What's up guys welcome to Rotoruaia and welcome back to Learn to FPV. On this episode I'm going to do a very basic overview on all the different parts that go into a drone. I'm not going to go into too much detail in any of these because later on in the series we'll have an episode that's dedicated to each part on its own. So this is really just for the absolute beginner that doesn't really know what all these parts are or what they do. So let's start with the frame. The frame is basically the backbone of the drone that everything is going to be bolted onto. So drones in this size you're typically going to see them made in carbon fiber and then microals are just about always made in plastic. Plastic is super lightweight and in this size it's strong enough to hold up to the forces that these motors make. But once you get to this size plastic would either be too flimsy or you'd have to make it still thick that it'd be too heavy. Those frames are roughly the same concept. You're going to have a bottom layer that all the parts go on, some standoffs and then another layer to keep all the electronics in the middle protected so they never take a direct impact and crashes. There's two main types of frames. So some of them are going to be really compact and small and lightweight and those are better for racing because the lower the weight the more the maneuverable. Then other ones will be a little bit bigger, a little more spacious but they're meant for freestyle so they're more optimized to carry a GoPro. You're typically going to see the battery mounted on top and typically I would say they're a little bit more durable, a little bit better for bashing around. Next up we have the motors. This is the one and only moving part to a drone. This is what makes your power. They come in a wide variety of sizes and speeds. So depending on if you're going for a longer flight time or more performance that's going to determine what type of motor you're going to choose. Attached to your motors is your propeller or prop. The prop's what's actually given you your lift. So these guys spin, they push air down, the drone goes up. It's a pretty simple concept but even though it's simple there's actually a lot of different variations in the propellers that are available. You've got different amounts of blades on them. I would say three blade props are the most common but there's also two, there's four, there's six blade props. There's a lot of different pitches of the blade, there's different lengths. We'll go a lot more into detail on that once we get to the choosing propeller episode. Connected to your motor is going to be the ESC or the electronic speed controller. This is what's going to take the power from the battery until that motor how fast or how slow it should be spinning. There's two main variations of ESCs. So in this drone I've got individual ESCs. So for every motor it's got its own speed controller to drive it. And then over here I've got what's called a 4-in-1 ESC. So this is one circuit board with four speed controllers built into it. The upside of that is it's less different parts to buy and keep on hand. It's a little bit easier to put together because there's less soldering connections that you need to do. But the downside is if you have an issue with any of the motors and one of the speed controllers having a problem you have to replace the whole thing instead of just replacing the one that's in issue. Whereas if you go with individual ESCs it can be a little bit cheaper to maintain because if one ESC has a problem you only have to replace the one. And a little quicker and easier to work on because the individual ESC is going to be on the arm so you don't have to take the whole drone apart to replace it. You could usually just desotter it right from where it's at, pull it off, solder a new one on and you're back in the air. Moving into the center of the drone is the FC or the flight controller. The flight controller is pretty much the brain of the whole drone. This is what's going to determine how the drone flies. It's where you do all your programming, it's what keeps it stable. Pretty much every part on the drone is going to connect to that flight controller. Flight controllers come in two main variations. You have your sort of standard or regular flight controller and then you have the all-in-one flight controller. So when we talk about a all-in-one flight controller, I guess that's not the best term for it because it's not really all-in-one, it's kind of two things in one. So it's a flight controller and it's also a PDB. So PDB or what this guy would be on its own stands for Power Distribution Board. So what a PDB's job is is to take the power from the battery and then split it up four ways so each of the different speed controllers gets its own power. A lot of them modern flight controllers, they've took this functionality and built it right into the flight controller. So on this setup, this middle board is just one piece. It's doing the power distribution from the battery to the speed controllers and operating as my flight controller. Moving back from there, we have our RX or receiver. What the receiver does is it takes the signal from your radio and sends those stick inputs into the flight controller to let the flight controller what you're trying to do with the sticks. Some things to keep in mind are each different brand of radio is going to have its own receivers with its own protocols so you can't mix and match. So when buying a radio, it's a good idea to look at what receivers are available. How much do they cost? How big are they and how easily available are they? All of these guys have this dangly wire coming off of it. This is your battery lead, sometimes called a pig tail. So this is obviously to get the power from the battery into the drone. You're going to see different types of connectors. The basic rule of it is you're going to see the smallest possible connector that can handle the current that's going to be used on that size drone. So you wouldn't want to put this connector on this little tiny drone because it's unnecessary. So that's your pig tail or battery lead. And those parts are all you would need to actually get the drone in the air. If you were to fly line a sight, you need a frame, you need motors, you need speed controllers, flight controller, receiver, battery and a pig tail. So since this is learned to FPV, let's move on to the parts that make first person view possible. On front you've got your FPV camera. These are going to come in different sizes. There's different lenses available for them, different types of sensors, different qualities, and they'll ship to you with different types of presets on them. Again here we're going to have a whole episode on helping you choose what's the right camera for you. To get that signal sent back to you on the ground, that's what the VTX is for, or video transmitter. It takes that signal and then sends it through the air back to you. Again like a lot of these other parts, they can scale up or scale down. The VTX that's in this drone is going to be obviously a lot smaller than that one, but it also doesn't put out the same amount of power. So as you get into a bigger VTX, typically they can handle pushing out more power, which is essentially going to give you more range. On every video transmitter, you're always going to have an antenna. The antenna is what's actually doing the communication for you back down to the ground. So there's a few different types of antennas and terminology you'll run into there. The two main types are going to be a linear antenna and a circular polarize antenna. In the circular realm, you've got right-handed polarize and left-handed polarize. This is so that you can get more people flying at the same time by if you alternate left and right. The different channels will not pick up on each other as much. Because in FPV, we're limited on how many people we can fly at the same time because some of the channels that you broadcast on can kind of interfere with each other. So it's kind of like if you ever tune in on the radio and you can hear a song, but it doesn't quite sound right and then you click into the next station and then it comes in full. That's similar to what the video transmitter is going to do. On the exact channel that you're on, it's going to be putting out a really clean signal, but there will be also a harmonic or a sort of less full signal on other channels. So splitting up left and right is good for that. So usually on a micro drone, you're going to find linear antennas. This is just a simple wire. It's very lightweight, but you lose that rejection of different channels when you have a linear antenna. The last but not least is your battery or your LIPO. LIPO is short for lithium polymer. That's the chemistry of battery that these are. And these come in different voltages and different capacities. So similar to your motor and your propeller choice, which battery you choose is either going to skew your setup towards more flight time or more performance. And again, like the other components, we're going to have a whole episode dedicated to batteries, how to charge them, how to discharge them, how to properly maintain them, and how to be safe with them because the battery is the most dangerous part about the whole drone. They're relatively safe if you take care of them properly, but you can burn a house down with one of these. So we'll definitely do a whole episode on batteries. That's going to be it for this episode. On the next episode, I'm going to do a basic overview on all the parts that stay on the ground with you. So that's your goggles, your radio, and your charger, and some of the basic things that I'll keep in my bag with me when I go out to fly. So again, thanks for watching, and this has been Learned FPV.