The RCExplorer webshop has permanently closed down. This post is here only for reference. This item is no longer sold.If you wish to make your own, you can download the design files for free from here
We suggest getting the Mateksys PDB FCHUB-W board as a replacement (available on many other webshops). The board offers many great additional features but comes at the cost of being slightly larger. The board will still fit in the Tricopter LR, Baby Tricopter and Bicopter. It might be a tight fit in some cases, but with some cable management, you should be able to get it in there. Here are some example pictures:
Rev4 of the BabyPDB is here! It can now deliver up to 5A continuous current and 20A peak! This new version features 2 BEC output pads allowing for easier soldering of two or more servos. The spacing between that pads has also been increased to make soldering simpler.
Please note:
Built-in voltage regulators on flight controllers are not suitable to power high-performance servos. It can be tempting but those regulators are not made for high peak loading. This might lead to the regulator catastrophically failing and potentially ruining the FC in an event of a shock load to the servo. Instead use an external BEC, like this BabyPDB, that is designed to drive servos.
This is the BabyPDB, a 36x36mm (30.5mm hole spacing) power distribution board with an integrated current sensor and selectable 5/6/8/12V 5A super clean switching BEC.
The board has 4 voltage output pads large enough to allow for easy soldering of ESC power wires and 2 large input voltage pads for big gauge wires from the battery.
The built-in current sensor is great for logging how much power your copter is drawing, but much more interesting is the monitoring of mAh drawn out of the battery. To me this is huge. It allows for a much more accurate way of knowing how much juice is left in your battery. This information can easily be relayed through telemetry to your RC transmitter together with the real-time current draw. Just hook up the Isense pad to the appropriate analogue input pad on your Flight Controller.
The built-in BEC is of the switching type, meaning it’s super efficient and can deliver up to 5A and 20A peak! The output voltage is also easily set to either 5V, 6V, 8V or 12V by bridging 4 different solder pads. The board can easily power 50 5V RGB LED’s without breaking much of a sweat, or you can power FPV gear, servos, charging a GoPro or whatever you fancy.
To make wiring as simple as possible, the board has easily accessible pads for Isense, Vbat out x 2, BEC and ground.
In cleanflight/betaflight/dRonin use current scale 336 to get the correct current value.
Specifications:
We suggest getting the Mateksys PDB FCHUB-W board as a replacement (available on many other webshops). The board offers many great additional features but comes at the cost of being slightly larger. The board will still fit in the Tricopter LR, Baby Tricopter and Bicopter. It might be a tight fit in some cases, but with some cable management, you should be able to get it in there. Here are some example pictures:
Rev4 of the BabyPDB is here! It can now deliver up to 5A continuous current and 20A peak! This new version features 2 BEC output pads allowing for easier soldering of two or more servos. The spacing between that pads has also been increased to make soldering simpler.
Please note:
Built-in voltage regulators on flight controllers are not suitable to power high-performance servos. It can be tempting but those regulators are not made for high peak loading. This might lead to the regulator catastrophically failing and potentially ruining the FC in an event of a shock load to the servo. Instead use an external BEC, like this BabyPDB, that is designed to drive servos.
This is the BabyPDB, a 36x36mm (30.5mm hole spacing) power distribution board with an integrated current sensor and selectable 5/6/8/12V 5A super clean switching BEC.
The board has 4 voltage output pads large enough to allow for easy soldering of ESC power wires and 2 large input voltage pads for big gauge wires from the battery.
The built-in current sensor is great for logging how much power your copter is drawing, but much more interesting is the monitoring of mAh drawn out of the battery. To me this is huge. It allows for a much more accurate way of knowing how much juice is left in your battery. This information can easily be relayed through telemetry to your RC transmitter together with the real-time current draw. Just hook up the Isense pad to the appropriate analogue input pad on your Flight Controller.
The built-in BEC is of the switching type, meaning it’s super efficient and can deliver up to 5A and 20A peak! The output voltage is also easily set to either 5V, 6V, 8V or 12V by bridging 4 different solder pads. The board can easily power 50 5V RGB LED’s without breaking much of a sweat, or you can power FPV gear, servos, charging a GoPro or whatever you fancy.
To make wiring as simple as possible, the board has easily accessible pads for Isense, Vbat out x 2, BEC and ground.
In cleanflight/betaflight/dRonin use current scale 336 to get the correct current value.
Specifications:
The frame has a built-in adjustable mount for a board-camera with up to a 40x40mm footprint. The angle can be adjusted continuously between 0 and 40° so that you can start out easy and as you progress in your flying, you can add more and more angle to the camera. The camera is well protected by the frame itself as well as the fact that it is held in place by rubber bands, which protects the camera even more during a crash.
The Mini Tricopter also easily carries a GoPro camera with protective housing. The camera is easily mounted on the top of the frame. A GoPro4 session or Mobius/Runcam can be mounted inside of the frame on the Mobius Shelf. This plate can be mounted in two positions to allow for different configurations and camera angles. The supplied silicone camera wedge can be used to fine-tune the angle of the camera.
Flying the Mini Tricopter can be best described as driving an overpowered rear-drive car. It’s not the fastest around the track, but you’ll have the biggest grin on your face when the race is over. The recommended electronics package makes this little beast go almost 160km/h (100mph). The thin arms and smallish body makes it pretty aerodynamically slippery. It requires very little power to cruise at high speeds and it absolutely loves long low-passes with big wide turns. Flips, loops and rolls are quick and crisp thanks to the center of gravity and center of mass being very close to each other.
Transporting the Mini Tricopter is really easy as the arms can be folded back, just like on the larger tricopter. Folded up it’s only 10cm wide and 30cm long (35cm with 6 inch props sticking out straight back) and 8cm tall. The folding design also makes the Mini Tricopter crash-resistant, as the arms may fold back, absorbing energy. The tough “cage” protects the electronics and battery on the inside.
The recommended battery size for the Mini Tricopter is a 4S 1800mAh with a C rating of 35 and upwards. Be sure to check the size of the battery as only batteries up to 110x35x35mm will fit inside of the “cage”. Larger batteries can be fitted on top or below but you’d lose the protection. I also highly recommend using the tricopter frame with integrated F3FC with built-in power distribution board, otherwise, it will get really cramped inside of the “cage”.
To make setup as smooth as possible all PID’s, filters, TPA, tail TPA and such are already tuned for the recommended electronics package. Just click the “Preconfigured Cleanflight Setup” tab above and follow the instructions.
The kit contains:
What’s new in the Tricopter V4;
The camera plate has been redesigned and improved. It is now made from 2mm thick matte 3K carbon fiber. This increases stiffness, which reduces vibrations as well as saves weight (more than 25% lighter). You can now easily mount RunCam2 and GoPro sized cameras.
After many requests the landing gear has now been made taller and with a wider contact area at the bottom. The sharp edge has also been removed. The new landing gear is also mounted with 4 zip-ties which absorbs more energy in a crash. As you will need more zip-ties for the build, the kit now comes with 2 bags (~50 pieces).
The Tricopter V4 is designed to be as light as possible without compromising strength or stiffness. It only weighs 201 grams including Flightcontroller, power distribution, arms, tilt mechanism, motor mounts, screws, landing gear and vibration dampened camera mount! Yet it’s stiffer and more precise than previous versions.
The Tricopter V4 is designed to be easy to build and repair. The landing gear and tilt mechanism are held on using zip-ties, just like in previous versions. These zip-ties acts as “mechanical fuses”, absorbing energy and protecting important pieces in a crash.
Tired of the how easily extruded carbon fiber booms crack and loose their torsion strength, I set out to find a better alternative. Many, many hours of searching I found a factory that could make 10x10mm carbon fiber square tubes to the specifications I was looking for. These woven carbon fiber square tube arms are incredibly stiff, strong and lightweight. The torsion (twisting) strength is unparalleled which results in a crisp and precise flying experience, even with high power setups. Unlike extruded carbon fiber arms, these arms can take abuse without cracking. They are also 33-40% lighter, have more room inside to run wires and are stiffer in all aspects. The kit includes 3 arms with predrilled 3mm holes, so you don’t have to drill it yourself.
