Unfortunately the flight controller was not recognized at all. I tried for days to troubleshoot this issue by changing software, downloading new firmware updates, watching videos on what could be wrong, etc. I have come to believe that the board was somehow damaged on the flight back to the US, and that it simply will not work.
This project has officially been put on hiatus until I find a new flight controller.