The journey with Cinewhoops started after watching NURK FPV videos with his Shendrone Squirt. I obviously seen a need for it and started to do some research about the Squirt. Quickly enough I found out that it’s not longer in stock, and no one in UK stock them…
The research started
After looking through many different 3” frames I have decided that ImpulseRC Micro Alien FPV Frame 3” would be best fit and quickly ordered one. Once it arrived I got quite surprised on how small it is - I just wasn’t expecting the size, after only dealing with 5” and 7” quads.
Because of the small factor I had to find some 20x20 stack, and after amazing review from Drone Mesh (watch full video here) I went with Airbot Ori32 BLHeli32 25A 4-in-1 ESC, and topped it up with Airbot Omnibus F4 Nano V6 Flight Controller. As for motors: T-Motor F20 II 1408 3750KV Motor.
The rest of the electronics is pretty much the same for my builds: TBS Unify Pro 5G8 HV SE (MMCX - so I can swap antennas if needed) with Lumenier AXII 5.8GHz Antenna hooked to the TBS Crossfire Nano RX, and a TBS Micro CCD FPV Camera (2.1mm lens) for the vision.
Designing ducts
This was the most time consuming part of this build, as I had to measure the frame, all the angles, etc., then 3D design the whole thing, test print every iteration - and I’ve done 3 iterations.
One side of the ducts (two ducts together as one piece) was taking 10 hours to print, and I printed 6 in total to get the ones I would like.
It was time consuming…
Rest is easy…
Next was a GoPro mount for my cameras, and this is the easy bit as I already have camera cases designed, and I just hook them up with different mounts I need in 3D software, so I didn’t have to go and design them from scratch - only the bottom mounts.
Initially I was using some 3” props, and I can see that their surface is quite small, hence I went for the 4” ones and cut them to the size of the ducts. Although I did find that RaceKraft 3045 Tri Blade Propellers are really good too, and a bit silent.
PIDs make a huge difference
While I am not that good at tuning my quads yet I have used NURK FPV recommendations from his blog post and tuned mine accordingly. I have to say it made a lot of difference. It really does fly nicely now.
First flight
So the first flight actually was me flying around at home, bump into things trying to get some control over it. That didn’t go well - but it was before I tuned the PIDs a little. After that it all seems easy, but throttle control is way different than what I am used to, so it’s probably a matter of more flight to get it right.
And this bring me to the two videos below, one made with my friend Dee aka. Hardware Fpv and chasing him through the tress, then another one with Keenan aka. Silentdrive at the skate park, where he did some riding on his BMX. Enjoy…
