Chinese brand components

(24.0603 WIP)

Another aspect of the "Ziptie" philosophy is how to deal with the quality problems of mainland Chinese brand components in hobbyist drones.

1 For a newbie, a bad component can easily mean a week of effort

You have no idea where the problem could be.

2 Bad components that you hear nothing bad about

SpeedyBee products are all the rage lately. Good advertising, cheap prices. Their F405 FC/ESC combination is kind of a standard. But I had some real problems with the SBee components:

F405 FC connectors were crap. I had to cut up the plastic on one to get the connection to work. 1+ days of effort. I wasted another day before I could even find the source of the problem. I almost bought a different FC.
F405 ESC pad for a wire to a motor came loose from the substrate. Its just hanging there.. still works, not sure how long.
T-800 VTX was junk. I swapped in a cheap Zeus, and it worked (and verified that I was not doing anything wrong with the T-800).

3 The problem with mainland Chinese brands

I worked at Huawei in China. It was an eye-opener. I worked in China for years, speak and read the language. Once a Chinese manager told me about the attempt to develop products in China. It didn't work. They shifted design and development back to California. Companies like Huawei (and DJI) make some quality stuff because these are not really China-based companies.

But most of the components you will buy for drones are from truly China-based companies (quality standards and control are defined in China). This cause the following problems:

Quality (nothing is thrown away at the factory)
Complicated and insecure payment and delivery (and returns)
Documentation and website issues

5 A big help: Amazon.com reviews and return notices

Amazon warned me about the Speedybee FC (see Shopping list). I bought it anyway because its kind of the defacto standard. But in general you want to read product reviews on Amazon.

Note: When I mentioned the SBee quality problems in some forum (Ardupilot I think), the "experts" mocked me for saying the the SBee FC was low quality. Until I posted the Amazon warning. They probably knew about the problems already, but did not want to admit it.