Overview of the Cheerson CX-20 Quadrocopter

Introduction

Not so long ago, Cheer­son pleased our domes­tic con­sumer with the release of bud­get quad­copters. Hav­ing begun its exis­tence in 2011, the Chi­nese com­pa­ny quick­ly found its admir­ers. The price range, tak­ing into account the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the quadro­copter, ranges from $30 to $200. The Cheer­son range is avail­able in three ver­sions: CX-10, CX-20 and CX-30. The most pop­u­lar mod­el is the Cheer­son CX-20 Auto Pathfind­er quad­copter.

Peculiarities

• brush­less motors
• Con­troller Open Code
• GPS mod­ule
• Flight range up to 1 km
• Gim­bal adapt­ed for GoPro cam­eras
• Intel­li­gent Ori­en­ta­tion Sys­tem (IOC)
• Autopi­lot func­tion
• Flight modes
• Auto Return Instead of Take­off and Land­ing (On Lost Communication/Low Bat­tery)
• LED back­light

Equipment

• Quad­copter Cheer­son CX-20 Auto Pathfind­er
  
• Bat­tery 3S 11.1V 2700mAh 20–40C LiPo 30Wh (with XT60 con­nec­tor)
• Con­trol equip­ment CX20 (pow­ered by four “AA” 1.5V, pur­chased sep­a­rate­ly)
• Cam­era gim­bal (rub­ber gim­bal damp­en­ers serve as sta­bi­liza­tion / adapt­ed for GoPro cam­eras)
• Charg­er
• Pow­er sup­ply for mem­o­ry
• 4 × rotors
• 2 × land­ing legs
• fas­ten­ers
• Tool
• Man­u­al + CD (Dig­i­tal Man­u­al)

Specification

Brand:

Cheer­son

Mod­el:

CX-20 Pathfind­er

Col­or:

White

GPS:

Yes

Return home func­tion:

Yes

Radio fre­quen­cy:

2.4GHz

Trans­mit­ter:

CX-20

Num­ber of chan­nels:

7

Drone bat­tery type:

3S 11.1V 2700mAh 20–40C LiPo 30Wh (with XT60 con­nec­tor)

Flight speed:

36km/h

Flight time:

up to 15 min

Con­trolled flight dis­tance:

up to 1km

Sta­bi­liza­tion:

6 axis gyro­scope

Motors:

Brush­less type 2212 920KV/1200KV

ESC:

CX-20–005/CX-20–006 12A

Drone light­ing:

LED

Weight (com­plete with cam­era):

987gr

Drone dimen­sions:

300×300×200mm

Appearance

Motors

Quad­copter Cheer­son CX-20 can be equipped with two BC motors 2212 920KV/1200KV. For a bud­get quad­copter, their poten­tial is enough to the fullest.

flight controller

The Cheer­son CX-20 quad­copter includes three ver­sions of the flight con­troller:

1. open source (open source) allows the pilot to use the full poten­tial of the ArduPi­lot con­troller and autopi­lot through the Mis­sion­Plan­ner soft­ware through open source.
   
2. ZERO — devel­oped on a 32-bit AMR STM32F103 RBT6 chip, there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty of an add-on for the con­troller, it is not com­pat­i­ble with the Mis­sion­Plan­ner soft­ware and, accord­ing­ly, has lim­it­ed autonomous flight capa­bil­i­ties.
   
3. Big Fly Shark — devel­oped on the basis of the STM32F103 chip, the fin­ished ver­sion of the con­troller, works with its own soft­ware.

The open ver­sion of the con­troller — “Open Source” through the pre-installed soft­ware “Mis­sion­Plan­ner” will allow you to fine-tune the flight con­troller and sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand the capa­bil­i­ties of the quad, for exam­ple, the “Flight by points” mode becomes active.

flight qualities

In the test, the Cheer­son CX-20 showed con­fi­dent trac­tion char­ac­ter­is­tic of bud­get drones on BC motors. It has a tan­gi­ble pow­er reserve, rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble, the oper­a­tion of the elec­tron­ics as a whole affects. Due to the large windage, the quad does not like to fly in windy weath­er, you should take this into account!

Flight modes

Quad­copter Cheer­son CX-20 has 5 flight modes.

