Hi All.
so looking at a quad or hex for some FPV and Filming. When I first tried FPV I put a camera and transmitter on my Trex 500 with a Vbar. I found it really difficult maybe because my first time with FPV but the heli would start to drift as they naturally do and by the time you realized looking at the screen I ended up over correcting all the time. Was almost impossible to hover.
Are the flight controllers on quads different. Do they position hold better? Might be a silly question but never used one so dont know. Do you have to have the GPS to make work well or are they stable and hold position well enough without.
Cheers
Never used a V bar, but I have others.
the Naza holds position really well compared to a flight controller from a flybarless heli.
perhaps the exceptions being the ones with auto bailout features like bavarian Demon even they tend to bail out into a climb.
I found I had similar problems to what you are describing when using a quad without stabilisation. The naza in GPS mode just locks in though.
because of the footprint of a quad it is a lot more forgiving to some sideways drift as you land rather than just tripping up like a heli does.
if you managed to get your trex 500 back in flying condition after flying it FPV you will have no problems with a quad/hex. :sparta:
it is a very strange feeling switching into GPS mode and putting the tx on the floor, the quad will just sit there until the battery goes flat. I have used mine in winds gusting to about 35 MPH and it was just locked in. (no fun to fly though) in FPV I tend to fly in ATTI mode which doesn't let you go too mad but stops the thing over banking making it much easier to control FPV. I find my FPV flights are very tame compared to what I do when not in FPV.
maybe as I get better it will change but it is quite rewarding keeping it clean and tidy.
/Steve
Hi,
Thanks for the good input.
So it will drift similar to a heli but maybe the multi a more stable platform. Obviously in GPS mode locks in. Assume most people are flying multis with GPS active. So you just let the sticks back to center and it locks in?
Other than 3GX issues never really had a problem with a heli tipping. The Vbar is very good in that area.
I have a Bixler with a Storm OSD with GPS so used the Pilot assist (PA) and RTH a bit. Have been through the nervous moment of switching the TX off to test it before. Do it as standard now each flight as nearly lost a plane one time with a wrong setting. :-)
What is ATTI mode? Sorry total newbee at multis and there terms.
Certainly dont do 3D FPVing like I do on my helis :-)
Is the Naza with GPS a good starting point ? From what I understand the Naza stuff is fairly good. Maybe easier to setup than other brands. Leaning towards the lite version as an entry level system thats cheaper. Whats the limitation of the lite over a full Naza ??
Cheers
Quote from: helimadness on May 12, 2014, 10:12:30 AM
Hi,
Thanks for the good input.
So it will drift similar to a heli but maybe the multi a more stable platform. Obviously in GPS mode locks in. Assume most people are flying multis with GPS active. So you just let the sticks back to center and it locks in?
Is the Naza with GPS a good starting point ?
It depends what sort of flying you are wanting to do. To me multis are best fun zooming around near to the ground and tend not to have massive range anyway so I've never felt I needed any sort of GPS-equipped flight controller. I also much prefer flying in manual mode. I favour a CC3D controller (or even a KK2) over Nazas as they seem to fly better. I think if you're a 3D heli pilot then you're going to get bored with a Naza.
Being unable to hover without drifting in FPV is just a matter of practice.
Sounds like you might need a naza in early days to build up confidence.
Then flog it and get multiwii/baseflight/openpilot or KK and enjoy...
If you like the acro stuff you will prob get bored with as loopdreams
Acro FPV is awesome will get your adrenaline flowing. One guy in US told me he puked trying a loop wearing goggles.
atti= attitude mode. it will hold position but not relative to air movement. so you release the sticks and it returns to a hover position, but if there is a 30mph wind it is now going 30mph.
GPS, locks in over a specific spot at a specific height.
check out the multi wii stuff as well, that has come on in leaps and bounds the last couple of months.
