Confused novice quad rotor builder seeks experienced builder for geekery.

[sausageroll]

Hi Everyone,

Mentioned this in another post, but I thought id do one here just to get a bit more exposure.

Built a quad rotor, and would really like to meet some like minded people near by. Can meet in a field and show each other our projects (no way of saying that without sounding corny).

We are exploring using a Naza or Ardupilot controller, as the Eagle N6 we currently have is a bit basic.

We are based in Maidenhead, High Wycombe area, South East. We currently test fly in Maidenhead in various fields and sports halls.

Would love to hear if anyone local (don't mind travelling a bit) would be prepared to meet up, would be great to chat about it and see what other people have.

[teslahed]

If you enjoy building stuff yourself and general geeky activities then i would strongly recommend you look in to the MultiWii based flight controllers. They are a lot more user hackable than the Naza which is designed more to work as well as possible out the box. With a decent MultiWii setup you can add different sensors and change the configuration to suit your needs and the software is open source and regularly updated.

You can build your own multiwii based board with an arduino and some sensors, you can buy one factory built which you just need to configure the software for or you can buy a board with the cpu and add your own sensors, depending which model you pick and how much tinkering and soldering you want to do.

http://www.multi-rotor.co.uk/index.php/board,16.0.html

The eagle is an extremely basic board with gyros only that can't be upgraded and the Naza works very well if you want to spend the money and don't want to have to fiddle with the software.

[sausageroll]

Hi Tesla,

Thanks for your input. We did look at the MultiWii. It seemed good, but does it hold altitude and gps position as well as the naza? All the video ive seen of the naza seems so solid and it looks so easy to fly, and safer to fly as well (by that i mean harder to crash).

If you think the same results can be had with the wii, and as its cheaper, then we may well end up with one of those...


Pete.

[Gaza07]

I really love the multi wii and it has brought this hobby on in leaps and bounds but I doubt it will ever be able to compete with the naza, yes the multi wii can hold altitude and hold position with gps but just not as good as the naza but you have to pay for it, A naza with gps is probably around £260 and that just gets you the flight controller,
You can start out with a multi wii board some thing like the crius all in one pro and a gps for about £100 quite a lot cheaper and it has all the latest sensors but you have to want to fiddle about with editing code and setting it up     

[teslahed]

I suspect that the position hold and stable mode work a little better on the Naza, if only because GPS is a new feature with the more recent versions of the MultiWii code.

It really depends on what you want to do - i think the Naza probably will be easier to fly to start with but the MultiWii will be more fun to setup and can be more configured more flexibly to allow you to do what you want with it. Once you've learned to use all the features you'll have more control of the software than you would with the Naza.

If you just want to learn to fly then i think MultiWii will be fine, you'll only really benefit from the Naza if you want the best possible GPS performance or the smoothest stable flight for camera work.

If you look at Warthox's website, one of the best quadcopter fliers I've seen, he uses MultiWii boards almost exclusively;

http://warthox.de/video/

but that's more for stunt flying. A lot of people carrying expensive camera equipment use different boards.

Personally i prefer the MultiWii stuff just because it's open source, more configurable and cheaper but maybe a Naza fan will come along and give you the other point of view.

[Gaza07]

I fully agree the multi wii is very good and I use it a lot, and it is for some one who likes to tinker but quite a few newcomers to the hobby seem to want an out of the box solution with no mess or fuss and something that is going to hold their camera gear nice and stable, the naza offers this and does it very well, as far as I know not counting the baro the naza has some quite expensive analogue sensors which make it super stable, maybe if those sensors were used for multi wii then it could compete but at the moment it cant, and all us tinkering types wont pay the extra for the sensors 

[teslahed]

It will be interesting to see how the MultiWii platform continues to develop as more sensors become available. One good thing about it being open source - I'll be able to upgrade the software and the hardware as soon as it's possible to do so. 

I am under the impression the MPU6050 is the best gyro / accelerometer chip currently available, if there's anything better I'd like to know.

[Gaza07]

Yea the MPU6050 gyro / acc is currently the best digital gyro available to us, we seem to be stuck with budget priced gear, the analogue sensors cost more and Im not sure they would run on our systems,
I dont think they are I2c probably SPI or what ever its called 

[MadMax]

You guys were up late  Im also a fan of multi wii there is a lot to be said about open source  and its not like you have to learn how to write the code, you just need to edit some of the parameters that appear in plain english but I also agree the naza is the best out of the box no mess no fuss works well flight controller  at present

[icedfusion]

I am reasonably close to Maidenhead - well, I used to work in Maidenhead, but I live in Basingstoke. I have an APM2, but I still ahve not got round to mounting it in a frame yet.

I could be up for a days flying somewhere!

ice.

[sausageroll]

Ahh, that sounds good. Your not far from us at all. Today I have introduced a friend into it, im gonna help him build a big hex copter, and update mine at the same time, so we will hve two large (1m size) hex copters both with naza GPS and cameras. Could be a fun day out eh?

[Gaza07]

Well dont forget to point him here to   

[sausageroll]

Ice, we are building this enormous hex next weekend, and will likely go flying on the sunday with the hex and the quad, around maidenhead area. If your about, you gotta come and witness the maiden voyage....

[Gaza07]

And dont forget to video it  ::)

[icedfusion]

Ice, we are building this enormous hex next weekend, and will likely go flying on the sunday with the hex and the quad, around maidenhead area. If your about, you gotta come and witness the maiden voyage....

Sunday 23rd? I should be good for that - give me a postcode or something and I will bring a few of mine as well. However, it will be interesting to see how big this thing is!

ice.

[sausageroll]

Ice, I have decided to turn this into a semi official meeting, have done a post in the news section. Would be good to see you there, still the 23rd and still Maidenhead aera.


Pete.