tinyFISH FC & tinyPEPPER ESC — Where to buy?!

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By | May 9, 2017
27 Comments

It has been a long time without new posts. I was fully occupied with our move. Most of my quadcopter equipment is still packed in boxes and I traded my soldering iron with a brush and I am still busy painting walls.
At least my desk is partially finished and I can start to work on my new or paused projects, I started to work on a custom OSD with full bf integration (no max7456 chip, ~0.4g, 10x10mm). Once this works I will do a 16×16 vtx with integrated OSD for the tinyFISH and tinyPEPPER stack — stay tuned!

A lot happened during the last weeks, racerstar invented their own cloned the tinyfish/tinypepper design and different websites started to sell clones of those boards as well. There are also rtf quads popping up that use my FC and ESC designs as a base (dustX58). Many of the sellers removed my fishpepper logo from the circuit boards, do not give proper credit and sell my designs as theirs, but there are laudable exceptions of course!

I started to make a list of “good” sellers that give proper credit. If a link is missing please let me know.
Some of the shops sell the old design. Recently there was a design change to use a 3.1V voltage regulator. The ones with the 3.0V regulator have some issues to start the ESCs as long as the batteries are fully charged. As far as i know boldclash is the only one who used the latest FC design. I got some samples from them, the pcb and soldering quality looks quite nice compared to racerstar. A review is still pending due to my move.

I have not flight tested any of the boards from the sources below. I can not rate the quality yet. Please note that some stores on aliexpress and banggood show bad wiring diagrams for the ESC (+/- swapped), so be careful!

16×16 tinyFISH FC

16×16 tinyPEPPER 4in1 ESC

There are also some sellers I can not really recommend as they do not give proper credit at all and actively selling it as their very own invention. E.g. Racerstar sells the FC and the ESC as their invention on banggood.com.

Please note that I do not get any money/licensing fees from sellers listed above. That’s perfectly fine. All I am asking for is to give proper credit to the inventor. Some stores claim to be the inventor/designer of those boards which makes me really sad. Thats even worse than copies without proper credit…

27 thoughts on “tinyFISH FC & tinyPEPPER ESC — Where to buy?!”

  1. Chris

    Thanks for all of your help. I purchased your FC from Boldclash to construct my first micro quad and I’m a little confused about the pinout diagrams that I’ve found online. They appear to be inconsistent. The pads surrounding Vin/out supply a regulated 3.3V? Does the buzzer pad supply Vbat? 5V? Any guidance would be appreciated.

    Reply ↓
    1. fishpepper Post author

      The buzzer pad is connected to the Battery +. So it supplies VBat and the mosfet will short the other buzzer pin to ground in order to enable it.

      Reply ↓
  3. Vinz486

    Just to share my experience:

    Got a Bangood clone: no binding, failed unit. Got a replacement: 1 motor not spinning.

    So, googling, I discovered this site and… ah ah!! The truth.

    Purchased 0.2b version fro ReadToFlyQuads. Received 0.2 (not b). I’m building a brushless TinyWhoop, this is my third attempt. If 0.2 will not work as expected, I will give up 🙁

    PS: ReadyToFlyQuads has a ridicolous website without customer support or email contact. I suggest to remove them from valid sellers.

    Thank you for your work.

    Reply ↓
    1. D_ NEX1

      So was it the right one… I just received one from ReadyToFlyQuads and got v0.2 and not 0.D

      Reply ↓
  4. Jakub

    Hi Simon, thanks for your work!

    I purchased the tiny FISH FC from boldclash, and it flies fine. But I have one problem – can’t get the buzzer to work properly.
    The buzzer is always on regardless of any settings. It does “flicker” 3 times after connecting the battery, but after that it’s just constant on.
    I connected the buzzer – to buzzer – pad, and buzzer + to + OUT pad.

    Did anyone have a similar problem? I checked my wiring. It seems like a software problem to me (because of the 3 flickers after connecting the bat), but I’m no expert.

    Cheers

    Reply ↓
  5. Fabio Fragiacomo

    Just ought and received the stack flight+esc from boldclash
    arrived in time, good price, very nice package, all the wires reinforced with little black silicon.
    so promising good.
    The only cons is there is no quick start guide from the seller website, so i went back to your site.
    i was able to bind, no correct telemetry also for me, also this should part of the quick start.
    i was able to read it with betaflight, didn t know that it was running cleanflight(is it? quick start)
    thanks

    Reply ↓
    1. Fabio Fragiacomo

      Updated comment, please use this(is there a modify comment button?)