The kit also includes a vibration dampening camera/battery tray made from 2mm thick matte 3K twill weave carbon fiber, giving maximum stiffness while reducing weight. The tray is suspended underneath the main body using 4 1.5mm thick crescent-shaped pieces of piano wire.
The wire comes pre-bent (which saves a ton of time and frustration). This vibration dampening system was created specifically for the large flight envelope of the tricopter. The vibrations created by the motors and props spinning only has one way of reaching the camera, and that is down through the thin curved shaped wires. Since the camera plate is stiff, the whole camera tray has to vibrate for the camera to vibrate. With the heavy battery and camera mounted on the tray, a lot of energy is needed to get it moving. The thin and stiff piano wire has a high resonance frequency and low-frequency vibrations will have a hard time to travel down to the camera plate. The small amount of high-frequency vibrations that do make it down has so little energy that they are easily absorbed by the heavy battery and camera. Resulting in buttery smooth footage. The main benefit of this system compared to many soft vibration dampening solutions, is that it doesn’t move or wiggle during fast forward flight or a quick change of direction. This system you can whip around like a maniac and still get perfect video.
Just like the previous tricopter versions, this design is also foldable. This makes transportation easier, but it also help prevent damage in a crash. The arms simply fold back and absorb some of the energy. The arms are held in place by friction, which means that you don’t have to use a tool to fold or unfold, simply grab the arm and push or pull it.
The kit includes the new upgraded version of the tilt mechanism is made from fiberglass reinforced black Nylon which was forged in the fires of Mt. Doom, making it almost indestructible. (It’s the same plastic used by high-end propeller manufacturers). This tilt mechanism is designed to be as simple, precise, light (only 10.6g), durable and with as little air resistance as possible. The design features a spline directly integrated into the part. The recommended servo simply slides right in and gets tightened down by the same screw that is used as the pivot point. Simple, strong and easy to assemble. You can also use any servo with a maximum distance of 8mm from the bottom of the servo body to the bottom of the spline using the “attached servo horn” method, just like on the V2.5 build. (See build-videos on the tilt mechanism product page)
Specifications:
Note that the old 3D printed front spacer will not fit this board. You will need an injection moulded front spacer.
If you want a full tricopter frame, choose between the g10 and carbon fiber bottom boards to go with your F3FC tricopter board. The CF plate is stiffer and weighs about 5g (25%) less, and it looks super fancy too. If you are just upgrading (or repairing) you tricopter, you can choose no bottom board, this way you only get the F3FC Tricoper (top) Board.
This is our new RCExplorer F3FC Tricopter flight controller/PDB frame. Designed based on all the feedback we’ve received since the release of the Naze32 frame. This frame has it all.
Equipped with a SMT32F303CC processor which has a dedicated float point math processor to reduce processor load, freeing up resources to run other fun stuff like GPS (Currently limited functionality in the software), RGB LED’s, compass, blackbox logging, SBUS, OSD and such. This processor also allows for 3 dedicated UART’s which vastly improves connectivity. It’s now possible to run GPS, LED’s, OSD, external compass(via I2C) and SBUS at the same time. The board also has a I2C port and CAN bus which allows for future expandability. It also has a direct connected LED pin for controlling those really cool addressable RGB LED’s.
To save weight and make the build easier and more streamlined, the F3FC tricopter frame is also a power distribution board! Instead of having 2 separate boards and wires going everywhere you now just solder everything to one board and no extra wires between the boards are required. It makes assembling the copter easier, as you don’t have to juggle both boards and arms around at the same time while trying to get everything in place.
That’s not all when it comes to power. The F3FC frame also has a built in 3A switching BEC! This BEC can easily drive the servo, flight controller, OSD, UART devices, RGB LED’s without even running warm. It’s super clean and it also has selectable output voltage of 5V, 6V and 8V, the latter mainly used to power high voltage servos. If you have the BEC set to 8V you can, by bridging two solder points power the UART ports via a built in linear 5V regulator, so that you don’t fry your sensitive 5V expecting devices. The components for the switching BEC are well protected in a crash as they are hidden within the front spacer.
Also mounted inside of the front spacer is a MS5611 high sensitivity, high quality pressure sensor. Together with an external GPS the copter can now do position hold. Mounting the sensor inside of the front spacer keeps it out of direct airflow giving much more accurate readings.
Another great feature is the built in current sensor for monitoring mAh used. To me this is huge. It allows for a much more accurate way of knowing how much juice is left in your battery. This information can easily be relaid through telemetry to your RC transmitter together with the real time current draw and battery voltage (which naturally also is built in to the board).
To give the best flight experience the MPU6000 Gyro/accelerometer chip is used. It’s the least vibration sensitive chip commonly available, which means crisper performance due to lower noise. The MPU6000 is connected through SPI instead of I2C, which allows for much higher update rates. This together with the F3 chips capability of running lower loop times also improves the flight performance greatly.
Another huge leap in flight performance is the feedback enabled BMS210 servo. The flight controller now knows where the servo is at all times, which allows it to much more accurately control the tail. The F3FC frame has a dedicated feedback pad straight on the board for very easy hook up. All ESC’s also have surface mount pads straight on the board, which makes for a very clean build and saves a ton of space on the top of the frame.
To clean up the wiring even more there is now through holes that matches the pin spacing of the beeper. You can now solder the beeper straight to the board without any cables. There is also RAW battery voltage pins to power FPV equipment and such on the top of the frame. No more having to run wires on the side of and then in-between the frames.
Lastly the frame has 2 PWM channels, one of which can be used for PPM receivers. Serial receivers can be plugged into any of the UARTs, but UART1 has a selectable 3.3V/5V selector solder bridge for powering 3.3V spectrum satellites or “normal” receivers.
The F3FC frame is a drop in replacement for the Naze32 frame. You can use it with both the Mini Tricopter and the V4 without any modifications.
90° pinheader + tail tube stopper pinheader are both included in the F3FC Tricotper frame regardless of which (or none) bottom frame is chosen.
A beeper is highly recommended. It makes the setup procedure a lot easier, and it can be used as a lost model alarm, failsafe indicator, low battery and so on.
Instructions on how to select UART1 voltage and UART2,3 and PWM voltages:
R8, which have the marking 5V/BEC sets the voltage output on UART2,3 and PWM5+6. If BEC is selected (which is the default) The voltage will be whatever the built in BEC voltage is set to (5V default) If a higher BEC voltage is selected (for instance 8V) the 0 ohm resistor can be moved to the 5V position. This will engage a small LDO voltage regulator that will supply the UART2,3+PWM5,6 with 5V power. The current rating on this regulator is rather small (around 200mA) so it’s extremely important that you don’t try and power LED’s or OSD through any of the PWM ports while using this option. This option is available so that sensitive UART devices that cannot operate on 6 or 8V can still be powered through the board without an external power source.
R13 marked as 3.3V/5V is the voltage selector for UART1, which is used as the Serial RX input. Some receivers can’t handle more than 3.3V (spectrum satellite receiver for instance). If you’re using such a receiver, move the resistor over to the 3.3V position. The 5V option that is the default will give BEC voltage out if R8 (mentioned above) is set at BEC or 5V if R8 is set at 5V. See pictures for reference. (I know this is confusing. Will post a more comprehensive guide to this soon)
Specifications:
Made for Bi, Tri and Quad copters.
The F3FC Racing flight controller was designed with 2 things in mind; Performance and cost. To achieve this we chose a 48 pin version STM32F303CC processor and the MPU6000 gyro/accelerometer chip.
The MPU6000 is the least vibration sensitive chip commonly available, which means crisper performance due to lower noise. It is connected through SPI instead of I2C, which allows for up to 8 times higher update rates. This together with the F3 chips capability of running lower loop times vastly improves the flight performance.
Using the 48 pin version of the F303 processor we managed to cut down on cost quite a bit. But you still get 3 UART’s, dedicated USB, 6 PWM’s, I2C, LED port, Current sensor port, Voltage reading and Servo feedback/RSSI. This is achieved by optimising pin connections until we almost went mad, but in the end we did manage it.
