CC3D Flight Controller Guide

Guides
1

The CC3D is a powerful and affordable flight controller that is very popular to use mainly on miniquad copters due to its small form factor. It has many advanced features that you can use if you add a GPS module, even waypoint based flight,. However, most users don’t bother with this for mini quadcopters and just want the basic setup. This post will provide some links and comments to some of the better CC3D setup guides that we have found on the internet. If you have made one, or know of a great guide that I missed, just add a comment with the link so I can add it to the CC3D flight controller guide.

CC3D Board Overview

Pasted image850×434 49.5 KB

Useful Links

First things first, here’s the links to the official user manual and software downloads.

  • OpenPilot CC3D Manual - this is the openpilot wiki but starts off with a step by step guide showing you how to install and download the required software and run the initial setup of your CC3D board.
  • OpenPilot GCS Software Download - You can download the latest openpilot GCS version here, if you have a previous version installed its best to first uninstall it first before installing the latest version. Once installed just follow the initial setup wizard and it will walk you through all the things you need to setup in order to get flying quickly! If you have any issues just look at some of the videos below which illustrate the entire setup process.

Setup Videos

Here are a few videos showing the complete setup process for the CC3D flight controller.

Possibly the better video for taking you through the process step-by-step and the guys (Dennis Baldwin) first impressions of the CC3D (all good!)

In this video he is using a QAV 250 quadcopter, but the setup process is basically the same for any other miniquad.

Receiver Cable Pinout

First of all, here’s a useful picture on how you should connect your CC3D to your receiver as sometimes the colours can vary depending on where you purchased your CC3D board from.

If you are using a PPM receiver you will only need to connect cable 1 (the three wire connector with white, red, and black connectors). If you have a PWM receiver then you will need to connect the cables in the correct order to your receiver. The image below shows the cable numbers and where they need to connect to your receiver. The numbers on the image below correspond to what channel they should be connected to.

Pasted image797×775 368 KB

Depending on the type of receiver you use, the ports will either be labelled 1-6 or by the names you see above. If you plug these into the receiver as the picture shows, you shouldn’t go wrong. Also note that depending who you buy your CC3D controller from the colours might vary, however.

CC3D Motor Order and Direction

It’s also very useful to know the motor orientation for the CC3D, so that you attach the motors the right way and for connecting the ESCs to the CC3D board correctly. This is the motor orientation for the various multirotor configurations:

Pasted image960×684 254 KB

For a quadcopter example in the image above - We see the motors labelled 1-4 and the ESCs are connected following this labelling. For example, the ESC for motor 1 is connected to the pins on the CC3D labelled 1.

LED sequence

Here is a great video showing all the various LED sequences on the CC3D board, and explains what each sequence means.

Fine Tuning your CC3D flight controller

For those of you that have progressed though the basic setup easily and want to go on and fine tune your CC3D, here’s a few other videos showing the process.

This is a follow-up video from Dennis Baldwin on the fine tuning. Again, it is helpful and informative. He used a Taranis X9D in this instance.

This is another video showing the PID process for the CC3D on a quadcopter frame, this is more of a video to give you a feel of how things change as you are tuning the PID settings rather than how you change them.

Lastly if you prefer to read a guide on tuning your PID’s, have a look as this basic CC3D tuning guide:

Pasted image666×2088 318 KB

If you have any other useful resources or links just let me know and I will add them

1 Like
2

I am a beginner. Trying to build Robocat 280.
There is a wide range of CC3D in the market ranging from 15$ to 45$.
I have no idea how to select a genuine quality product.
Please help

3

Welcome to the community :smile: And you are correct about the selection of CC3D boards available. Currently the two main ones are the regular CC3D, and the CC3D Atom (also known as mini cc3d, or cc3d evo). There is a more advanced board called the openpilot revolution (which was based on cc3d). My opinion for a small FPV quadcopter is to use the basic cc3d or the cc3d atom boards. Using something like the revolution is abit overkill for a basic FPV quadcopter.

All the boards ordered direct with us come with our warranty so if you have any hardware faults within 90 days of you receiving the board (not caused due to a crash/user error) we will help get it fixed/replaced. This warranty is not something that all the sellers offer so its worth checking that our before purchasing.

Also the openpilot CC3D software (the firmware that runs on the CC3D) is now called librepilot, and we will get around to updating the guide soon to reflect this.

4

Hi! Y just got a Wltoys V393 (the big one). And I want to replace all the electronic with a CC3D. Can I use a CC3D board on this big drone? Of course adding what ever it need extra. Sorry for my english.

5

Since the Wltoys V393 uses brushless motors it should be possible. Why not start a build log thread and add some photos of the internals and I will be happy to help. Hopefully it uses regular esc’s so that you can easily connect to the cc3d.

6

hello i am a noobie with the quad copter building. i found cc3d is a very good flight controller. so i am thinking of buying it.i need to know which motors and esc to buy.please guide me with that. and what is difference with all the ampere in esc.

7

Welcome, however your question is quite open ended and if you are new to this my suggestion would be to buy a drone building book as it will cover all the basics you need to know. I have written a book for sale on Amazon called Haynes build your own drone manual

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Build-Manual-Haynes-Owners-Workshop/dp/0857338137

However if you have any specific questions please feel free to ask on dronetrest and one us us will be able to help.

8

Hello,

Who all has the Micro CC3D? This one has a few more ports to use for what ever you want it to do. However information on this board is very limited. That and I’m new to the drone world.

Thanks.

9

Is this the board you have? Hopefuly the image below will help. I think I will try and get a guide written for the min CC3D (CC3D Atom) or atleast describe the connectors etc… but in the meantime if you need any help just create a new topic with your questions :smile:

10

No, It’s smaller than the CC and bigger then the atom (mini). Setting it up I can use all the CC3D files. Am I able to upload pictures of what I have?

11

Oh crap. I should have opened a new topic. Sorry about it. I’ll go and do that.

12

Yeah you should be able to upload images, either just copy paste, or click the upload button on the text toolbar. If you only just joined there might be some limit on how many you can upload but should be at least 1 image…

Uploading…

13

That’s fine. I’ll have to make it a good one.

IMG_0785.jpg2419×3226 2.71 MB

14

Hello Dronetest,
I have a question about motor orientation/direction.
Can you clarify from your pictorial on motor direction etc.
I’m considering a tricopter but cannot figure how with just 3x blades/motors the torque reaction can cancel out rotation.
Two of the three motors are bound to be rotating one way while just one will be opposite!
Also noticed that on ‘quadcopter X’ the rotation direction is what I expect, but motor ID is number 1 bottom right, not top left as per setup video’s.
I have set up 2x 250 size and one 450 size quadcopter ‘X’ formation, found the details and video’s invaluable.
Running a model flying club, I’m keen to share with members the awesome detail and help from this website, hoping that a number of them will become followers.
Thanks for a great resource, couldn’t have managed without it :smile:

15

With a tricopter the rear motor is mounted on a servo mechanism so that it can tilt leftwards and rightwards to create horizontal thrust to compensate for hte torque, kind of like a conventional helicopter’s tail rotor.

TricopterWiring.png1600×800 181 KB

In the case of a Y6 copter, since it has 6 motors then you can balance the torque by having fixed motors since the top and bottom motors will spin in opposite directions to compensate the torque.

As for setting that up on your CC3D, you will need to connect the servo to output 4, and during the setup wizard you need to tell it that you are flying a tricopter so it knows you have a servo to control the angle of the tail motor.

16

Alex,
Thank you, much clearer now :slight_smile:
Just for clarity though, the tricopter motor 2 on blue pictorial is possibly indicating CCW where it should be CW (if I have understood correctly).
Going through assembly process, it hadn’t crossed my mind until another club colleague pointed it out, but centralising the CC3D board is quite possibly an important feature, so that stabilisation reaction is equalised.
He suggested the board would ideally be centrally positioned by doing a ‘cross-hairs’ diagonally (on ‘X’ configuration) over motors to get the logical centre. Sounds good to me, this would mean equal motor thrust in any direction from the controller board.

17

Not sure off hand about motor spin direction but the front two need to be opposite. The librepilot setup wizard will tell you what direction the motors must spin.

As for cc3d mounting location, it’s best to be near the centre of gravity, but not crucial so don’t worry too much as the firmware is good enough to cope with it being mounted just about anywhere on your multirotor.

Keep us updated as your build progresses :slight_smile:

18

I have not get my CC3D controller yet, but as zoom as I get it I will post everything

19

I want to ask configuration of QUAD COPTER with CC3D>… please telll me or thanks for contributing DRONE TREST.

20

Here is a quick video that @SamBot made to cover the basics of setting up a CC3D board on a quadcopter.

If you have any questions just let us know.