I used a ~$20 Cheerson CX-10 to practice line-of-sight flying before I did anything too crazy with my ZMR250 quadcopter. The CX10 is tiny, robust, and safe to fly near people so I was able to fly it often and quickly got comfortable with flying in stabilized mode.
Since the skills I learned from flying the toy quad transferred so well to the bigger quad, I figured it would be a good idea to also use the micro quad platform to learn FPV and rate-mode flying.
To mount an FPV camera, I needed to use larger motors, and for rate-mode, I needed a flight controller that could be flashed with a rate-mode capable firmware, like Cleanflight.
Parts List:
- Lulfro Brushed Flight Controller (alternatives)
- CL0820-17 Coreless Motor Set
- Hubsan X4 Propellers
- TE60A 5.8G Mini Camera
Since I’m designing this quad as a learning platform, I wanted to try different motor-to-motor distances and propeller sizes, to see how these factors affect the handling and tuning of the quad.
To achieve this, I designed a 3D-printable parametric frame using OpenSCAD:
Using a parametric design allows me to swap out constants in the model like the dimensions of the flight controller, motors, or the motor-to-motor distance, and instantly generate a new model built using the new parameters.
Here’s how it looks printed and assembled:
