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Arducopters 2nd chance..

Posted by Wayne Jones on September 2, 2011 at 11:49pm

I want to give Arducopter a 2nd. chance but need help. I recently bought a $4000 Droidworx Cinema Series Hexacopter and wanted to put Arducopter on it for my flight board. I purchased my board, xbee and gps and proceeded with my set up. As a precaution I also purchased a Gaui quad frame for use as a test dummy. After trying to run the mission planner which never work correctly and not knowing if the code was loaded correctly I tried to attempt a simple flight. It didn't go well. Off balance, wobbly, no real flight at all.

 A little back ground about me, I am a pretty decent pilot and have flown almost everything out there and have crashed almost every type of aircraft out there, simulate every night, and I am not afraid of any situation that comes my way but I have to tell you, I attempt Arducopter and I scratch my head. I feel as if I am going to crash. If that happens then I want it to be my fault not software, so I can take something from it but when I can't trust the software that is operating my aircraft to work properly then I am at a loss. That is how I feel with Arducopter. There is no confidence that the Tx input I give it is what it is going to do. This programing may be all over my head and I may just be pissing in the wind but when I buy the Hoverfly Pro board and with simple software and a few gain adjustments I am flying with aggressiveness and confidence that I am not going to smash my $4000 aerial photography investment I feel that something is wrong. I may be naive but give me a break. If this system is being touted as the one to use because anything is possible then make it that way. So far I am not impressed and I don't have the time or money to waste my time smashing aircraft to get it right.

 If anyone can help I would love to give Arducopter a 2nd chance. If not then I have the Ardupilot Mega,Media Tech GPS,Magnetometer soldered,Full 2 way Xbee Telemetry, $550 electronics set up for sale for $400 shipped obo.

 

Thanks,

Wayne

 

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Replies

  • Toby Mills September 4, 2011 at 12:49pm
    The apm is capable of just about anything but it is not a commercial off the shelf solution that is plug and play. It is a tinkerers dream but if you want something that you can just launch and fly then you are better off closed source. One day the apm will do what you want and it's come a long way but generally what you don't see in all the 'success' videos on the forum is the hundreds, if not thousands of hours beforehand of testing. Generally by people who either have a background in software or hardware.
    There are slot of people here who are trying really hard to make it as user friendly as possible and reduce the technical threshold required and most of these people are working for free.
    Personally, if I had dropped $4k on an airframe I'd be looking at doing 80 to 100 hours of testing and tuning before I even took it for a flight (whether it was commercial or open source).
  • DaveyWaveyBunsenBurner September 3, 2011 at 9:15am
    All I can say is 99.9% of problems Ive ad have been me and not a bug. Ive connected planner to APM on a multitude of machines and never once (ignoring Xbee) had a problem. Ive done it on XP, Win 7 and it just works. So then you have to ask why is yours different? Firewall? Antivirus? Bad lead? Bad APM hardware?

    "link properly" is pretty cryptic! whats properly? Do you get an error? Whats the error? If you get no error, what makes you think its not working properly? Can you get a command line up in terminal window? Is it the lack of an affirmitive you think is improper? If you unplug your laptop and try to connect to fresh air does it behave differently???

    With respect, and dont take this as an insult because it really isnt meant that way, I think you lack the patience to get this stuff going, or you expect it to be far mature than it is. But thats the state of amateur UABs as a whole. Getting my Mikrokopter in the air took me nearly 8 weeks of troubleshooting while my first Arducopter was way quicker..
  • DaveyWaveyBunsenBurner September 3, 2011 at 12:52am
    Looking at your posts, I think youd be far better suited to a closed source solution that is more plug and play than the current Arducopter Beta.

    While I think Arducopter is catching up at a rate of knots, and will soon exceed the competition, it's for people willing to take time and effort to setup, test, adjust and retest. Not for people who don't even know the formware is loaded but slam the throttle anyway.

    I have several Arducopters, two KKmulticopters and a $2500 Mikrokopter and I can tell you I honestly dont believe a true plug and play quadcopter exists at this point.... For every hour spent flying I probably spend two-three tinkering in the garage improving...

    Best,

    Dave
  • Jose Angel September 3, 2011 at 12:51am

    In order to help, you should provide more details than "It didn't go well. Off balance, wobbly, no real flight at all." :)

     

    Do you have the latest version of Mission Planner installed?

    Have you installed firmware from Mission Planner?

    Have you perform the first setup following the wiki instructions step by step?

    http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/wiki/AC2_First

    Have you checked in Mission Planner, that all your sensors readings are ok and radio channels configured appropriately?

    Have you try to fly it in hand to see if basic response is correct?

    http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/wiki/AC2_Preflight

    Copter does wrong movements or you see oscillations (PID problem)?

    Here is the basic guide for tweaking the PID:

    http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/wiki/AC2_Tweaks

     

     

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