RateFPV F4 40A AIO Flight Controller: A first look

[00:00:03]Hello and welcome to the video. This is a first look at this thing here. This is the all-in-one, the new F4 V4 from RaceFPV. Now, I've been looking at alternative suppliers for flight controllers and ESCs since people like SpeedyBee and Matek started to become really tricky to get hold of. SpeedyBee and Matek for many, many years at this point have been my go-to if I was doing any of my builds. Check out my quad building for beginners, I now for beginners, those kind of things, you'll see the same things cropping up over and over again. However, it's become increasingly difficult to get hold of things like Matek and SpeedyBee and I've been looking for quality alternatives.

[00:00:48]Now, RaceFPV caught my eye.

[00:00:51]This is the all-in-one board designed for those kind of more compact whoop style boards. This actually, go through the full specs in a minute, F4 processor on here, but a powerful F4 processor.

[00:01:03]Things like chunky 40 amp 32-bit ESCs, pads on the sides for soldering, but also connectors, too. So, some of the stuff you can just plug in and that minimizes the amount of messing about.

[00:01:19]Now, the all-in-one that I ordered has come in first. I've also ordered one of their other things. There's also a stack that I'm hopefully getting in soon and that I'll actually probably swap one of my quads over to try it out. But as this has come in first, I thought it'd be interesting to kind of show you what it is, how it all goes together, and also kind of ask if you've tried any of the RaceFPV stuff, what do you think?

[00:01:44]So, while I unbox it, let's cover the specs. So, again, this is the RaceFPV F4 V4 40 amp all-in-one flight controller and ESC stack, all-in-one little board.

[00:01:57]The CPU in here is F4 based. Gyroscope is an ICM 42688.

[00:02:03]Barometer is an SPL06.

[00:02:06]Does have an OSD chip in here as well.

[00:02:08]So, it will support both analog and HD FPV. 16 meg black box inside. Supports LEDs. It has LED pads and will support 3 to 6S. I squared C interface on here as well, which is great. Could support things like an external compass. BEC, it has a 5 volt 3 amp BEC, but also an additional 10 volt 2 amp BEC for things like your HD system. Weight is about 9.6 g with the heat sink, about 8 g without.

[00:02:39]But, let's be honest, we're not going to take the heat sink off it. If it comes like this. Size is 33 by 33 by 5.5 mm.

[00:02:46]And the mounting holes, although it says on the website 25 by 25 mm, they're actually 35 and 1/2 mm.

[00:02:55]So, let's quickly plug it into Betaflight and have a quick look around.

[00:02:59]Everything is moving on the desk. Just so you know, I'll cover this again in a minute. The front of the board is the corner that has no power connections.

[00:03:09]So, the USB port is kind of at the rear left hand side. So, target is rate rate F435V4.

[00:03:19]And that is an F435 processor on board.

[00:03:23]We'll see how well it's performing in a minute. CPU loads about 40% and that's with an 8K gyro and PID loop running away.

[00:03:30]Data flash is currently empty. We can see we have the gyro, accelerometer, and the barometer on here as well. Version of chip with here is 4.5.2.

[00:03:40]Going into the ports tab, we see we have lots of ports to play with. Not sure all of them are exposed. So, UART4 is used for the HD FPV port. UART2 is used for your input, and then you are one is set for MSP.

[00:03:57]Configuration, nothing really exciting here. The only thing to point out is that 8K gyro and PID loops, the CPU is running at 40%, so it can definitely handle that without a problem at all.

[00:04:08]Receiver by default is set to CRSF.

[00:04:12]Uh that's nicely shown in the diagram.

[00:04:14]I'll talk about that in a minute.

[00:04:16]Nothing particularly exciting in the motor tab. Nothing particularly exciting in the OSD tab. The only thing I'll mention in here is the fact that it's set up from OSD out the box.

[00:04:27]I will save the settings as it's supplied in a file. I'll put a link in the description if you're interested.

[00:04:33]So actually, this is an impressive all-in-one little board. I like the fact that everything you need is inside the box. The manual is actually really nice.

[00:04:43]I like the fact that we have everything you need. The cables are all in there, even the power connector, uh even things like a capacitor. The [snorts] connection diagram is nice and clear.

[00:04:54]The manual itself is also very useful with Chinglish on one side and I guess Chinese on the other.

[00:05:02]Do like the fact that they've thought about solderless connections for some of the pieces. I think lots of people would probably enjoy having a few more. Uh it isn't solderless setup, sadly, but the fact that they've included a I think they've called it a welding board in the box, uh soldering practice board, is brilliant. Those of you that struggle a little bit means that you can practice on that board, and then when you come onto the real one, you will have got your eye in and will make less mistakes.

[00:05:32]The soldering pads on the flight controller are actually printed as well.

[00:05:36]They're an absolute eye test. Some of these pads, although they've tried to make them as big as they can, cramming these pads onto a flight controller that's physically this small is always going to result in pads that are a little bit smaller than than I would like. So, you're going to need a very fine soldering tip and you're going to have to make sure that you haven't drunk too much coffee that day so you don't have the shakes.

[00:05:57]But, it does have I squared C and LED pads on here as well. So, if you have LEDs on your quad and you want to connect them up, that's absolutely something you can do. And I also like the fact that there is a separate supply for the HD FPV system. Looking at the specs here, there is a bit of confusion about whether it's 10 or 12 volts, but both the specs that I've seen say 2 amps, so that's good news.

[00:06:24]A couple of things to be aware of though. This isn't a completely solderless setup. Some of the things that you're going to want to put on here, you're going to have to solder.

[00:06:30]So, if you want to add a GPS, depending on the our receiver, you might have to do some soldering there. Adding a buzzer is going to require some soldering and adding your analog FPV kit is going to need the soldering stuff as well, both for the camera and the VTX. Again, it's not clear where the front is. It's this corner here is the front by default in Betaflight. So, just make sure that this is pointing towards it's that kind of 45° configuration and setup, which is very common for these all-in-ones.

[00:06:59]Not a fan of the Chinese characters in the documentation and the images. If Race FPV are serious about targeting English-speaking countries, then I would expect them to do what a lot of other manufacturers do, which is kind of tidy those up and have different language versions available so that things are not too cluttered. Also, noticed that there have been a couple of differences in terms of what the stated CPU on here is and also what the stated voltage. One thing I read said 10 volts, another thing I read said 12 volts for the HD FPV system. So, there's a little bit of work to do just to get the documentation really clean.

[00:07:40]And sadly, although it does support things like external compass, no iNav support at the moment. And a quick look at the iNav GitHub shows me that that's isn't coming anytime soon from all I can see.

[00:07:55]But in summary, this looks like a solid little all-in-one board. There's lots of thought gone into the technology. Just at the moment, the documentation is playing a little bit of catch-up, but the unboxing experience, some of the nice tips and tricks, the things like the manuals are actually really handy.

[00:08:12]Having all the pieces in the box and even a soldering practice board are really cute ideas.

[00:08:18]I'm waiting for that all-in-one stack to actually build out on one of these and actually take it for a fly. But I'm really interested if you are watching this and you've tried any of the Rate FPB stuff, I'd be fascinated to know how you have got on.

[00:08:34]Unboxing experience and looking at in Betaflight, this really ticks an awful lot of boxes. But you only really find out what a flight controller is like when you've built it, put it in your quad, and you've flown it. So if you have that experience, I'd be fascinated to know. Stay tuned. I'm hoping to get that other stack in soon, and when it is, we'll take a look at it, and I'm very tempted to pop it in one of my quads and try it out.

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