BFight 210 / LS-800D Power up

Warning: Looooong article ahead (but luckily with loads of pictures)

Time to put some power to this BFight 210! But not straight away a battery. First, I'll power up the flightcontroller board through the USB connection, to check out the settings in Betaflight. It's important to have the receiver set up correctly, as well as modes, ans (most of all) the failsafe options.
It comes with an OMNIBUS F3 controller, pre-configured with Betaflight 3.1.7. Or at least, mine did. If you are reading this well after I published, chances are that Betaflight 3.2 or later is on yours, but at the time of this writing, 3.2 was only just out. I'll probably re-flash to 3.2 in due time, but first, I want to find out what this little quad has to offer straight out of the box.

So here's some screenshots of what my Betaflight 3.1.7 configuration looked like, after setting only a few essentials:

I did not change anything on the Ports tab. UART3 was set to be the receiver, and that is the correct one.

In the Configuration tab, I switched on MOTOR_STOP, although I effectively override that setting a little further down.

I have enabled Failsafe Stage 2, and the procedure to drop was then already selected - which is what I want.

I left the PID tuning values exactly as they were, since I have no idea what they should be otherwise. Let's see how she behaves with the stock settings.

On the receiver tab, I just confirmed that all my channels operated in the right direction, that midpoints were at 1500, and endpoints between 1000 and 2000. I also checked that my switches I wanted to use were on what channels, and working in the proper direction.

I set up my switch A as AUX3, which was to become my arming switch. The "away" position is the position it needs to be in to power on the transmitter, so that must be hte safest choice. So arming is done by pullinf swich A towards you. I also set up Air Mode to be triggered by that same switch, so when armed, Air Mode is On (and when not armed, Air Mode is off). This effectively undid the setting of MOTOR_STOP earlier (Configuration Tab), because with Air Mode, the minimum rpm is about 3%, not entirely off.
I set up my only 3-position switch as AUX1, to select Angle and Horizon in position 2 and 3 respectively. That leaves position 1 as Acro mode, which is the mode I intend to learn myself as soon as possible.
My Switch D is set as the failsafe switch. In the startup position, Failsafe is not triggered. if you want to apply the failsafe condition, you flip the switch.

Here's how I have set up the Betaflight OSD. This might change, once I gain some experience, butit is not essential to the functioning of the quad. It just determines what information is presented to me, and at what position on the screen. This will probably be different for everyone, and might well change for me too, once I've stared at it for some time :)

Finally, as I had Blackbox ticked in the Configuration tab, I also added a micro SD card to the flightcontroller to record parameters during flight. Not sure if I'll ever use it, but I had a card laying around that I could use for it, so why not... CPU load was still below 20%.

Assembly

I only had 3S batteries from my previous builds. But this type of quad would typically take 4S batteries. So I ordered one from a EU warehouse of HobbyKing. But I did not want to wait for that with firing up the quad 😉. So I took the smallest 3S battery I had, and looked at how to put that one on or under this quad. It is a 2700 mAh one, so a bit large and heavy, despite being only 3 cells. Adding the battery almost doubles the weight to 485 grams!

I used two pieces of self-adhesie Velcro to fix the battery, so that the supplied Velcro strap would be able to hold it in place.

As the power line, coming from the rear of the quad is rather long, the battery needs to be mounted with it's power lines forward, so they will meet at the side. Otherwise the power lines will get cut by the propellers in flight.

Also, I tuck the balance lead in between the battery power lines, to keep it away from the props.

As I mentioned before, the dipole antenna also needs to be kept out of the props. Here's how I accomplished that:

There's two slots on either side that the zip-tie fits through precicely. So you can pick one you like. When assembled like this, the zip-tie stands straight upward. I routed the antenna wire around the top plate, in order to avoid it having too Sharp corners. With the shrink tube around the zip-tie and antenna wire together, I crimped it in a straight upright position, and cut all off just above the antenna with some Sharp cutting pliers.

First Flight

With everything out of the way of the props, and the radio, including failsafe, set up, it was now time to get out there for a Line Of Sight (LOS) test hover. First power up with props mounted was in my back yard, but there is not sufficient roo to fly there. This was just to check if props still turn in the correct direction, and especially if the PID loop corrections are in the correct direction. Finger on the failsafe trigger....

