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.