Armattan Rev 2 Tilt - The Rebuild

[Kellarly]

Ok, now I'm back flying again, it's time to get the fleet up to scratch.

I've got a 180 and a 210 both running 2300kv cobras, 20a littlebees and a naze32 rev 5 (with a MASSIVE F1 processor), running a very old version Beta flight, but they're flying fine, so I'm leaving them for now.

However, there's a Armattan Rev 2 Tilt frame that's been sitting idle for a while. It's got some 900kv Tiger motors that sound amazing with 12 inch carbon fibre props. However, the rest has been stripped and it's ready for a refit.

So the refit is going to involve:

Bardwell AiO FC
Littlebee Spring 20amp escs
Foxeer Arrow V3 cam
Matek 40 ch vTx
Optima D Rx for SBus (Apparently even PPM is out now... A lot happens in a year or so!)

Everything has pretty much arrived, just some capacitors to come in the post and I can get started. Some of the newer FCs and vTxs have some seriously nice stuff on them that makes life a lot easier.

Things I'll need to learn how to do:

- Learn how to flash escs through the FC
- Update Betaflight on a new board
- Work out how to use black box
- Remember how to solder again...

Should be fun!

The original build, way back when:

[Kellarly]

Right, so stripped the frame of everything except the motors.

I soldered the voltage bridge for 5v and put the lipo wires on, then mounted it onto the frame.



I also added some stand offs at on end so I could stack the vTx there too.

The Rx was soldered on and left with enough wire so it could be mounted under the tail section of the frame.



Mounting the cam was fun, ended up mounting it where the vTx aerial would go, and moved that back a little. Had to use a washer in the end to keep it steady, but it's all fixed in place now. The original design was made for the large 12v board cameras we had back in the day.





The only snag I've hit so far is with the vTx and I haven't powered up yet because of it. In the wiring diagram below, Matek show that there should be 2 ground wires running from the vTx to the FC, one for the power and the other, I'm guessing, for the OSD? Now, on the Bardwell FC, there's only one ground pad. Given I'm powering it from a 9v pad, not direct from the batt, do I need the second ground wire, and if so, where does it go?




Other than that, I had to extend the wires from the escs to the FC using 20 awg silicone, but the signal wires were long enough.



Other than the vTx issue, it's ready to be set up now.

[apollo7]

good to see you back, and posting again

[Kellarly]

Thanks mate! It's good to get back into things, but it's amazing to see how much things have advanced since I last had a proper look into where FCs and ESCs were at.

[Kellarly]

As in the second post above, anyone know the answer to this small issue? I'm guessing it should be ok without the 2nd ground as I'm not powering it from the Batt, but not sure.

The only snag I've hit so far is with the vTx and I haven't powered up yet because of it. In the wiring diagram below, Matek show that there should be 2 ground wires running from the vTx to the FC, one for the power and the other, I'm guessing, for the OSD? Now, on the Bardwell FC, there's only one ground pad. Given I'm powering it from a 9v pad, not direct from the batt, do I need the second ground wire, and if so, where does it go?

[ched]

I would link the grounds back to the fc. Reason being is that a floating ground can have some weird video effects. So by grounding them all back to the FC you shouldn't get any issues.

One question. The FC controlling the vtx. Does the tx pin on the fc go to the rx pin on the vtx or to tx pin? Normally you connect a tx to an tx when using uarts. So the FC is tx(transmitting data) to the vtx and it is rx (receiving the data) from the FC.

UPDATE
Interesting just looked at Matek wiring and looks like tx to tx!!! unusual. That's why it's always worth checking things!!!

[Kellarly]

Can they both go back to the same ground pad on the FC?

Yeah it goes Tx to Tx, I had to read the diagram twice when I saw that!

[ched]

Can they both go back to the same ground pad on the FC?

Yeah it goes Tx to Tx, I had to read the diagram twice when I saw that!

Yes both gnd back to same pad. I think Josh has a video on grounds and vtx, cameras and FC. If I remember correctly he was suggesting best to ground vtx and camera back to same pad on FC to try and fix ground at same potential.

Looks good mate. Looking forward to maiden video.

[Kellarly]

Must have missed that one amongst the hundreds of other videos that I've watched!

Thanks mate, gonna maiden it hopefully this weekend.

[Kellarly]

It's alive!!!!

Kinda.

Can't get my FC to recognise the sbus signal from my Rx. The Rx powers up, it's linked find with my transmitter, sbus mode has been selected and everything.

But no joy when I try to see it in BF config.

Soldering appears fine, have checked it once over and re-soldered it in the sbus pad.

I've checked UART 1 to be a serial Rx in the Ports config.

Now I'm just a bit stumped.

[hoverfly]

Just had the same problem,  rx bound no problem,tried swapping with another rx and it looks like the rx is faulty..

[Kellarly]

Balls. They're not cheap either

[ched]

I assume it's nothing to do with inverted rx signals and the correct uart is it? Think there might only be 2 inverted uarts on the jb f4 fc, 1 and 3 I think. Might be worth trying the alternative one in case 1 is faulty?

[Kellarly]

Right, got it, the Rx is a bit power hungry and isn't getting sufficient power. The board provides 5.1v from a 5v pad, but from reading about other problems, it seems that they work better around 7v. Right, time to get a voltage adaptor.

[Kellarly]

Looks like an Rx failure.

The beeping is the Tx, i think the Rx isn't holding the signal.

Bollocks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GAgZWeaVsU

[Kellarly]

Well, screw Hitec.

Now got a Taranis X9D+ SE and R-XSR. Bound first time, set up everything perfectly.

Maidened today, but there's a bit of jello on the footage. The back left motor is stuttering a bit, but I think I might need to resolder the wire on that motor looking at it. I tried to fly FPV, but hadn't set the camera correctly, so need to get that set for dynamic range as it was a bit dark looking through.

But that's the jobs list for Tuesday :)