Naze 32 is pretty good and dirt cheap.
there is definitely a learning curve as multis tend to stop dead in turns unless you keep forward "cyclic" on, a bit like a coaxial heli. my first crash was caused by this as I was used to helis and they just keep going, by the time I realised what was going on I was in the turf. I then bought a naza lite and now when I have the brain farts I can just let go of everything and it sorts it out.
as you get better you find you use it a lot less and actually find gps mode too restrictive. my last flight was only in GPS mode while I took off and was in manual for 40% of the flight.
what I meant by tipping over, was when you land with sideways movement and the heli trips up, quads don't do that so if you are not coming down perfectly stationary they forgive you where the heli will just eat itself.
check out readytoflyquads.com Whitespy's stuff is good and the flip 32 is pretty much the same thing as a Naze 32. he also has shed loads of multi wii options.
hope this helps
Steve
Helimadness - your V-Bar - is that a standard V-Bar? i.e. flybarless controller? It doesn't have auto hover built in?
If that's the case we are talking two totally different things. Switching from a heli to a quad with a GPS flight controller is incomparable.
You don't need to fly a quad with a GPS flight controller (Let's say a Naza FC)- you can just "push it around" with the sticks.
I'm a heli flyer at heart and made the same transition. Quads are childs play to fly.
With a quad an a Naza flight controller (any variant) you switch it on, push the throttle up and it takes off into a stable hover and stays exactly there, even in wind, within a few feet. You can put the TX down and walk away and it'll stay there until the batteries run low, and then it will auto land.
As mentioned above, there are three flight modes - manual , atti (auto level), and GPS (Auto level with GPS position holding). You choose how much control you wan't. Even in GPS mode you can fly it round as you like, but when you let go of the sticks, it'll level and hold position and height.
A helicopter is a whole other beast. I'm sure you can get GPS holding flight controllers for helis now, but I can't see the point., If you want that much control in the air, use a multi that is far more reliable and less complex.
Lots of good comments and info to take in.
So get the impression the Naza is designed so any newbee or 5 year old can fly it? So you cant change the rates like in a Vbar? It just has a slider where you dial up flip and roll rates. Can make it as mellow or mental as you like.
Im sure the trouble hovering will come with time. It was the first time I tried FPV. decided to get the Bixler after that. Still like the Bixler for a bit of range flying but thought some playing with cameras and gimbals might be a bit of fun. I think Im leaning towards that more than hooning around. Not sure you can beat the Goblin for that but then its not FPV so different again. I think Camera based setup for now.
I tend not to use the PA flight mode on the Bixler much. Normally just to put my goggles on after take off :-) Find you feel like you are fighting it all the time and the controls are even slower than normal. I also have a Teksumo my brother and I brought 2 for dog fights at Christmas. Lot of fun. Had to break it down to bring it home. Might turn it into a blunt nose so its a big bigger and can carry the FPV kit. Was a lot more fun to fly than the bixler. I did put my FPV kit on it but only to test. Was too heavy and bulky so killed performance. But thats another project.
I have 2 full size Vbars and a Kbar (Vbar clone) on my 250. They are fly barless controllers not flight controllers. I think that is the key difference. They are meant to simulate the fly bar on fly bar less helis. So if a gust hits it it will correct for the gust but it wont maintain a position. If you put the heli on a 45 deg angle it will stay there.
The "push it around" way of flying is a good description of what I imagine them to do.
Sounds like a multiwii or KK board is the way to go. I just thought about the Naza as "seen the name a lot so figure they must be good" And also Bruce from RC model reviews recently said they are only a tiny bit more than a KK controller and they plug in and work. So few more questions. Hopefully starting to head where I want to :-)
1) How hard are the multiwii or KK or other boards to setup and get flying? Is it a black art or just a matter of following setup guides properly. Have experience with Vbar, 3GX, Storm OSD and Remzibi OZD and managed to work them all out ok.
2) Is one better than the other if I wanted to hook up say a Zenmuse 3D Gimbal with 2nd TX controlling the camera. Watched a video on those and they look like they will make any flying bucket look good.
3) Like the idea of GPS position hold so you can place the Multi copter (haven't decided quad or hex but leaning toward hex) in a spot and drive the camera around with the copter fixed in position.
Think thats it for now.
Thanks for all the great advice.
