MarKus upgrade

MarKus upgrade (early 2017)

Goals for this upgrade was to:

• have lighter and more responsive drone
• have better FPV quality (reduce lagging and latency from the previous version)

Upgrades: 

• All the excess wires are trimmed to ideal lengths for cleanness and weight reduction.
• PDB (power distribution board) is replaced with lighter and smaller board and is now sitting between the plates that hold the arms.
•  It’s hard to see from the photo but most of the wiring is done between the plates where the PDB is located for wire protection from spinning props.
• Video transmitter’s dipole antenna is replaced with clover leaf antenna.
• Video transmitter is replaced with smaller & lighter VTX.
• Camera is replaced with something of better quality.
• Betaflight filmware is now used instead of Cleanflight.
• Proper FPV goggles is now used instead of old phone screen system.

Looks pretty clean now

MarKus got a diet  380g -> 324g

485.8 grams with 3cell 2200mah battery attached at the bottom

  The upgrades resulted in better quality FPV experience. Latency is almost completely gone that it is no longer noticeable when in flight.  The effort to weight reduction has shown effect and MarKus weighs 324 grams instead of 380 grams. (although still heavy). Thus, flight time is increased from 10 min to 13~15 min when hovering. Also, using Betaflight filmware has clearly improved the flight characteristics compared to when it was using Cleanflight.

  Many upgrades have been done but the drone still got quite a lot of problems. Although improved from the previous version, MarKus still shows noticeable unnecessary oscillations upon small movements or external forces. It was also still heavy which resulted sluggish flight characteristics. 

For improvements,

Use better motors, ESCs, flight controller, OSD, props, lighter frame… ah forget it. I’m building a new quad.

This marked the end of MarKus iteration.