#225 FQ777-954/TearDown

Teardown an FQ777-954 nano drone and figure out as much of the technical design as possible.

The Build

Notes

The FQ777-954 and its derivatives (RC Leading RC101W, Cheerson CX-10W..) is a pretty hot item if one can judge by the number of unboxing and flight test reports - a simple search on youtube will find a few thousand. I get the impression someone has been flooding the market with review units!

What is much harder to come by is good technical information beyond the usual product feature specs.

I recently got an FQ777-954. And yes I can confirm its fun and pretty amazing for such a small package!

Since I’m interesting in exploring ways of controlling it with my own electronics and code, I first wanted to study the technical design and specs. Good information is hard to come by, but the following is the best I’ve been able to figure out and collate to date.

Product Specifications

This is basically the extent of the information available from most sources:

Channel: 4CH Gyro: 6 axis Flight Duration: 6-7 Minutes Quadcopter Control Distance: 30 meters
Recharging Time: 25mins Battery For Quadcopter: 3.7V 150mAh/25C(included) Battery For Transmiter: 2 x AAA Battery (not included)
Quadcopter weight: 17g
Product size: 60x60x26mm
Camera: 0.3Megapixel(480P)/Photo Quality 640x480 / Video Quality 640x480,30FPS
Function: WIFI FPV camera/Take photo/Record video/up/down/forward/backward/side flying/360˚rolling action/hover/3D/LED

Note that many listings claim 720P but actually ship as 480P. FQ do make 720P drones but as far as I can tell, there is no 720P version of the FQ777-954 (yet).

Manufacturer

The FQ777-954 is produced by Fu Qi / FQ Model Factory located in the Chinese Toys Town – Chenghai, Shantou City, Guangdong Province. They design, manufacture and sell a range or drones, RC models and other toys and have been around since 1997.

They also offer OEM arrangements, so it is possible that other “similar” drones are actually originally manufactured by FQ.

Mechanical Design - Propulsion

The FQ777-954 uses a conventional quadcoptor configuration of counter-rotating propellers to offset torque:

Teardown_rotors

Disassembly

Parts out of the box. This is the “BNF” version (no controller). It also comes in an “RTF” version with controller. Without a controller, it can be flown with the RC Leading mobile application.

Teardown_1_unboxing

The top comes of:

remove the rotors - requires a bit of force or a level/tool (they are press-fit)
remove the 4 screw on the underside of the rotor arms

Teardown_2_top_off

Close-up of the top:

main processor board, with an unidentified processor chip and camera attached by ribbon cable
sitting on the receiver board, which also runs wires to the the 4 motors

Teardown_3_top

The bottom shell comes off by unclipping from the four arms of the receiver board:

3.7V 150mAh LiPo battery

Teardown_4_bottom

Underside of the main processor board, featuring:

Marvell Wi-Fi SoC
BergMicro SPI Flash memory

Teardown_5_pcb_lower

Processor Board

The main detail I haven’t been able to pin down is perhaps the most important - which processor does it use? The identification has been etched off, but I’m guessing it’s something like a Cortex M3.

Main components: