Blade 185 Build

The Blade-185 (ARF) arrived last weekend so I started on it Sunday. This is my first quad with Naze32 and CleanFlight, so all this is new to me. This post will be edited over the next few days.

General Notes:

• Never connect main lipo battery without rear FPV antenna connected (you might damage video-TX).
• Black prop-nuts screw-on in normal direction (for CCW spinning props)
• Red prop-nuts screw-on in backwards direction (for CW spinning props)
• Props are 4045 and should not be installed during any of this setup.

FrSky Receiver Install:

This quad is very small and I had worries about spinning props hitting the wires (or maybe the battery if it shifts a bit during a crash). I decided to move the battery to the top (so it was no longer in same "plane of rotation" as props). It slides right into the "frame" I made with two black nylon wire-ties. I had a spare FrSky X6R, so I decided to use that for now. The tubing keeps antenna wires bundled (but not actually touching). This should work until I more permanently mount the RX later (in its final location with foam tape).

You can peak through the rear carbon-fiber frame to access Dip-Switches.
For SBus, on Dip-A set 1=ON , 2=OFF.
Connected supplied 3-wire cable from Blade's small white radio connector to SBus port on X6R receiver (first port on the X6R, at the very beginning). Watch polarity of black Dupont plug since this is also how the radio gets its 4.5v power (in addition to SBus signal on white wire).

Setup Model #3 on Taranis transmitter:
- Mode = D16
- Channels Range (CH) = 1-16
- Receiver (RX) = 03

For the X6R Binding ... for now, I just used Mode-5 (D16). This one is the "no-jumper" easy-bind and should be fine since I'm not using any of the physical RC-channel outputs on RX (only SBus). When it's properly bound, the light on the X6R will turn green (and might flash green at times). Having a properly connected and Binding radio set is your first step in making the constant beeping go away. This appears to be a good safety feature. Once the Naze32 Flight-Controller is sure that a working radio is connected, the beeping will stop. To program and setup the Naze32 FC, I will use CleanFlight software.

CleanFlight:

On Windows-10/64bit, first, I installed Google Chrome. Then installed the CleanFlight Configurator v1.2.2.

Follow the link to install the Windows Silicon Labs CP2104 driver for Naze32 (in my case, the Default 64bit driver). After it installs, connect micro-USB cable to Blade. You should get the Windows-chime that a new USB device was detected and the proper driver should load and install from driver-cache. Now that Windows sees the quad and its Flight-Controller, CleanFlight should be able to also.

In CleanFlight (video), proceed to click Connect in upper right-hand corner. I'm in no way a guru at any of this and did some significant jumping around during setup while figuring stuff out. I even had some problems that the helpful forum users helped me with. All that said, here are my current working settings, and my best recollection of the steps I followed (or rather, the proper steps you should follow).

• Setup
• Calibrate Accelerometer
• Let sit still on level surface
• Calibrate Magnetometer (compass)
• Within 30 seconds, evenly spin on each of 3 axis (R, P, & Y)
• Save your config if you want (I do this often as I make changes and progress)
• Ports
• UART-1
• Data = MSP/115200
• Never change this or else USB port will quit working.
• UART-2
• RX = Serial RX
• Configuration
• Mixer = Quad-X
• Receiver Mode = RX_Serial (SBus)
• Serial Receiver Provider = SBus
• ESC & Motor Features
• Motor_Stop & Dis-Arm Motors (5 secs)
• Throttle numbers are Min=1000, Middle=1500, Max=2000, Min_Cmd=1000
• Some of these likely need adjustment, but theses do work/fly.
• Battery Voltage (VBat Monitoring = ON)
• System Configuration
• Loop Time = 2000
• Other Features
• Telemetry
• LED_Strip
• Black-box
• Receiver
• Select Option for JR/Spektrum
• That will give you TAER1234 (Throttle, Aileron, Elevator, Rudder, Aux1-4)
• By now your radio TX/RX set should be working. Turn on Taranis, and see it respond in CleanFlight. If it does, beeping should stop.
• Motors
• You can can perform a calibration of all ESCs (All-At-Once) by clicking the check box at the bottom with the battery disconnected. Then using the master slider, slide it to the top turning all motors to full throttle in CleanFlight. With the sliders at full throttle connect the lipo battery, the ESCs will beep indicating throttle calibration mode, then immediately click at the bottom of the slider and it will return to zero throttle. The ESCs will beep indicating calibration is complete.
• You can also just test your motors here.
• Modes
• Setup some modes ... like Angle flight-mode (Auto-Level) on your main switch. (video)
• Sensors
• Move and manipulate the Blade quad and watch sensors respond.

CleanFlight Firmware Flashing

After your are familiar with how everything works, you can load the current Naze32 "stable" firmware. This is the program or code that runs on the various flight controllers that CleanFlight supports.

If you haven't already, first ... Backup your quad's Configuration using CleanFlight.

You should be "Disconnected" for this procedure. The icon that looks like a chip on the left menu is for Firmware Flashing screen. For Board model, I selected "Naze". The Firmware versions are listed in order, with newest ones near the top. I selected "v1.12.1 NAZE 2016-4-10 (Stable)". Scroll to the bottom of this screen to see the messages. First, the firmware file will auto-download to your computer, then you can click the button to use it. At the end, you should get a "Successful" message.

After it finished, I Re-Connected, double-checked my settings, and re-did my calibrations.

Taranis (model programming)

On Model 3, the Mixer screen, add a switch or two to be used for AUX 1-4 for your Flight Modes, Modifiers, etc. This is real easy ... for Mixer CH5-8, you simply set desired Switch as the SOURCE and save/exit the Mix. Other than changing the text name of the Model, this is all I initially programmed on Taranis (and it flies in Angle flight-mode fine).

You can now see switches responding in CleanFlight and can assign modes and functions to them.
When testing the model, on the main model flight screen of Taranis, you should have FrSky Telemetry working by now. You will know when you see the Input voltage and RSSI as being read from X6R on Taranis LCD.

I'm sure there is still more to setup (like Fail-Safe) and tweak (like PIDs). This video looked good and seemed to have some advanced content in it (will watch and learn later). But for now, but I'm eager to see if she even flies.

Maiden Flight

Ok, now I can say my new Naze32 quad is air-worthy and I've flown it.  Just newbie baby-steps today. I flew thru a battery in Angle Flight-Mode by LoS in the yard. Angle is like Stabilize flight-mode on APM-based quads. Blade-185 seems stable, fast, and even hovers good. Didn't see any problems with balance (since battery was moved to top). Didn't really test range, but worked fine with strong RSSI during flight.