Wow! That sounds smooth! 😃

Flipped the arming switch back to disarm, so I can hold it inone hand (first startup was on the tile floor).

Once in my hand (under the battery, taking care not to come near the props), I flipped the arming switch back to "hot", and the motors started up again ("armed" = "air mode", which means the motors do not get killed which throttle 0). When moving around, I felt the quad resisting every movement. Adding some 15% throttle made that resistance stronger. So all PID corrections work in the correct directions. Flipped the mode switch to one of the self-leveling, and felt it correct towards level right away 😃. Time for a test hover!

Found an empty grass field in a park to do the first hover test. A great succes in all flight modes! Acro is going to be somewhat of a challenge to get used to, but moving back and forth, left and right, worked all right, nose out. So I'll get there in the end.

That sound! Lovely, not too loud, buzzing like a bizzy beeeeee! I did not try a full punch out, but even at 75% throttle, I found it impressive. Despite the heavy 3S battery... That promises good things once I get my 4S battery.

LS-800D

Of course, I also fired up my new goggles. Tried them on, on my head. For that to work, I had to remove my glasses. But that is no problem, because I can see well nearby. Immediately, the clarity of the screen draws attention. The splash screen is wonderfully crisp, right up until the "snow" comes on. The on-screen information is not very well readable when there's no video feed and you are looking at snow. There are two simple solutions for that: either push the FUN button (that stands for "function", by the way 😉), or press the auto-search button. The FUN button toggles between video in signals: either the receiver, or the video-in connection on the right hand side. With nothing connected there, you will look at a blue screen, on which the on-screen display information is well readable. Or when the receiver video signal is displayed, the information is readable, but it may take a little time, depending on what is displayed as the video signal. But the information on what channel is used, is not very important during flight. And before flight, you have the time to take a good look.

There is minimaal light leakage, which I found to be surprising, looking at the ample room that is reserved for the nose (I seem to have a very wide nose, apparently...). What bothers me a bit, is that there is some sort of polarisation effect when looking in the goggles. I think the fresnell lens is polarised, and the film on the LCD screen too. The interaction causes the view from my right eye to be dimmed on the right side of the picture, but the view from my left eye is perfect across the screen. Not sure what to think of it yet, but I expect that to become an issue.

The goggles split up in two parts, where one part can be used as a stand-alone FPV screen. That is ideal for playback of footage recorded with the built-in DVR. Also the polarising effect is gone, like that.

The battery is enclosed in the screen part of the goggles, and can be charged with any standard micro-USB phone charger. That also means you can take any 5V powerbank along as a backup battery.


To summarise my findings so far:

BFight 210

https://www.gearbest.com/brushless-fpv-racer/pp_660794.html?lkid=11520347

Pros

• Beautiful appearance
• Easy setup
• Gemfan props black/clear
• Low noise
• OOTB stable config

Cons

• Bind button hard to reach - top plate needs to come off.
• VTX gets hot to the touch (@ 200mW)
• Motors as replacement parts? Did not find them yet (means you have to buy a complete set of 4 if you need to replace one motor)
• No Sound with video. I think that would be helpful, especially when learning to fly.
• Crappy velcros. They do function to keep the battery from sliding off the self-adhesive Velcro pads I put on the frame and battery, but not as a single strap for holding the battery.
• Power lines a touch long. No problem if the battery is placed power lines forward.

LS-8000D

http://www.gearbest.com/fpv-goggles-monitors/pp_669092.html?lkid=11511046

Pro

• Cheap
• DVR
• antenna diversity (specs say even receiver diversity, but a comment in the support section was answered with antanna diversity only)
• Light leakage is minimal
• 16:9 aspect ratio
• clear image
• Divides up as separate monitor
• There's a FUN button

Con

• Fingerprint susceptible
• DVR records in 4:3 while the screen displays 16:9
• Polarisation filter makes right eye more or less useless
• SD card needs tool to lock. My thick fingers cannot push the card in deep enough without growing more nail.
• Tripod nut could have been far closer to the center of Gravity when it is used as a screen. One will not use the tripod screw in complete goggles mode, but in separate screen mode only.
• Record button is to the left of the rightmost antenna. Would have been easier to the right of that antenna. Now one has to reach around the antenna

I have no flight video just yet. I hope the winds and rain will die down by next weekend, so I can finally fly my very first FPV flight...

Stay tuned!