RC receiver

The receiver for the radio controller has two antennas that work best when under an angle. A 3D printed part is included in the kit which can hold the antennas and fits onto the rails. The antennas should fit right into it, as can be seen below.

The cable that will later go to the FMU should be plugged into the pins labeled i-BUS SERVO. The signal wire (white) should be on the outside. Also see the picture below.

Installing the RC receiver and telemetry radio

The radio receiver itself and the telemetry radio transceiver can be mounted with some double sided tape. They should fit between the rails, as can be seen below. The 3D printed antenna mount can be put onto the rails near the back of the drone.

The cables coming from the radios should go through the hole near the front of the drone. We will later connect them to the FMU when we install it on top of the drone.

Battery plate

We can now also install the battery plate. It consists of a carbon plate with two clamps that are put together with four small screws. It is easiest to put the clamps onto the rails first, on then screw the carbon plate to them. When the drone is finished, you can strap the battery to this plate using the velcro strip included in the kit.

This section is a guide on how to build the HoverGames drone with the S500 drone frame. It works best when the pages are read in the order in which they appear in the menu. You should start with mounting the motors, and finish with mounting the FMU and GPS.

Mounting the top plate and GPS

Before we install the FMU onto the drone, we should first install the GPS when we still have the space to do so. A small 3D printed part is included in the kit which allows us to mount the GPS mast to the top plate. The 3D printed part goes underneath, the base of the GPS mast goes on top and we use the included screws and nuts to keep it in place. It should be mounted on the right side of the top plate.

You can now mount the top plate onto the rest of the frame. You need 12 M2.5 screws. The "arrow" should point towards the front of the frame, which should be the part with the slits in the bottom plate.

Next, you can put the GPS mast together. You might need to use some super glue if the rod can turn around too easily inside the plastic parts. The plastic part on the bottom of the rod can be mounted to the base part that is already mounted to the top plate.

Finally, you can use the double sided foam tape to put the GPS on top of the GPS mast. The arrow on the GPS should be aligned to point forward.

Mounting the FMU, arming switch and buzzer

The FMU can also be mounted on the top plate with a few pieces of double sided foam tape. It should be as close to the center of the drone as possible.

The safety switch can be mounted with a simple zip tie, as can be seen below.

Finally, the buzzer can be installed on the front left arm with a small piece of double sided foam tape.

The FMU comes with a 3D printed casing, which still has to be assembled. It consists of a top and bottom part and a tiny piece which presses against the reset button. The FMU should first be screwed down to the bottom part of the casing with four short screws of about 7 mm long.

After the FMU is screwed down to the bottom part of the casing, you can put the top part on and turn the whole case upside down. You need to short screws (7 mm) and two longer screws (about 10 mm) to keep the two halfs of the case together. The longer screws should go in the holes on the side of the servorail of the FMU. The short ones go on the side of the SD card slot.

Next, we will start soldering all components onto the power distribution board (bottom plate of the frame). The top side has solder pads for ESCs, as can be seen in the picture below.

Soldering the XT60 connector

We will start with soldering the male XT60 connector for the battery power input, because it is a bit harder to solder than the ESCs. The male XT60 connector is the one with the two metal pins on the inside, and it should have the letter "M" on its side. On the other side it should also indicate the polarity, or which side is positive (+) and which side is negative (-). This should match up with the symbols on the board.

The XT60 connector goes on top of the board and is soldered from the bottom. All other components are soldered on top. Make sure to use enough solder to make a good connection to the board.

Soldering the ESCs

After you have soldered the XT60 connector, you can add some solder to all ten soldering pads on top of the board. There are four pairs for the ESCs, and one pair on the side meant for a UBEC.

You can now easily solder the ESCs onto the board. We chose to solder the ESCs in such a way that the long wires coming from the ESCs go to the middle of the board. Make sure that the red wire is soldered to the positive pad (+) and the black wire to the negative pad (-).

Soldering the UBEC

If you have a UBEC available, you can solder it in similar way to the pair of pads on the side of the board. Again, solder the wires in such a way that they point towards the middle of the board, and make sure you get the polarity right (red is positive, black is negative).

Outdated

Part 1 - Kit contents

Part 2 - Mounting the motors

Part 3 - Mounting the ESCs

Part 4 - Mounting the arms

Part 5 - Mounting the BEC, landing gear and top plate

Part 6 - Mounting the battery plate and FMU

Part 7 - Mounting the GPS mast, arming switch and buzzer

Part 8 - Soldering and mounting the FMU power module

Part 9 - Soldering and mounting GPS

Connector pinout

We are almost ready. We only need to connect the wires to the right connectors on the FMU. A diagram showing all port locations is available below. More indepth information is also available in the technical reference section.

The power module plugs into the XT60 connector at the back of the drone. Its other end should go through the hole in the bottom plate. The battery can be connected to this end later. The smaller cable coming from the power module should go between the two plates and come out near the front of the FMU. This 6-pin connector plugs into the POWER IN connector.

The 6-pin GPS cable should go to the GPS connector just below the POWER IN connector. Below this is a 6-pin UART connector, to which the telemetry radio cable should be connected.

On the left side of the FMU we have the 4-pin FRSKY/RC IN connector, which is meant for the receiver of the radio controller. Below it is a 3-pin connector for the safety switch. In the middle of the board is a 2-pin connector for the buzzer.