1. Take off (or man­u­al) — in this mode, the pilot is respon­si­ble for mov­ing the drone (with­out ref­er­ence to GPS), if you release the sticks, the drone will begin to descend.
2. GPS hold — posi­tion hold­ing mode. In this mode, if you release the sticks while fly­ing, the drone will hov­er and hold its alti­tude autonomous­ly (begin­ners will appre­ci­ate it). This mode is also rel­e­vant for FPV flights.
3. Ori­en­ta­tion — in this mode, the ori­en­ta­tion of the drone in space is turned off, the mode is rel­e­vant for begin­ners (sim­i­lar to the Head­less mode).
4. Alti­tude hold — the alti­tude hold mode, in con­trast to the “GPS hold” mode, holds only the alti­tude (requires the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the pilot to con­trol the dis­place­ment, for exam­ple, in the direc­tion of the wind), rel­e­vant for film­ing.
5. RTH (return to home) — the clas­sic mode of return­ing to the take­off point, acti­vat­ed from the tog­gle switch on the trans­mit­ter, return­ing the quad will car­ry out an auto­mat­ic land­ing.

Thanks to the “Autopi­lot” func­tion, in the event of a loss of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the air­craft and the trans­mit­ter, the CX-22 will auto­mat­i­cal­ly return to the take-off site and per­form a soft land­ing, fol­lowed by turn­ing off the motors.

It is worth con­sid­er­ing the fact that the drone returns instead of tak­ing off and per­forms an autonomous land­ing with an error (1.5 — 2 meters), oth­er­wise the pilot risks crash­ing the quad­copter, for exam­ple, against a pole stand­ing at the take­off site, etc. It is also bet­ter to take off with absolute­ly flat sur­face, because this affects the accu­ra­cy of a future land­ing in RTH mode.

Battery

The Cheer­son CX-20 quad­copter is equipped with a 3S 11.1V 2700mAh 20–40C LiPo 30Wh lithi­um poly­mer bat­tery (with XT60 con­nec­tor). In the test, it pro­vid­ed a con­tin­u­ous flight of about 15 min­utes (with­out a cam­era) and about 10 min­utes with a cam­era on board. Full charge time 60 min­utes.

The bat­tery com­part­ment allows you to install a bat­tery with a capac­i­ty of up to 4000mAh, which will increase the flight time by 3–5 min­utes.

transmitter

The Cheer­son CX-20 quadro­copter is equipped with a good 4‑channel trans­mit­ter (con­trol equip­ment) oper­at­ing at a fre­quen­cy of 2.4GHz. Pro­vides a flight range of up to 1 km in field con­di­tions. Pow­er is sup­plied from 8 × AA (pur­chased sep­a­rate­ly).

Price

On var­i­ous Inter­net trad­ing plat­forms, the price for the Cheer­son CX-20 Pathfind­er starts from $225.

Conclusion

Cheer­son CX-20 $250

Func­tion­al­i­ty

8/10

Flight time

7/10

flight qual­i­ties

8/10

com­pact­ness

5/10

Equip­ment

5/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

7/10

Price qual­i­ty

10/10

pros

• Price
• GPS mod­ule
• Flight modes
• Auto return with land­ing (in case of loss of con­nec­tion and a weak bat­tery charge
• Con­trol
• fail­safe
• Range of flight
• Adapt­ed to cam­eras like GoPro
• Price

Minuses

• For cor­rect flight, it requires fine tun­ing of the con­troller
• Dis­likes fly­ing in windy weath­er
• No cam­era includ­ed

The opti­mal ratio of price and qual­i­ty of the prod­uct. The Cheer­son CX-20 Auto Pathfind­er quad­copter will be more appre­ci­at­ed by advanced pilots who like to exper­i­ment with flight con­troller set­tings. As the first UAV for film­ing, it comes up at the last moment. The main pur­pose of the quad is pho­to / video shoot­ing (pro­vid­ed that it is equipped with a good cam­era cou­pled with a mechan­i­cal two or three axi­al sus­pen­sion). Age lim­it 14+.

A photo

Pho­to with Cheer­son CX-20 quad­copter.

Video

Video with Cheer­son CX-20 quadro­copter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcEO138cvJE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jf9qgkYWyo