Stil flying APM 1 – time to upgrade?

Posted by Lukas Holoubek on October 24, 2012 at 1:01pm

I purchased a hexacopter kit from 3DR in May – right before the APM 2 was released. Nonetheless, I have had great success with the APM 1 and enjoy flying the hexacopter. I'm currently running 2.7.3, planning to update to 2.8.1 soon. The 3DR/DIY Drones dev team has done excellent work: 2.7.3 flies significantly better than any previous firmware I've used. 

Until now, I have been satisfied flying in stabilize mode, and I have experimented with loiter and alt hold. However, I would like to attempt to fly waypoint missions. Will it be possible to still have success with the APM 1, or would it be better to upgrade to the APM 2.5? I'm hesitant to invest more in a new board because I spent so much on the initial kit. I appears that one of the biggest limitations of the APM 1 setup I'm using is inaccuracy of the mediatek GPS. Any thoughts/recommendations? Thanks!  

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Replies

  • Lukas Holoubek October 24, 2012 at 5:26pm

    I appreciate the advice. I'll look at picking up a Ublox unit, and continuing to enjoy the APM 1 for the time being. Thanks!

  • Mike Boland October 24, 2012 at 4:55pm

    I have finished setting up an APM1 in a Hex for survey work and it works fine, with the MTek GPS, but I agree, it would be nice to upgrade to the UBlox.

    I have a couple of APM2.5 with UBlox and they are more 'locked in' than the APM1 with MTek, but both systems do teh job just fine.

  • Developer
    Jason Short October 24, 2012 at 1:07pm
    The best upgrade you can do is get the new Ublox GPS. I fly an APM1 with Ublox and it works great.
    The MTek is fine, just not nearly as precise.
    Jason
This reply was deleted.