Servorail

The servorail pinout is shown in the diagram below. The BEC should be connected to the leftmost pins. The ESCs should be connected to the first four sets of pins on the right side.

The order in which the ESCs should be connected to the servo rail is given by the diagram below. The motor/ESC at the front-right should be the first, the one at the back-left should be second. The motor/ESC at the front-left should be third, and the one at the back-right should be fourth.

The black (ground) wires should be on top, the white (signal) wires on the bottom. The BEC doesn't have a white wire, but it has a red wire, which goes in the middle. It will provide 5V power to all middle pins. However, the ESCs included in the HoverGames kit already receive power directly from the PDB and therefore don't have a wire that connects to the middle pins of the servo rail.

The drone should now look similar to the picture below.

Final result

Finally, you can use some zip ties to make sure the propellers won't cut through any loose wires. You could already install the propellers, but you might have to remove them again later. The clockwise rotating motors (with a mark on top) have propellers with black nuts, the counter clockwise rotating motors have propellers with silver nuts.

We will start by mounting the motors to the arms of the frame. Put the three wires coming out of the motor through the hole as shown in the picture below.

Each motor is mounted by four M3 screws. Make sure to use all four of them and tighten them firmly. You can use washers (metal rings) in between if they are available, but it is not required.

You should now have the motor mounted to the arm like in the picture below. Make sure the motor is on top of the arm and not on the bottom!

Repeat the process three more times, until you have mounted all four motors onto the arms. You will see that there are two motors with a mark on top of the shaft. We will come back to this later. It indicates the direction of the threading and in which direction the motor should rotate.

Mounting the landing gear

The first step is to put together the landing gear and mount it to the bottom frame. Each leg consists of a bottom part with foam and a T-shaped junction, and a carbon rod with a part that can be mounted to the bottom plate with four black M3 screws.

It might be a good idea to reinforce the landing gear with some zip ties. Cracks might occur in the plastic T-shape junction when you have a hard landing. A zip tie is a quick fix and could help prevent this from happening.

Each leg is mounted to the bottom plate with four black M3 screws from the top.

Mounting the rails

The next step is to mount the rails on the bottom of the frame. These rails are an easy way to mount new components on bottom of the drone.

The first step is to put the rubber rings into the plastic parts. There are two for each side, so four in total. The purpose of the rubber rings is to keep the carbon rods from moving around. Don't mount them to the bottom plate yet, it is easier to first put carbon rods through them before we install it to the rest of the frame.

It requires quite some force to put the carbon rods through the rubber rings. Therefore, it is easier to do this before you mount it to the bottom plate. Try to position them as close as possible to where they should be when we mount it to the frame. We will use the outermost holes to mount the rails, not the ones close to the legs.

The rails are mounted with two M2.5 screws per plastic part, so four per side and eight in total. The rails go on bottom, on the screws come in from the top.

Clockwise and counter clockwise rotating motors

As mentioned on the previous page, we have two kinds of motors. Clockwise rotating motors have a little mark on top of their shaft, and counter clockwise rotating motors have a smooth top.

The motors should be mounted according to the following diagram. The motors on the front left (#3) and back right (#4) should turn clockwise (motor with mark), and the front right (#1) and back left (#2) should turn counter clockwise (motor without mark).

The top side of the bottom plate is the side with the soldering pads. The S500 text should be at the back of the drone, the part with the slits should be at the front. The front left and back right should have an arm with a clockwise rotating motor (which have a mark on top of the motor shaft). The front right and back left should have arms with motors rotating in the counter clockwise direction (which have a smooth top of the motor shaft).

Mounting the arms

Turn the whole board upside down and "fold back" the ESCs so the wires make a nice loop in the middle of the board. This is similar to what is shown in the picture above with all four ESCs soldered. Take one of the previously assembled arms with the correct motor, and position it so all the wires coming out of the ESC fit in the small area as shown below. Make sure you are using an arm with the correct motor, especially now that you have turned the board upside down.

You can now use two M2.5 screws to mount the arm to the board. Make sure all wires are still where they should be.

Repeat this for all four arms, and double check that you have installed the right motors at the right position. The overview as seen below should match with the schematic provided above.

Mounting the ESCs

The next step is to connect the motors to the ESCs and make sure the ESCs are properly attached to the frame. We will use zip ties for this.

The ESCs can be strapped underneath the arms with zip ties. The zip ties go through the holes in the arm and fit nicely around the part of the ESC where the power input and signal wires come out. One zip tie per ESC should be enough, but you can add a second one if you want.

The results so far

At this point, we should have the bottom plate ready with the XT60 connector, ESCs and possibly the UBEC soldered to it. The motors and ESCs should be mounted to the arms, and the arms should be screwed down to the bottom plate.

Now make absolutely sure the motors are in the right positions. The motors with a mark on top of their shaft should be at the front left and back right. The motors without a mark should be on the front right and back left. The front of the drone is the part with the slits on the bottom plate. The back is the part with the XT60 connector.

If you find you have made a mistake with the motors, you can just unplug the ESC wires, unscrew the M3 screws that keep the motor in place and change two motors. You don't have to change the whole arm. The ESCs are the same for clockwise and counter clockwise rotating motors, so they can stay in the same place.