How to build a 1 hour 250g Ardupilot quadcopter

Can you add up all the costs and post a total cost estimate?

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This is a great write up, thanks.

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This might be a silly beginner question. How much there is room for more weight?
What happens to the flight time, and when does it just stop working?

Like if i switch some components like using whole speedybee stack instead only the FC

For every extra 10 grams you add, it will lose around 5 minutes of flight time. just changing the esc should only add around 5g.

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The FC firmware is Ardupilot?

yes

https://firmware.ardupilot.org/Copter/stable-4.5.1/SpeedyBeeF405Mini/

Wow… i had no idea !!

Could you tell how i could flash it to my speedy bee f405 v3 30x30 fc ?
use betaflight (i just finished my first FPV build with that FC a week ago).

I’d really appreciate anything you could tell me!

terry

I think I just found it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/diydrones/comments/174oh4q/installing_ardupilot_on_speedybee_f405_v3/
https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-loading-firmware-onto-chibios-only-boards.html

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Hi,
Can you share some details regarding setup of esp32 fpv. I have a problems with gs running on rpi4, using same kernek/rtl drivers like openhd does… What is your setup ?
Kris

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I was having issues with vibrations, it turns out it’s the motor torque flexing the arms, by turning the IMU filter frequency down to 20hz I could tune it out, but by adding some 1mm carbon rod as bracing it stopped it completely with less than 1g of additional weight.
I have also added the optical flow and lidar for loitering indoors.

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Hello,

and a big thank you for this very detailed build description.
I’m currently rebuilding your design and it’s almost finished.

@geofrancis
Do you mind sharing your parameter file ?

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twiggylatest2.param (1.5 KB)

Can I add that to the ArduPilot methodic configurator software under GPL3 license?

If I’m not total wrong your parameter file is not complete, it’s only 78 lines.
Can you please upload it again …

the rest wont be applicable to your quad.

Here is my attempt for a 250g 1 hour quadcopter. Frame, motors, ESC and FC are as described above.
It’s not as weight optimized as described in this build because I just used some parts I had already lying around. So my takeoff weight (including everything except battery) is 79g.

Everything’s ready for maiden flight now …

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You will probably need to add some bracing, 1mm carbon is what i used.

Thanks for your hint. I’ll report back once I got it into the air …

if you try and fly it with those settings without bracing it is going to shake violently.