Posted by Tyler Troutt on November 11, 2016 at 6:02am
Whats up guys. So when i first got into quads i did very little research on flight controller and ended up picking the revolution fc. I have three of them now. One on my 550 quad and one on my 250 size quad. So far the have been performong fine although gps modes and autonomous stuff is challenging to get setup on it. Other than that i have been happy with them. My one grip is the wiki for it feels incomplete.Do i got around to doing some looking and reading and have read really good things about the navio2 and the ardupilot mega. Is there anyone here that has experience with all three and would like to share their opinions about them.
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My HK board worked fine using Arducopter. GPS support is just the same as if it was using an APM and works perfectly. The downside is that the port was done once for quads and hex frames and has not been repeated for later versions of Arducopter - so the more recently added functionality is not there. There's no support either for the built in OP Link telemetry radio so you need to use a normal Mavlink radio for telemetry. There was a port of Arduplane done too as I wanted to try it but I didn't have a lot of success with that.
Given that the board suits a 250 or smaller quad and is now about 1/3 the cost the original its a pity that the port was not brought up to date, it may well be a useful add to the hardware arsenal.
There is apparently a version of Cleanflight that runs on the board as well. I've not attempted to try it and not researched whether or not the iNav fork of Cleanflight (GPS support, Missions, etc) will run on it.
If I was you I would look at these options before trashing the boards.
I have looked on here about mag stuff. Still have not been able to get it working..... I have a Naza gps unit coming I am going to see if that performs better with the revo firmware. I will flash my third revo over to arducopter in the days to come and if I cannot get GPS working I will try it. I really am about to that point to throw the three revo boards I have in the trash and buy something else. Maybe I just buy a full naza set. I have never had this much of an issue conquering something! Its really getting to me.
Look here for mag suggestions. Also a link to the Arducopter port. Bear in mind that it by no means a current version of Arducopter and there will be things in the current GCS that won't work or will work wrong. If you intend to persist I recommend that you download and use a version of Mission Planner that is contemporary to that version of the firmware.
Well I totally understand the mag issue. I have a m6n that I am trying to get the AuxMag to calibrate properly. I have been working at it for weeks now. Getting really frustrated. I have totally rebuilt my quad to make wires shorter move things around amd twist everything. I can keep a green mag alarm but cannot get stable GPS flight modes on my 550 x4. Im bout ready to give up honestly. Where do you get the arducopter port for it? Sounds like something I would like to try?
I have 2 Revos. The first I acquired when they came out and, after a frustrating time with Open Pilot eventually installed the Arducopter port on it. I've been using it unchanged in a camera hex since then. Recently I bought another, this time from HK as the original source has vanished and HK claims to give some of the proceeds to the developers. I installed LibrePilot but could not get the mag to calibrate, then installed the Arducopter port to test if the sensors worked properly, they seemed to, so I went back to LibrePilot. I still cannot get the mag sensor green and it will not arm so currently in the too hard basket.
I have 2 full size 'Hawks, a mini and a micro, 3 APMs and an APM mini - all in copters and planes. I am very happy with the Ardupilot system and it is way easier to understand and setup than LibrePilot (for me anyway).
As far as hardware is concerned, with all other things being equal (all running Ardupilot) the Revo's flight performance falls somewhere between the APM and the 'Hawk, it's a lot better than APM and not much worse than a 'Hawk, but this takes no account of the normally unseen benefits arising from the 'Hawk sensor redundancy.
I only bought the second Revo for it's form factor, the mini 'Hawk wouldn't fit in my Black Ops frame. The Micro Hawk is getting a try once I get some issues with a new Arduplane installation sorted out.
The most developped, usable and field proven autopilot stack is Ardupilot running on a Pixhawk hardware. Also Ardupilot has the largest community to support you.
