** FYI : This article is a work in progress

The Blade Inductrix is a great little ducted fan multirotor with enough lift to carry a payload, specifically the transmitter camera combo of the FX798T which lead to the Tiny Whoop revolution that everyone and their mother is flying right now.

I really wanted to get into this but the idea of having another transmitter to deal with, let alone a toy-ish transmitter turned me off, and i didn’t have a Spektrum radio nor any Spektrum or Orange modules for my FlySky transmitter. NewBeeDrone came out with an awesome alternative plug and play Transmitter for the Inductrix called the “The BeeBrain v.1”

jjj

Through one of NewBeeDrone’s recent HoneyPot Grab Bags they included a ZMR250 frame, cc3d Flight controller and a letter . This Letter described that the theme for this particular grab bag was to give back to the community, and to “pay it forward” so to say by giving back to the sport of flying by introducing a new person to the community. so through this I knew my brothers son has been through several “Toy” multirotors but never a real deal legit quadcopter. I paired the ZMR with a set of DYS 1806’s, 5x4x4 HQprops, RTFQ PDB, and a set of XM20a ESC’s and built him a full quad.

[Link to that build here]

Through that i was one of the two people selected to receive the “Special Honeypot” from NewBeeDrone and received this awesome kit from NBD consisting of:

1x BeeBrain v.1

4x 6x15mm motor

6x Nitro Nectar batteries

1x 12-in-1 Battery charger parallel board

1x BeeDuctrix carrying case

1x NBD battery strap

This awesome kit got me essentially everything i needed to make my own Inductrix with my own FrSky module in my radio (i did have to switch it to D8 mode) and fly it just like any of my other large quads.

I quick went into the internet and looked for a frame. Thats when i hit a snag, everyone seems to be sold out or backordered on Inductrix parts.

No problem right, ill just turn to either the CNC, Laser or worst case 3D Printer. but first i need to do a bit of designing.

I went to pulled out my Calipers and went to Corel and laid out all the main dimensions, then sub dimensions for the Flight Controller. I started to mockup a frame but i figured why re-invent the wheel, i just needed something to quickly test and ill deal with the ducts and stuff later, so i pulled a frame off thingiverse and used all the layout points from that as a jumping off point to start designing my frame.

I designed a small set of rings that i could zip tie above and below the motors to keep them in place for now and cut out a quick sample from 0.180″ acrylic.

I set my XJT module to D8 mode and bound to the BeeBrain, this took several tries as there was no real confirmation if it had worked, it wasnt until i plugged it into Betaflight that i was able to confirm that it was indeed receiving signal from my radio, i did have to change the input to AETR to match my radio, and i had to set the Aux ports according to the BeeBrain Manual and luckily i set the motors in the layout as shown in the manual where the motors with Red and Blue wires go to motor locations 1&4 and the Black and White motors go to 2&3, if you are using stock inductrix layout the props spin outwardly whereas the Betaflight/BeeBrain combo used inward spinning props like every other large size quad.

To recap the Radio and Betaflight changes i had to make;

Switch XJT Module to D8 Mode (SW1=ON – SW2=OFF)

Switch to AETR

Set Aux channels to for ARM, Horiz and Air Mode

Reverse motor layout (inward spinning props)

I Ran into my last problem with this build at this point, i had no props to test (betaflight has an awesome little virtual test in the software to test inputs) in real life. I thought i just bought some tri blade props for my Proto-X FPV and those should work right? wrong. The shaft diamater for that must be about 1.5mm because they were just a hair too large to fit the shafts off the BeeDuctrix, I did have another set of props that did fit, from my smaller Proto-X quad, however these were too small of a prop, so even through the hub fit the shaft, the props did nothing.

So as of now, the DIY BeeDuctrix Build is on hold, until i can find a local place that has inductrix props and maybe replacement frame (i swear i saw a set at Sheldons Hobby on my last visit) or the slow boat delivers the clones from china….