Posted by Joe Marler on February 11, 2012 at 11:28pm
Hello.I am an avid flyer of small indoor helis but am now getting hooked on outdoor quad copters. I would love to jump in to the drone community but was wondering if the Mission program works on Apple machines.I would like to get your experiences with running the programs on MacBook and your suggestion for a Rx/Tx Radio. is Spektrum the Best? Really any advice you would have given to yourself as a newbie would be appreciated.Regards,Joe Marler
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As for transmitters.... there is no one "best" and you can spend as much money as you have on a transmitter, from tens of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. Personally, I love my Futaba T8FG TX so much that I bought a second one. They are about $500 US each. However, I recommend you NOT spend $500 or $800 on a new TX right now. I recommend you save that cash for more batteries, repair parts, frames, more APMs, etc, and get a good low cost TX right now. More than saving your cash for DIYDrones-type gear, it will also give you time to understand the very different features available in the JR, Futaba, Spektrum, etc TX (like SBUS, telemetry, etc) and by the time it would make any difference to you there might even be a new generation of transmitters on the street for you to chose from.
You cannot go wrong with a Futaba T8FG or a Spektrum DX8, but I would recommend something like a Turnigy 9X. Moreso because after you've gotten a second transmitter (maybe something like OpenLRS, if not one of those mentioned above,) you can start hacking your transmitter with stuff like http://code.google.com/p/er9x/
On the other hand, its not just about price. If you spring for the Futaba T8FG immediately, then you will be pretty much ruined. No other transmitter under about $1200 will feel as nice *wink* So hold off and get the $60 model for now....
regarding running on MacBook, see http://www.crucial.com/ about maxing out your memory. You can sometimes run more memory that Apple advertises, and for much less than they sell it for. If you do find you need to run a windows system in virtulization (even if you don't use a windows ground control, you might need to use the vendor windows tools X-CTU to repair your Xbee telemetry modules, or uCenter to change settings on your u-Blox GPS, for example) then you will be much happier to have as much memory as possible.... 8 or 16 gigs is a good place to be.
"It" is a tiny bit ambiguous. The short answer is "yes", the longer answer is "there are several ways to do things, some work without *any* windows technologies, some work easier with some windows (virtualized or emulated or interpreted)
Here is a more complex answer:
You don't need a Ground Control software package at all ... to configure or to fly. But of course you can benefit from using one.
There are several major mission planner / ground control technologies. One of the three major options is the "native" toolchain, and combines configuration and flight planning. The other two major options are more focused on flight ops, but have some degree of other features (HK GC and QGroundControl)
As to runtime environment, one is windows only (HKGC). One (APM MP) is built for windows, but has been known to run with mono for mac, and is often run under parallels or vmware. QGroundControl runs natively on several platforms, including mac and windows.
That being said, I did this just for you, just now (download, install, run, in the time it took to punch out this message - but it is not stable.... provide some bug reports and data, it might get more stable *if* you buy Michael [Oborne, not me] enough beer...)
Replies
As for transmitters.... there is no one "best" and you can spend as much money as you have on a transmitter, from tens of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. Personally, I love my Futaba T8FG TX so much that I bought a second one. They are about $500 US each. However, I recommend you NOT spend $500 or $800 on a new TX right now. I recommend you save that cash for more batteries, repair parts, frames, more APMs, etc, and get a good low cost TX right now. More than saving your cash for DIYDrones-type gear, it will also give you time to understand the very different features available in the JR, Futaba, Spektrum, etc TX (like SBUS, telemetry, etc) and by the time it would make any difference to you there might even be a new generation of transmitters on the street for you to chose from.
You cannot go wrong with a Futaba T8FG or a Spektrum DX8, but I would recommend something like a Turnigy 9X. Moreso because after you've gotten a second transmitter (maybe something like OpenLRS, if not one of those mentioned above,) you can start hacking your transmitter with stuff like http://code.google.com/p/er9x/
On the other hand, its not just about price. If you spring for the Futaba T8FG immediately, then you will be pretty much ruined. No other transmitter under about $1200 will feel as nice *wink* So hold off and get the $60 model for now....
regarding running on MacBook, see http://www.crucial.com/ about maxing out your memory. You can sometimes run more memory that Apple advertises, and for much less than they sell it for. If you do find you need to run a windows system in virtulization (even if you don't use a windows ground control, you might need to use the vendor windows tools X-CTU to repair your Xbee telemetry modules, or uCenter to change settings on your u-Blox GPS, for example) then you will be much happier to have as much memory as possible.... 8 or 16 gigs is a good place to be.
"It" is a tiny bit ambiguous. The short answer is "yes", the longer answer is "there are several ways to do things, some work without *any* windows technologies, some work easier with some windows (virtualized or emulated or interpreted)
Here is a more complex answer:
You don't need a Ground Control software package at all ... to configure or to fly. But of course you can benefit from using one.
There are several major mission planner / ground control technologies. One of the three major options is the "native" toolchain, and combines configuration and flight planning. The other two major options are more focused on flight ops, but have some degree of other features (HK GC and QGroundControl)
As to runtime environment, one is windows only (HKGC). One (APM MP) is built for windows, but has been known to run with mono for mac, and is often run under parallels or vmware. QGroundControl runs natively on several platforms, including mac and windows.
Personally, while I dislike using any windows products, I do see a lot of merit in running APM MP under virtualization, which I discuss briefly here: http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/getting-past-coming-down-with-s...
That being said, I did this just for you, just now (download, install, run, in the time it took to punch out this message - but it is not stable.... provide some bug reports and data, it might get more stable *if* you buy Michael [Oborne, not me] enough beer...)