For autonomy, you'll definitely want to go with something that's Pixhawk-compatible that can run either the ArduPilot or PX4 code: there are lots of Pixhawk varieties out there, from good Chinese clones such as HK Pilot to Pixhawk 2 to Pixhawk Mini. If you want something more powerful that's also Pixhawk-compatible, the Navio 2 on Raspberry Pi 3 is a great choice. That's what I use for all of our rovers, which need computer vision in addition to basic autopilot functions.
Replies
My HK board worked fine using Arducopter. GPS support is just the same as if it was using an APM and works perfectly. The downside is that the port was done once for quads and hex frames and has not been repeated for later versions of Arducopter - so the more recently added functionality is not there. There's no support either for the built in OP Link telemetry radio so you need to use a normal Mavlink radio for telemetry. There was a port of Arduplane done too as I wanted to try it but I didn't have a lot of success with that.
Given that the board suits a 250 or smaller quad and is now about 1/3 the cost the original its a pity that the port was not brought up to date, it may well be a useful add to the hardware arsenal.
There is apparently a version of Cleanflight that runs on the board as well. I've not attempted to try it and not researched whether or not the iNav fork of Cleanflight (GPS support, Missions, etc) will run on it.
If I was you I would look at these options before trashing the boards.
I have looked on here about mag stuff. Still have not been able to get it working..... I have a Naza gps unit coming I am going to see if that performs better with the revo firmware. I will flash my third revo over to arducopter in the days to come and if I cannot get GPS working I will try it. I really am about to that point to throw the three revo boards I have in the trash and buy something else. Maybe I just buy a full naza set. I have never had this much of an issue conquering something! Its really getting to me.
Look here for mag suggestions. Also a link to the Arducopter port. Bear in mind that it by no means a current version of Arducopter and there will be things in the current GCS that won't work or will work wrong. If you intend to persist I recommend that you download and use a version of Mission Planner that is contemporary to that version of the firmware.
https://forum.librepilot.org/index.php?topic=2478.0
Well I totally understand the mag issue. I have a m6n that I am trying to get the AuxMag to calibrate properly. I have been working at it for weeks now. Getting really frustrated. I have totally rebuilt my quad to make wires shorter move things around amd twist everything. I can keep a green mag alarm but cannot get stable GPS flight modes on my 550 x4. Im bout ready to give up honestly. Where do you get the arducopter port for it? Sounds like something I would like to try?
I have 2 Revos. The first I acquired when they came out and, after a frustrating time with Open Pilot eventually installed the Arducopter port on it. I've been using it unchanged in a camera hex since then. Recently I bought another, this time from HK as the original source has vanished and HK claims to give some of the proceeds to the developers. I installed LibrePilot but could not get the mag to calibrate, then installed the Arducopter port to test if the sensors worked properly, they seemed to, so I went back to LibrePilot. I still cannot get the mag sensor green and it will not arm so currently in the too hard basket.
I have 2 full size 'Hawks, a mini and a micro, 3 APMs and an APM mini - all in copters and planes. I am very happy with the Ardupilot system and it is way easier to understand and setup than LibrePilot (for me anyway).
As far as hardware is concerned, with all other things being equal (all running Ardupilot) the Revo's flight performance falls somewhere between the APM and the 'Hawk, it's a lot better than APM and not much worse than a 'Hawk, but this takes no account of the normally unseen benefits arising from the 'Hawk sensor redundancy.
I only bought the second Revo for it's form factor, the mini 'Hawk wouldn't fit in my Black Ops frame. The Micro Hawk is getting a try once I get some issues with a new Arduplane installation sorted out.
The most developped, usable and field proven autopilot stack is Ardupilot running on a Pixhawk hardware. Also Ardupilot has the largest community to support you.
For autonomy, you'll definitely want to go with something that's Pixhawk-compatible that can run either the ArduPilot or PX4 code: there are lots of Pixhawk varieties out there, from good Chinese clones such as HK Pilot to Pixhawk 2 to Pixhawk Mini. If you want something more powerful that's also Pixhawk-compatible, the Navio 2 on Raspberry Pi 3 is a great choice. That's what I use for all of our rovers, which need computer vision in addition to basic autopilot functions.