Cheers
can't answer all of these, but I know the GPS hold on naze 32 doesn't work yet. more features coming on line all the time, but they tend to thumb their noses at GPS hold, or as you will see it referred to a lot, newbie mode. they don't like RTH either so I don't expect these to be as well developed as the rest of the features.
from a setup point of view, it is just as easy as a flybarless system, there is a configuration tool called baseflight for the naze and flip 32 it works really well.
if you want something with absolutely no faff, then the naza is the way to go, you can always sell it later on once you have outgrown it.
if you want a gimbal then I know the DJI stuff doesn't support a 2nd Tx (or at least that is what I have read) you will also need to use a proper full fat naza rather than a lite. which pushes up the cost a fair bit.
if you want to do proper AP then you will have to do a lot of tuning to get something as good as a zenmuse, you either pay the money for something, or you pay more in time, depends on where your needs are.
flying quads around LOS is dull as dishwater but once you are wearing the goggles you don't need a 3d beast.
depending on what you want to do with it would dictate what I recommended, if you really want to do nice stable AP style flying a 450 with zenmuse is an expensive but excellent option.
if you want to light the world up with proximity in the woods flying then a smaller quad like a blackout or x hover 230 with a naze acro on it would be great. both will carry a mobius and get your blood flowing... a mini quad will be easy to carry and with integrated (RX) goggles you have an ultra portable solution.
you could probably do a blackout for about £300 obviously you could go for a K quad or the HK 250 quad and get the budget right down. cheap motors, props and controller.
2 totally different set ups for 2 totally different jobs... I'd like to have both :D
/Steve
I think I must have said something misleading somewhere for you to conclude that you don't want a NAZA and perhaps should get a KK or MUlti Wii. Just the opposite - the Naza FCs are the top of the pile. The other FCs do the same stuff but without auto land (well, not without a lot of faffing about).
The Naza kit is well made, rubust, reliable, and easy to setup (so you don't spend more time with a laptop and usb leads going into your quad than actually flying).
The Naza will fly totally "unassisted" in manual mode. It doesn't get any more pure than that. But most people fly in at least ATTI mode, as it is not intrusive. In the software you set the "gains" - you set how much the Naza will "fight" to level the quad. That's your "rates" for you. You can even assign sliders or switches on your TX so you can switch gain mid flight.
When you fly in Atti mode, it flies just like it should, just that when you centre the sticks, the quad levels perfectly. In GPS mode, in addition to it levelling, it'll stop and maintain position.
GPS mode is your "pushing it around" mode. Stab a stick forward then let go, the quad will shift forward, then stop. This makes it ideal for AP work, and is also a great benefit when FPV flying as often, you want to be sure you are not drifting while looking at something.
I actually do a lot of my "zooming about" fun flying in GPS mode as it really doesn't interfere too much while you are giving stick input. When I want lots of speed I switch to ATTi mode, as it lets you tilt the quad a lot more. I don't often use manual as my Quad is a dead cat style and rolls quite severely on full power climbouts. I just don't find the need for it.
+1 What RodgerD just said
I guess more what was said above about learning on a naza then changing to something else to enjoy.
I understand gain and rates. So the naza uses tx rates to control stick sensitivity? As long as you can crank them up enough to get the pitch and roll rates you are looking for then I guess different controllers just have different feel. I know the 3gx is totally different feel to vbar.
So to connect a zenmuse for instance would it come with is own control board? Could then plug a second rx into that for camera control? Or do you need a fc that can do both. Do the need to be joined? Thought they were 2 independent bits of kit?
Hope this makes sense on a crowded bus in China heading for a plane to UK on my phone.
Cheers
You really can't compare heli flybarless controllers to quad flight controllers. Quads really don't have a "feel" to them when you fly them. They are hovering bricks. When you push forward on the stick the rear motors speed up and the front ones slow down. That's it. You select flight controllers for their features, not how they "feel" to fly. You are best off forgetting what you have learnt from helis as none of it applies to quads/hex's etc.
Gimbal control comes in 2 flavours. The old way is servo driven. Nearly all FCs have a pitch and roll servo output that plug straight into the servos on your gimbal. The FC has the gyros built in so it can control your gimbal easily. You can assign channels via the FC software and manually control roll/tilt via your radio too. All via the one FC (i.e. naza)
The new way is brushless gimbals. Since brushless motors can't be driven by servo ports, they need brushless motor controllers. As you are going to be needing a board with 2 brushless motor controllers, it makes sense for that board to also be the gimbal controller, with it's own built in gyros etc. This board is separate from the FC. You can feed spare channels directly from your Rx to the gimbal controller to override pan and tilt.
So on my quad for example, I have a Naza lite and an FRSky 8ch Rx. 6 channels go into the Naza (4 for flight, 1 for flight mode, 1 for IoC mode). I then have a seperate Alexmos 3.1 Simple gimbal controller board. This takes a spare channel from the Rx to control tilt. This board plugs into the gimbal motors.
Quote from: RogerD on May 14, 2014, 05:16:03 PM
You really can't compare heli flybarless controllers to quad flight controllers. Quads really don't have a "feel" to them when you fly them. They are hovering bricks. When you push forward on the stick the rear motors speed up and the front ones slow down. That's it. You select flight controllers for their features, not how they "feel" to fly. You are best off forgetting what you have learnt from helis as none of it applies to quads/hex's etc.
Couldn't agree less with any of that. All sorts of things change how quads feel to fly, the layout, the weight to power, underslung payloads and most definitely the flight controller. Each uses it's own algorithms and sensors to produce the flight and each has strengths and deficiencies. And all those differences most definitely do amount to a different feel. Granted if all you do is wobble along in GPS or atti you might not appreciate much of a difference.
What I mean is helis fly, and multis don't. A heli has translational lift, they weather-vein, they have a very specific "flying" feel to them, which can be drastically changed with flybarless controllers. Too much "help" and you lose the feeling of "flying" and it becomes more robotic. Flyers love helis as they are flying a mini version and they want it to fly like a helicopter does.
Multis are just a hovering slab that you move around. Sure weight, balance, COG etc affect how they handle, but at the end of the day, the controller is simply adjusting each prop to point the thing in the direction you want.
I've built a 550 dead cat quad with Naza GPS and full fpv, a 500 x quad perfectly balanced with no extras and a kk2 controller, and a dji s800 hex with Naza. They all "fly" exactly the same. Shove a stick and they move. In manual, the balanced X quad handled it best, unsurprisingly. The dead cat is a little messy as the weight is all over the place, and manual on the hex was as expected, just like the other modes but with no levelling.
Put them in atti, and you'd never know which controller was in them ( until the kk2 starts to drift at hover).
I guess Im not trying to compare the FC to a heli but just more curious the difference.
The more I look into it the more I am keen on just a camera platform. Looking at Gimbals the 3 axis seems to be leaps ahead of a 2 axis. The Zenmuse look like fairly cool bits of kit. Sure you pay but looks like its well worth the money. Alexmos Basecam controllers seem to be fairly popular around here. Are they any good?
So think leaning towards a 550 hex with Naza lite. Get that up an running learn how to fly and setup then slowly upgrade to a gimbal I think it the way im going.
Cheers
The Naza Lite is not compatible with the zenmuses (iirc). So you need at least a Naza 2 if you want to keep that upgrade path open.
The Alexmos controllers work extremely well - I'd say, they are industry standard now - even for larger installations - but they need proper setting up.
But if you use a brushless gimbal then wont you need a separate FC for the gimbal that is brushless compatible. ? Or do the Naza 2 handle both ?
Cheers
the Zenmuse is controlled thorugh the naza (though it has it's own built in controller) so you need to get a compatible flight controller.
Alexmos based gimbals work completely independed of the flight controller.
Here is the zenmuse H3-2D compaitbility list:
Compatible With DJI Flight Control Systems
The H3-2D gimbal is compatible with DJI flight control systems, it can adjust the roll and pitch angle according to the accurate control of the Gimbal feedback and communicate with the MC in real-time.
It supports WooKong-M, NAZA-M V1, NAZA-M V2, Phantom;
It will support Ace One, WooKong-H, NAZA-H;
It doesn't support NAZA-M LITE.
Notice: NAZA-M V1 and Phantom users need the PMU of NAZA-M V2.