Entry #11 - Notes for the Betaflight F3 Flight Controller

This notes are about the FPV Model Betaflight F3 flight controller board.

The best online resource for this flight controller (and most other RC stuff) is the RC Groups thread, though it is too long to sit down and read and not that great to search.

Here are some quick notes:

• Due to the double sided board, it's probably best to solder all the wires to the board before building and then install the board, then solder the far end of the wires. This is especially true for the ESC pads. I've done two builds and a board replacement with this board, and attaching the wires to the board first was way easier.
• The corner mounting holes are connected to ground - I've had boards from two batches and this has been the case with both so be aware. Nylon hardware or other non conducting mounting is probably wise.
• 
  
• There are two solder bridges on the bottom of the board:
  - one controls the voltage of the RAM pin. The ram pin is the pin the camera power should com from if you're not going to power it from your VTX.
  - one controls the voltage on the receiver power pin
  - If you don't bridge these I think you get no power to the RX power and RAM pins.

• It's said the camera and VTX should both be connected to the ground AGND pin. Given the ground plane for the whole board is common, I'm not sure how true this is.

Other references:

• Oscar Liang's BF F3 FC article and wiring diagram
• Phillipp Seidel's BF F3 FC wiring plan

Sorry about the images I can't see an obvious way to customise the image size or do a thumbnail with a pop up in Blogger. I'm hoping you'll prefer the info over the aesthetics. The default X-Large is too small and original size gives us this.