Quick tip: Stopping wobble and vibration on HS1177

I was having an issue with my fpv video getting really wobbly when I was at >50% throttle.  I went over my quad multiple times trying to figure out what was causing the vibration.  The camera seemed fine, all the motors were balanced, and I even tried new props multiple times.

It turns out the HS1177 board doesn't always sit nice and snug.  I've heard of people putting all sorts of thin object to get the slop out and stop vibration.  Here is what I did

After that I just sandwiched it all in there and no more vibration!  I should probably cut down the foam a little so I don't cover up the vent holes on the back.

XT60 quick tip: Secure that connection

On two separate occasions I've had an xt60 connection come lose because of vibration or a little rough action.  Both times it resulted in my quad plummeting from the sky and me hoping it wasn't pulverized.  I found a good tip on rcgroups that mentioned putting small bits of wire in the middle of your xt60 pins.  I've done this for awhile and it's worked perfectly!

Please excuse the quality of the photos.  My phone doesn't take great macro shots.

Steps: Take small pliers and slightly pry apart the pins.  Be gentle because I've broken a few.  Maybe they were cheap but I'm extra careful now.  I use 20 AWG stranded wire or whatever I have laying around that is a snug fit.  I cut it to a lengh of about 3mm then push it down into the center of the pins.  Make sure no thin wires are poking out and everything is clean.

KISS FC Initial thoughts

I finally wanted to know what all the fuss about the Kiss FC was so I decided to get one from the Rotor Riot store.  I put it on my martial 5" frame with xm20 escs running BLHeli 14.6.  I haven't taken it out for a test flight yet but I wanted to provide a brief write-up about what I've liked and disliked.

Hardware and prep
This was extremely easy.  I oped to solder everything to the board and the layout was simple and clean.  Because this board accepts 2-6s directly I didn't have to worry about a bec of any kind.  I simply soldered a wire from my PDB to the VIN input on the kiss fc.  All the solder pads are large enough to easily solder your wires to and tinning them was not a problem.  I had to put mine in with a 180degree yaw and the kiss fc gui supports this option.

Another awesome feature is that when your kissfc is plugged in via usb it will power up your receiver!  That makes things really convenient for initial setup!

Overall I was really impressed with the board layout and easy of soldering.

Software
Coming from betaflight I was really surprised at how few options you have.  This is both good and bad depending on your personality.  If you really like to tweak each and every aspect then you may not enjoy the kiss fc firmware but Boris and felix may be working on a betaflight port if that's your thing.

I'm getting to the point where I just want things to fly smoothly without too much configuring so the Kiss fc gui was enough for me, mostly.

I would love to see a motors tab where I could easily calibrate my escs and test motor direction.  It would also be really nice having a 3d image of your quad so you can test if tiling forward actually tilts forward and something isn't reversed.

I'm using BLHeli on my escs and Kiss doesn't support passthrough so if I want to upgrade my escs I'll have to remove the solder, upgrade them, then solder it all back together.  This probably isn't worth it and if I don't have issues I'll most likely stick with BLHeli 14.6 for awhile.

Overall
I'm pretty impressed with the board so far but am not yet sure if it's worth double the price you would typically pay for a spracingf3 board from banggood or x-racer from fpvmodel.  Not having to supply 5v power means no bec so that is some savings but not much.  I'm sure I'll provide a follow up review after a few flying sessions and hopefully some video footage.

Does better gear help?

It's been awhile since I've had the motivation or really any reason for posting content.   I haven't gotten to fly as much as I like but have been doing a lot of building/fixing.

I've been in this terrible circle of flying and fixing.  Though hti sis normal I've been doing a lot more fixing than I think I should be.  I'm starting to wonder if this is because I buy the cheapest parts.  I really don't trust my equipment and want to be able to.

I have currently have two machines that that use spracingf3s, little bees or xm20s, different motors, and different frames.  For the most part both of them fly beautifully and then out of nowhere they freak out and crash into the ground.  I think I tracked one down to a cold solder joint on an esc.  It must have been rebooting after enough vibration.  It caused the krieger to have a nasty spill and so I put all the gear on the qav210 instead.

The martian (alien clone) has been pretty good to me but the camera mount is awful.  I'm attempting to rig something up similar to the official alien but haven't tested it yet.  I was also having issues with this one and I'm thinking they were desync issues with blheli 14.5.  I upgraded to 14.6 and things got better but aren't perfect.

I'm really curious if people have similar experiences with better gear.  I decided to test it out and have some emax red bottoms, xm20s, and now a kissfc on the martian.  I'm going to direct solder everything and take my time.  I'm considering selling my backup quad and using all kiss equipment and a setup similar to the rotor riot crew.

I'll post as soon as I can with a breakdown on if spending a little extra helps.

What I can say is that the cheaper motors I've purchased (readytosky 2204 2300 and le todar 2204 2300s) aren't very good.  I'm comparing them to cobras and the emax red bottoms.  After many crashes the more expensive emax and cobras are just fine.  I haven't had a bent bell or shaft or anything.  The readytoskys had a bent bell and shaft after one very minor crash.  The le todars are really rough and one of them is twitching.  So even though these cheaper ones are half the price I think the more expensive ones are definitely worth the extra cost.