QAV250 Xmas build a'la banggood.com

Long time no post as usual but this fall hasn't yielded a lot of building worth posting. This however is a complete QAV250 build with most parts from the cheap Chinese online shop banggood.com.
Parts needed are the usual suspects starting with the frame. This is a carbon fiber/plastic frame with a robust X shape for $16.99. Just be careful and use lock-tight to keep screws in place.

This combo package consists of an ESC, a brush-less motor with a 5x3 propeller. The ESC is programmed with a SimonK firmware, which is something to aim for as his firmware usually does a better job than the stock firmware. Motors are 1804-2400kv from ZMR. This package goes for $16.08.

One motor was broken on delivery. It felt like one of the magnets had come loose and I've heard from others that they have had similar problems too. Luckily, I bought one spare package.

As flight controller, I'm using a Naze32 copy called Flip32. It's based on a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 processor (STM32F103CB). It can be used with both Baseflight and Cleanflight, which are both open source projects. I'm using Cleanflight as it feels newer and seems to have a more active development. It also has a few more features, such as Autotune. PID configuration can be used right out of the box.
Note: One issue I experienced is how to arm the flight controller. After some research, I figured that you absolutely need to calibrate both magnetometer and accelerator in order to get it to arm. $24.59.

I'm using a generic 1300mAh battery, which is common with QAV250 models. I have had no issues with these batteries so far. $20.45 each, I bought two but I think that I'm going to order a couple more.

Radio receiver is actually bought from Hobby King rather than from banggood, simply because I fancy the OrangeRX brand. It's a seven channel RX with fail-safe functionality. When used properly, if the RX detects a loss or radio connectivity, it'll automatically pull down the throttle channel to a minimum. This will prevent your model from flying away. If you're interested in the "fly away" topic, do query YouTube with the keywords "quadcopter fly away". $17.99.


Merry Christmas and fly safe!