Help us Make the Final Yolo FC Prototype Fly

Title picture: First partially assembled prototype of the Yolo. More images at the end of the page.

The YOLO AIO Flight Controller

The Yolo FC is an 20mm 25A F7 all-in-one flight controller. Initially, it was taylored to fullfill the needs of flight time record-breaking quads, but due to our urge to integrate more and more features, it became the most versatile flight controller we can imagine. We somehow managed to assemble all functional parts of the first prototype manually (!) in order to verify their function. For the next step - a second Prototype - we've come to an end of our manual assembly capabilities as well as our budget for PCBs and electronic parts. We see electronics design as part of our RC hobby and we don't intend to make any money with this, but that also limits our financial capacity. Please support us with a small donation to make the Yolo finally fly!

The Specs

It's actually two AIO FCs for two different battery voltage ranges:

- 1-3S
- 2-6S

What they have in common:

- Main MCU: STM32F745
- IMU: ICM-20602
- Flash: 8MB
- Baro: BMP280
- OSD: '7456
- GNSS: Integrated GPS module (uBlox ZOE-M8Q) with u.Fl connector and experimental support for active antennas
- 4 ESCs:
  - BLHeli_S bluejay with a custom firmware
  - Calculated current rating of 20A continuous 30A burst (depending on the airflow cooling situation)
  - up to now, we could only test one ESC with 16 A continuous (> 1 minute), but the whole FC got only slightly warm at this test
- Current sensor: INA186 with 0m5 shunt - subjectively some of the best current measurements we have seen on any FC
- 4 multi purpose expansion connectors:
  - each with its own UART
  - shared I2C bus
  - 5V, 3V3 and GND
  - a multi-purpose pin for analog RSSI, Buzzer, LEDs, etc.
- One video expansion connector:
  - Camera in and VTx out
  - UART
  - 2 multi-purpose pins
  - switchable 5V (*)
- size: 30 x 25.2 mm
- weight: about 4.4 grams + expansions

The expansion connectors can be used with very simple or more complex plug-ins for
- Rx of your choice
- Magnetometer
- Buzzer
- LED strip
- dual camera switching on the OSD connector
- even additional plugin ESCs for hexa- and octocopters are possible

*) The OSD connector has a 5V output that is only ON when USB is not plugged in. This protects your USB port from power hungry VTx'es that might overload the port. However, that feature can be disabled with a solder bridge.

The first prototype was assembled manually, on a PCB that we were able to get for free because we had a huge amount of luck. However, it was not perfect, so:
- we want to make a revised layout and have it made
- but we don't want to assemble it manually again for sanity reasons.

Because we always have some additional cool RC projects in the pipeline, the prototyping PCB run might also contain:

- enough Yolo PCBs for a prototype batch (if it flies)
- complex YOLO expansions like a 2in1 and a 4in1 ESC for hexas and octos (Why no 45g AUW Hexa Whoop with GPS? Yes the more stupid it sounds, the more fun we have!:-) )
- crteensy's experiments with Cypress PSoC6 for an AIO controller that unifies FC, 4 ESCs and the OSD on one chip (yes, memory mapped ESCs!) in two sizes:
  - whoop for manual assembly, with Bluetooth and USB
  - 16 mm, Bluetooth only
- an H7 1s tiny whoop board, the HypaWhoop:
  - H735
  - ICM-20602
  - 2 MB blackbox flash
  - OSD
  - on-board VTx with PA
  - on-board ELRS Rx, with optional routing for direct SPI between H7 and SX1280
  - EFM8 ESCs, 1S, 5A
  - Buzzer output
  - 3 UARTs
- maybe an H7 Yolo with 32-bit ESCs
We think that for high quality PCB Panels with custom Layer Stackup and Via in Pad we need about 1500$. A professional prototype assembly of a few flight controllers and the components will be about 2500$. If we get more donations than we actually need and the Yolo flies, we will assemble more and send them to testers and randomly picked donors (we need an e-mail address in this case).

We don't have any support from the industry, we don't intend to make money with this and all designs will be open hardware for everyone to manufacture or just take inspiration from.

We have released a limit set of files (schematic pdf, gerbers, 3D rendering form kicad) here: https://github.com/crteensy/Yolo-files
Once the design is proven, all files will be published.

More Pictures
Current Yolo prototype, bottom:


Expansions (rendered):


PSoC6 Whoop board (rendered top/bottom):


PSoC6 16 mm board rendering (rendered top/bottom):

HypaWhoop: