Hi all Looking to replace my Pixhawk that died when an ESC went into meltdown and dumped batter voltage up the signal wire and just cannot afford the cost of the genuine items so was looking to the Chinese clones, I then stumbled across these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/331784307248 and at under £50 quite a bit cheaper than the usual Chinese clones, but was concerned by the reference in the description to German & Russian firmware. Anyone know anything about these, are they fully compatible with Pixhawk and Mission Planer and the normal APM firmware normally used. I know you get what you pay for and if you buy cheap you buy twice, but I need to get something to replace my smoked Pixhawk and just cannot justify the cost of the genuine item at the moment. Thanks for any help with this Paul | |
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Emin,
This information is from early 2014 and might be changed afterwards. It's their own forum where Drotek member says it is made in France: http://www.drotek.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=209
I've heard some good things about Drotek but have never owned one of their products. They have expanded their selection since my last visit. Thanks.
You could buy a new Pixhawk from getfpv.com.
That's where I bought my unit from.
http://www.getfpv.com/flight-controllers.html?manufacturer=297
For anyone interested, CA announced there will be a new version of Pixhawk available soon. What that means is anyone's guess, but 3DR has never said they will stop selling Pixhawks. Of course that doesn't mean they won't stop at some point, but until that day comes, IMO it's a better option than inferior copies (in lieu of calling them clones).
All I needed to do was visit the RTFQ forum at RCG, and after reading the multiple dozens of failed units people were buying it wasn't for me. Besides that, I have too much money in the rest of the copters to risk buying something that either doesn't work out of the box or fails. Sure there are ones that last, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally. Spending another $100 is peanuts compared to losing a $1500-2000 due to skimping on the FC.
Virtually every "clone" out there continued using components or mfg methods that 3DR identified as faulty or obsolete. Anyone following these things knows what I'm referring to. Even Pixhack, which I believe has pretty high standards, after months of being in production still has the 1mb flash limit.
Bottom line is: buy what you want.
----> WORDS OF WISDOM, Learned the hard way.
Don't get burned by Chinese knockoffs. Too many components seem not to be rated the same as the original 3DR Pixhawk. The best way to cut cost is to cut corners. I got burnt recently and just got my real Pixhawk today. Everything works better and more reliably than the Chinese clone I got 4 months ago which failed. The new Pixhawk boots up faster, HUD response is smoother (thus I assume the gyros and accels are better filtered)- not to mention a much more attractive and better labelled package. The Chinese supplier basically told me 'too bad, so sad'.
Besides, 3DR did all the R&D to make the best of the best, why chance it? Why risk destroying a perfectly good craft or hurting people, structures etc when the cheaper versions fall out of the air mid-flight. Not saying it will happen, but why chance it? I am fully happy with my replacement Pixhawk- and I know its covered by the best in customer service. Not only do I feel bad about trying to take the cheap way out and cheating 3DR out of its fair share, I also feel cheated and screwed because I am out the money with no recourse. Not to mention the feeling of guilt for having created more useless, high value trash that has a tremendous environmental impact to manufacture.
Thats my not so humble opinion for what its worth.
Eric, you are missing a point .
We are not discussing if 3DR hardware is better compared to other manufacturers.
We are discussing about 3DR that is stopping selling the hardware for DIY .
Since very soon 3DR Pixhawk will be no longer available, what will be the best alternative ?
By the way the decision of 3DR arise an interesting question .
Why do they stop selling DIY hardware while they earn a lot of money with it ?
Simply a marketing strategy to challenge DJI RTF products with 3DR Solo or 3DR know something we do not know yet about future air rules for DIY drones ?
SNARK ALERT:
Hijack the thread into bashing 3DR and I'm missing the point? LOL
I bought into 3DR's vision many years ago with an APM 1.6 and was never disappointed until I couldn't load new firmwarez onto it, but that is the price of progress.
The Pixhawk is many times the computer that the 2650 was, improvements are normal, so is obsolescence.
My mistake was going away from 3DR and better components, testing, devel teams etc...
Paul: you said it yourself- 'buy cheap, buy twice', do what you need to do, I have no investment, just offering my $.02.
So if answering the original question and offering actual experience instead of hearsay and subjectivity is missing the point, so be it.
I'm gonna keep missing the point in that case.
Why not start another thread called 'Hey, 3DR, whats the future of drones look like for us DIY'ers?' instead of hijacking a thread started by someone asking about Chinese clones.
I still have somewhere a Optical Flow unit sold by 3DR that was supposed to work with the APM but in fact it never did so sometimes 3DR way of doing things was not fair.
also not entirely true there are some forks in the code that support optical flow on 8 bit controller !
Remember, we are from all over the world. So US legislation is not that important for most of the world.
PixHawk Lite was "invented" by GoodLuckBuy as far as I know, not sure if there are any clones yet. Mine from BG came with GLB labelled components.
Question is about their QC. I have seen clone Arduinos which looks hand soldered, there are a few different layouts, and different USB<->Serial converters. Finding an Uno with an Atmel usb<->serial chip is almost impossible. All seems to use CH340.
But again, it is all about finding a supplier with the quality you need. I have bought $5 OrangeRX 433MHhz radios from HK, knowing they have their weaknesses, and they can be fied. But they price is way better than $150 for DragonLink. Then I can spend a little time "fixing" them, and I have plenty of spares, and I will have something Good Enough (R).
Here in Denmark, there is no Flight Controller requirement, and we will likely not get any legislation towards old models. I doubt there will come a FC requirement for planes under 7 kg (our large model limit). Planes flies great without GPS and FC.
On the other hand, danish companies are lobbying for a requirement of ID and anti-collision systems. Will likely be required for commercial operators at some point. But this will require FC and GPS, just like ADS-B uses GPS.
IMHO I can keep building hobby planes/multis for my own use without any requirements to FC, as long as I do not fly them closer than 150 meters to cities/villages > 300 inhabitants, large crowds, and keep them under the legal 100 ceiling. Civil Aviation are allowed to fly 150 meters outside cities, so we get 50 meters seperation vertical.
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