First look: FuriBee F90 Wasp

Today, I'll be having a first look at this:

The FuriBee F90 90mm "Wasp" quadcopter. A nice minidrone that resembles ... a Wasp!
The model was kindly offered to me for review by GearBest. Mine is version 1, with a Spektrum receiver.There's also a version without receiver, and one with FrSky receiver, but that one also comes with a transmitter and goggles. I thought that would be a little over the top, but because I don't have a Spektrum transmitter, I requested and got a FlySky micro receiver with the package.

What's in the box?
In the relatively small box, we find quite a lot, actually! Besides the drone itself, there's a spare seet of 4 props, a 2S 600 mAh LiPo battery, a USB charger for that battery, and a manual of course.

The whole setup is very light: only 67 grams, and that's including the LiPo!

The Wasp has a "real" Flightcontroller (FC): a personalised version of the OMNIBUS F3 FC. That means, amongst others, that it can be configured over USB. This one has Betaflight 3.0.1 flashed to memory. The micro-USB connector is placed on the left side of the "body".

Down side: a USB cable cannot be plugged in without removing the "hood"...

In the head of the Wasp, we find an FPV camera. A quick connect of the battery, and parting my LS-800D to use only the "monitor" part, quickly reveils that the camera works! :)
In the movie below, you can see there is some lag in the video signal. If that will be a problem during flight? I dont know yet! I guess we'll find out later.

I asked for, and got, a FlySky mini PPM receiver. Oddly, thhough, the receiver looked different than advertised on the site. It was only half the size, but it did have all the same compponents on there, only on both sides of the PCB. So I expect it will have exactly the same functionality. Which is only very basic, by the way: PPM is an "ancient" protocol, without failsafe, and a mximum of 8 channels.

Small challenge: the solder pads are not labeled, so it will be a bit of a gamble, or an educated guess, which of the pins is for 5V, GND, and Signal. A little experimenting is in order :)

The DSMx receiver that comes with the Wasp originally, is that little square plate with the tiny copper wire running across. That little wire is the antenna...

With my FlySky receiveer placed on top of it, it is clear that this is going to fit, physically.

In this case, the original receiver utilises a 3.3V power source, while the FlySky receiver requires 5V. That's why the red wire is on a different pin in the below picture.

This was the configuration of which I was convinced it would work, but that has not been the case so far. The receiver signals did not show up in the receiver tab of BetaFlight at all. To check if the problem lay in the receiver, either the binding or the signal processing, I de-soldered my known-to-work receiver out of my BFight 210. Added bonus: thhis receiver has the pins clearly labeled, so there can be no doubt about the connection either.

But when this receiver yielded exactly the same results as with the FlySky PPM receiver, I decided to switch back again. The only thing I had not tried yet, was to connect the signal pin to UART3. So far, I had been using UART 2, but the one pin I had not used yet, is the RX pin for UART 3. Maybe that will work...

ut not with this oneBut no ... not the case!

The receiver seems bound OK, judging from the frantically blinking blue LED that stops emitting after the transmitter signal is lost.

I know, with most receivers, fast blinking means "bind mode", but not with this receiver. I learned that (and some other very interesting stuff) from the IntoFPV Forum by Oscar Liang.

In Betaflight the settings are correct: 

• Ports - UART 3
• Configuration - Serial receiver: PPM
• Receiver - nothing!

And without a battery, with only the 5V of the USB connection, the little blue LED shines constant, and very faintly. Not entirely sure what this means, but I suspect that the USB controller cannot supply enough current to feed the Wasp. This might be an indication of something electrically being wrong. Something like a short, or a stray current, or something.

Other options I have are an FrSky receiver, or a FlySky FS-IA6B. The latter is way too big for this application, but maybe it can help in determining what's going on here. Once I get a proper communication established between transmitter and Flightcontroller, I can try to recreate that with the FlySky receiver.
So I am not done puzzeling just yet, but I wanted to share this part of the advanture already. This is also a part of the hobby: sometimes, thing just don't work out the way you expect them to, out of the box. The investigative bit is fun too, you know! Especially when it delivers result in the end.

I do look forward to flying this little insect, especially because it is such a neat size, and flight caracteristics can be modified to your liking with PID tuning in Betaflight. So I'll be puzzling some more to get this bug flying, and will get beck to oyou once that has happened.


Here's a plusses and minuses list of the things I've found so far already. In a future sequel, I will expand the list as I find more things flight related.

Plus:

• Design
• OMNIBUS F3 FC
• Compact, yet complete - easy to transport

Minus:

• USB cable cannot be connected without removing the hood (a slight enlargement of the opening can make that work, though)
• FPV camera angle cannot be adjusted