The F3FC Racing also has a built in 5V linear voltage regulator. This makes installation easy and clean as no external BEC is needed to power the board or the receiver. However it’s very easy to hook up an external BEC if you would like to power more power hungry things such as a servo, RGB LED’s or a OSD. Just remember to move the little resistor next to the USB connector to “BEC” or you might fry the board! I highly recommend checking out the BabyPDB, which besides being a 36x36mm power distribution board also has built in current sensor and a 3A switching BEC.
The F3FC Racing follows the 36x36mm (30.5mm hole spacing) form factor. It weighs 4.6g. The connection pads are located on the top and bottom edges of the board, just like the popular KISS FC and LUX flight controllers. An easily accessible side mounted boot button is located on the opposite side of the USB connector. This makes entering DFU mode as painless as possible.
This board uses a Mini USB connector instead of the Micro USB commonly used on flight controllers today. This is because the Mini USB is much less likely to break if you accidentally leave the cable in while moving your copter. I know I’m not alone in having destroyed at least one board this way. The F3FC Racing should be able to take a lot more of this kind of abuse.
PPM input is shared with PWM 6. For powering spectrum satellites a 3.3V pad is also available.
The F3FC Racing uses the same architecture as the F3FC tricopter board, which means that it uses the same hex file during flashing.
The F3FC boards are now supported by BetaFlight. Use target “RCExplorerF3” in the firmware flasher tab in the Betaflight configurator.
The F3FC boards are now supported by Cleanflight. Use target “RCExplorerF3” in the firmware flasher tab in the Cleanflight configurator.
Correct signal output for a quadcopters is:
Just like cleanflight/betaflight shows you on the configuration tab.
The correct signal output for a tricopter is:
Pad number 1 = Tail motor
Pad number 2 = Servo
Pad number 3 = Front Right motor
Pad number 4 = Front Left motor
Specifications:
This upgraded version of the tilt mechanism features injection moulded pieces made from black fiberglass reinforced nylon parts. All parts were forged in the fires of Mt. Doom, making it almost indestructible. (It’s the same plastic used by high-end propeller manufacturers.)
This tilt mechanism is designed to be as simple, precise, light (only 10.6g), durable and with as little air resistance as possible. All parts are made from black fibreglass reinforced nylon for maximum durability. The design features a spline directly integrated into part which enables the recommended servo simply slides right in and gets tightened down by the same screw that is used as the pivot point. Simple, strong and easy to assemble.
The tilt is design around 28mm outside diameter motors with a hole spacing of 16 or 19mm, which is a very common motor size. The tilt can handle motors with a maximum motor size of about 33mm outside diameter. You can squeeze a 35mm motor but it’s not recommended, the bell might rub against the servo. DT750 type motors work well as they stick up high enough not to interfere with the servo.
Designed for 10mm booms the tilt simply attaches using zip-ties that are design to work as “mechanical fuses”, breaking and absorbing energy in a crash, protecting the important parts. It also makes it much easier to repair at the field, just bring some zip-ties.
The tilt is designed around the BMS-210DMH / TGY-210MH servo, which is a really strong and tough servo with great precision. It uses magnetic induction instead of a potentiometer. This means that in a crash, when the servo is subjected to way to much force the magnetic encoder looses track of where the output shaft is and it stops trying to make the servo fight the force, saving the gears. This servo also has a large spline diameter of 6mm which makes it possible to you to 3D print the spline directly into the tilt if you wish to make one yourself. This makes it super strong and slop free. It also uses a M3 servo horn screw, which I took advantage of by designing the tilt to use a 40mm long M3 screw as the pivot axis. This screw simply screws straight through the whole tilt and straight into the servo. The design also works with a other servos directly (list below) or you can use almost any servo as long as it has a maximum distance of 8mm from the bottom of the servo body to the bottom of the spline.
Specifications:
The RCExplorer Bicopter is designed to look as badass as possible, and I think we succeeded. The frame is entirely made from high-quality 3k twill weave matte finish carbon fiber. This makes the RCExplorer Bicopter frame lightweight, durable and worth drooling over.
