Hi All
I'm new to APM. Picked up a cheap one from HK to give it a try. Setup and flash was very easy. Software is very intuitive. Put the unit in one of my home made canard planes. Programmed the Taranis for 6 modes and took her to the park. Flew perfect. Stabilize worked well. As did loiter and cruise. RTL worked both off the switch and with the receiver off. FBWA was awesome. Even my wife could fly with this mode.
Setup a few way points this am. Saved them. Went to a local park and they worked perfect. Very Happy.
BIG THANKS for the firmware and software!!!
Questions. With JP1 on can I power the plane and still plug in the usb? So far all programming has been done usb only plane unpowered.
Secondly. Whats the quality difference between a HK knock off and say a branded pixhawk. I'm okay right now running the HK unit on a home build but am wary about using it on a nice plane with expensive cameras on board. The fieyu tech stuff I have been using has been flawless up to this point and i'm hoping the APM equipment will replace it at a significant $ savings.
The Taranis, OpenLRSng and now APM. The sport is getting better and cheaper.
Thanks
Brichter
Replies
Thanks Duncan
I think i'm going to pick up a quality pixhawk for my main plane and one for one of my quads. Use the Feiyu stuff for smaller planes and the HK apm's for the foamy's. That should get me up to 8 drones lol. I love this sport and I love tinkering and hacking into code.
As for powering... Will stick with one or the other. I cut a small hatch in the plane to insert the USB. Guess its time for a wireless unit huh.
B Richter
^^ I don't think you're supposed to power both ways at the same time, either USB or battery power. I've heard that it'll blow the APM but I haven't experienced such a thing.
Hello, congrats on your purchase, build, and flight experience! Having bought the APM 2.5 unit from 3DR, their product is solid construction... looking with fine detail at the soldering, it is 10x better than the HK knockoffs (which I also bought to test) and much less likely to blow out whether midflight or on the tuning blocks at the computer plugging in and out for hours tweaking and tuning... truly HK, ones are knockoffs and shouldn't be given any praise higher than knockoff status, its amazing what the chinese can pull off. I have both, and the knockoff is uncomparable in quality to the authentic 3dr unit. However, they do work with their own lines of GPS and other plug in accessories. the clone HK board will not accept my ublox gps also purchased from 3dr. the plug shape is the same, but ever so slightly different, making it useless with the clone board, thus I need to repurchase an additional GPS for use with the clone board, not ideal... at all