Last year I was one of the forntunate people to be able to acquire a handmade AlienWhoop F4 from one of my favorite people in the FPV community, Charlie Stevenson.
His AlienWhoop boards have become my personal favorite to use when building my TinyWhoops.
I initially built this Whoop with FrSky R-XSR receiver and an AIO camera from WolfWhoop, and had a blast ripping through the house and loved being able to tune up this board through the telemetry options.
However, with being the Geek I am, I really wanted to fully utilize the OpenTx lua scripts and control the camera as well but I didn't personally like utilizing the only option available. That included using the Beeper POS+ line and Softserial remap of the resource to handle the SmartAudio. (which can be flaky at times) So you have options if you want to stick with FrSky Rx's but it's not a method I liked using personally.
I'll cover that in another post if needed but there is a fantastic site for this type of instruction already from Oscar Liang.
The TBS Tiny Cam and TBS Unify Nano
In Feb 2018 Team Blacksheep came along and released the TBS Unify Nano and the TBS Tiny Cam. Jumping on that for pre-order was a no brainer since the weight was right and all the tech geeky goodness was now within my grasps to control the camera through the lua scripts.
Follow that up with the TBS Crossfire Nano Rx.
Smaller than the FrSky R-XSR but with the added ability to handle the SmartAudio right off of the RX without having to free up another Tx UART or remap the resources in the BetaFlight. I knew this was going to be a better option for me.
With the exception of OSD my whoop now has the same tech as my other quads. Below is the final product of all the TBS Tiny/Micro/Nano tech that has been released so far wired up to my beloved flight controller, the AlienWhoop F4.
I'm a huge fan of Heli-Nation.com and the people there are absolutely stellar individuals. All of the links below will take you to their site for the parts needed. (exception is the AlienWhoop which is much harder to come by right now.)
Wiring It Up
From the Cam+ and Cam- pads run the wires to the Tiny cam for your power source.
*I didn't run the SmartAudio line from the Crossfire Nano Rx to this side since it's just a passthrough and would have added another wire which equals weight.
From the Tiny Cam you run the 5v, Gnd, and Video Signal to the TBS Unify Nano positioned like you see in the picture below. This keeps the wires short and the ufl connector to the back of the quad. This matters if you are going to replace the antenna with a soldered on dipole instead of the ufl connection.
From the Uart 4 Tx and Rx Pads, instead of soldering to the top of the board, I soldered the lines up from the bottom so I didn't have to run both of those around the edge with the 5v and Smart Audio. (the pads have holes just big enough to get nicely tinned wires through from the bottom if you have the soldering skills)
Tx goes to the Ch. Out 2 pad
Rx goes to the Ch. Out 1 pad
GND to the pad on the bottom of the AlienWhoop where you would mediumly wire the Rx.
5v comes off of the Unify and wraps around the board to the CrossFire Nano.
SA from Unify to the Ch. 4 pad on the Crossfire Nano
Once you have it all wired up and tidy you just need to power it up, bind, and configure your CRSF transmitter of choice.
BetaFlight configuration tutorials are out there, but I'll post that next so you won't have to hunt around for it.
His AlienWhoop boards have become my personal favorite to use when building my TinyWhoops.
I initially built this Whoop with FrSky R-XSR receiver and an AIO camera from WolfWhoop, and had a blast ripping through the house and loved being able to tune up this board through the telemetry options.
However, with being the Geek I am, I really wanted to fully utilize the OpenTx lua scripts and control the camera as well but I didn't personally like utilizing the only option available. That included using the Beeper POS+ line and Softserial remap of the resource to handle the SmartAudio. (which can be flaky at times) So you have options if you want to stick with FrSky Rx's but it's not a method I liked using personally.
I'll cover that in another post if needed but there is a fantastic site for this type of instruction already from Oscar Liang.
The TBS Tiny Cam and TBS Unify Nano
In Feb 2018 Team Blacksheep came along and released the TBS Unify Nano and the TBS Tiny Cam. Jumping on that for pre-order was a no brainer since the weight was right and all the tech geeky goodness was now within my grasps to control the camera through the lua scripts.
Follow that up with the TBS Crossfire Nano Rx.
Smaller than the FrSky R-XSR but with the added ability to handle the SmartAudio right off of the RX without having to free up another Tx UART or remap the resources in the BetaFlight. I knew this was going to be a better option for me.
With the exception of OSD my whoop now has the same tech as my other quads. Below is the final product of all the TBS Tiny/Micro/Nano tech that has been released so far wired up to my beloved flight controller, the AlienWhoop F4.
- When wiring in the Crossfire Nano, I pulled power from the 5v out on the Tiny Cam instead of using the pads on the FC since those only supply either vBat or 3.3v.
- The Crossfire Nano calls for 5v and I wasn't about to try anything lower since I had the 5v available.
- You can also just take that right off of the 5v out of the Unify if you prefer which is how I have it in the diagram for your reference.
I'm a huge fan of Heli-Nation.com and the people there are absolutely stellar individuals. All of the links below will take you to their site for the parts needed. (exception is the AlienWhoop which is much harder to come by right now.)
- AlienWhoop F4
- Team Blacksheep Tiny Cam
- Team Blacksheep Unify Nano Vtx
- Team Blacksheep Crossfire Nano Rx
- Team Blacksheep 4 blade 31mm props
- Cockroach frame
- Betafpv 19400kv motors (waiting for these to wear out before switching the TBS versions for outside or the NewBeeDrone Gold motors for indoor/outdoor)
Wiring It Up
From the Cam+ and Cam- pads run the wires to the Tiny cam for your power source.
*I didn't run the SmartAudio line from the Crossfire Nano Rx to this side since it's just a passthrough and would have added another wire which equals weight.
Tx goes to the Ch. Out 2 pad
Rx goes to the Ch. Out 1 pad
GND to the pad on the bottom of the AlienWhoop where you would mediumly wire the Rx.
5v comes off of the Unify and wraps around the board to the CrossFire Nano.
SA from Unify to the Ch. 4 pad on the Crossfire Nano
Comments
Post a Comment