Cheapest Brushed Tricopter Ever? [overview]

Here's adding to the family of brushed, popsicle-frame based micro-copters: a tricopter!

The first part of a detailed build is available here. This post is mostly an overview of the parts used as well as some sample flights.

Part list:

- Eachine Naze32 Brushed FC ($7): note that newer ones like the F3 will not work. (Or at least not as easy)
- DasMikro FlySky Receiver ($10): version B, for PPM output on CH8.
- Eachine 8520 Motors ($12): I'm really interested to try the RacerStar or Chao-Li ones to see if I can get a bit more oomph out of them, as currently its a bit anemic even with ladybird props. Maybe 2s?? :P
- Ladybird 55mm props ($8): works great now for the quadcopter. Have some 65mm King Kongs on way which hopefully provides more power and are considerably cheaper at $5 for 10 pairs intead of $8. There are less clearance issues on the tri compared to the quad.
- 3.7g servo ($2.50): could have gone lighter, but was the cheapest I could find on AliExpress at $2.50. The Emax 2.5g should work too (and may be better quality) but is a whopping $5!
- 1x rubber grommet ($1.50) for ghetto-mounting the tail motor to servo horn
- 3x "craft grade" popsicle sticks from the dollar store
- Prop guards ($2.30)
- Elastic bands

AUW is about 50 grams before camera.

Total was a bit over $40 without FPV stuff, with a lot of spare props and grommets, plus an extra motor (Since the tail servo handles all the yaw and the number of motors are odd anyway, the third motor can be any direction). Not super cheap compared to RTF quads available on the market these days, but I'm not aware of a tri in this price range, and it was a pretty fun build process! I would love to hear how one might go cheaper on this if anyone has any ideas! :) I expect 720 motors could work, but the cost savings would be negligible. Oh and I forgot to include the price of the battery, which was from my V222 quad...

Using FlySky i6 receiver with 10-ch mod. (swich off AFHDS 2A to bind).

Indoor flight:

Outdoor flight:

While not as anemic as the initial popsicle quad with the weak triblades, its definitely could do with some more power. Hopefully the 65mm props in the mail would help. I should also consider removing the prop guards as they add a tiny bit of weight, and also see if getting different batteries would help. (These are from a unbranded multi-pack I got for my V222, and there's no discharge rating on them. Have some 600mAh 25C's coming, so will see if the battery may be the limiting factor here...)

*update* the 65mm props have arrived, and there's a lot more thrust now! Check it out:

And some flight footage:

*update2*: Yet another outdoor video with the 65mm props:

This time I had a larger area to play in and was able to fly a bit harder. It flew well generally, but I'm finding that the props are a bit loose and pop out relatively easily (this could have been after an incident where I crashed it indoors while tuning perhaps)... by the end of the second pack, I had lost the tail prop in flight and crashed it such that one of the main popsicle sticks have unglued... luckily all electronics appear to be intact. back to the workbench!

Bonus pic the happy DIY multicoper family (so far):

Popsicle Quad, V2

So after the first version, made with HaagenDaz sticks flew a bit, I wanted to make some upgrades. Specifically, I wanted a.)more power and b.) a bit more clearance to mount an AIO FPV (all-in-one first-person-view) camera, such as the TX02 that I had on hand. To do so, alas, would require a slightly larger frame. So I picked up a bunch of "craft grade" popsicle sticks (there's only so much sugar we can handle) from the dollar store, and got to designing a new frame.

I wanted to keep on using the rubber grommets as before, which were quite good at holding the motors. The final design I came up with the following: (series of relatively self-explanatory photos)

The end result, with the old Eachine triblades:

The new props, based on the suggestion of a redditor, are the 55mm ladybird props. I also tried some hubsan x4 props which were also an improvement, but only had a set and broke them quickly testing indoors ;) I see some newer KingKong 55mm and 65mm props, which might also be good to try out. They are also a bit cheaper at $5usd for 10 pairs instead of ~$8 for 8!! The main thing is to use props with 1mm shaft holes, and to ensure there's enough clearance of course!

Looks like the props are about half a gram heavier each. The extra thrust however, was totally worth it. It's actually a bit hard to fly indoors without a prop guard, so I waited a while before good weather and opportunity arose. Here's a flight in a park taken with a run cam 2 (sorry for slanted camera placement... it's a bit hard to tell sometimes ;)

Unfortunately, I haven't had time to do any FPV flights with it, and my ghetto FPV system (to be described at some point) is quite clunky. The camera adds 10 lbs 5 grams, which is about 10% the total weight of the quad. Being 200mW it also draws about 400mW, which is not negligible for such small flight batteries. A 25mW (such as the TX01 or the switchable power TX03) transmitter would be more appropriate for this build.