      Just bought and received the stack flight+esc from boldclash
      arrived in time, good price, very nice package, all the wires reinforced with little black silicon.
      so promising good.
      The only cons is there is no quick start guide from the seller website, so i went back to your site.
      i was able to bind, no correct telemetry also for me, also this should part of the quick start.

      i was able to see it with betaflight

      ABOUT THE PROBLEM with the TELEMETRY is that you have to “discover” the new sensors when armed, otherwise you will see only A1 and A2 which are showing 0.9 V

      thanks

      Reply ↓
  6. Tom

    I purchased the Lumenier stack but I’ve had trouble getting telemetry working. No telemetry data is found when searching from the Taranis. Is there any documentation of the correct port configuration in Betaflight? I’m a newbie here and struggling finding answers in the more technical documentation.

    Appreciate all your work and generosity with this project, keep it up!

    Reply ↓
    1. fishpepper Post author

      Telemetry should work out of the box. Note that the voltage and current are probably only sent once you arm the board.

      Reply ↓
      1. Ren Medalla

        I bought 2 TinyFish FCs. One from Banggood and another from a local shop. Although the locally bought FC had the expected “TinyFish” and “FishPepper.de” markings while the Banggood one did not, they both behaved similarly – which leads me to believe that all the TF FCs floating around come from the same source in China. The one that Lumenier sells looks pretty identical to the Banggood one. I asked 65Drones to test his FCs for functionality but haven’t gotten any results back on that.

        The problem with both of the FCs i’ve tried are the ff:

        – Buzzer pad does not work. The buzzer turns on when battery is connected and does not stop.
        – There is no actual VFAS or Current telemetry being sent back to the radio.
        – The Taranis constantly reports loss-and-reaquisition of telemetry like every half second.

        Please consider manufacturing your own designs. I have neither the skills or resources to build them myself.

        Reply ↓
          1. Rene

            Hi, I have the same issues. It’s funny bought also two FC’s, one from Banggood and one Boldclash.
            My buzzer is at both FC always on. The voltage sensor shows in betaflight 25,5v. Maybe I’m stupid but I don’t get voltage telemetry on the D8 protocol.

            I don’t understand how this should work.
            A fix for 3.1.x: use the cli to set bat_detect_threshold to 2.0 V 😉

            Anyway great stuff!!!

    2. mnementh

      I see that TMart is selling a number of BoldClash quads including one labeled as the world’s lightest at 22 grams dry, that use your FC/ESC and also give you credit.

      Is it too much to hope that they also kicked you back a few bits per unit for your amazing work?

      Even a percent or three of a US$110 unit would certainly add up quickly and help you keep up the awesome work…

      http://www.tmart.com/sl/595d47a9e93a5

      Cheers and thanks for all the hard work. 😀

      Reply ↓
      1. fishpepper Post author

        No, I do not get any money from that. I published all those designs as open hardware and did not request anything. Happy to see he gives proper credit to me 🙂

        Reply ↓
        1. mnementh

          Yeah, I know you released it Open-Source… still would be nice if they felt a normal human urge to give something back to the source. 😉

          Reply ↓
  7. pakamon

    Hi Simon,

    I appreciate your effort to combine a list of “valid” sellers however please correct me if I’m wrong… all the sellers are US based ? 🙁

    Reply ↓
    1. fishpepper Post author

      I do not know of any european sellers yet — if you know some tell me, I am happy to add them to the list!

      Reply ↓
  8. George Hook

    Glad you are getting house finished then back to your awesome projects

    Reply ↓
  9. Andrés

    Any chance of seeing an FC with an integrated DSMX Rx?

    Rest assured, I will only buy from people who give you proper attribution 😉

    Thanks!

    Reply ↓
    1. fishpepper Post author

      Probably not in the near feature. I have not spektrum gear and no source/access to a receiver implementation.

      Reply ↓
  10. Czaja

    Good to have you back.

    Thanks for the updated info regarding your products availability from proper sources. I like Boldclash – have a few other products from them and they are of good quality.

    I am looking forward to your new designs, especially the 2s 4-in-1 ESC. I have a feeling I am not the only one 🙂 Cheers.

    Reply ↓

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