Bartman
Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
If anyone is looking for a fully capable flight control system with excellent wind tolerance, very good GPS stability and return home reliability, fully adaptable motor mixing table for a wide variety of configurations, and flight characteristics that are world class with zero tuning you might want to consider....
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Mikrokopter!
There are a lot of them available second hand and the prices don't reflect what a good, stable, capable flight controller the FC 2.1 is. I'd also say the firmware is the most stable in our industry at the moment. There's a mod that improves the altitude hold and the GPS can hold steady, as in dead steady, in winds well above what a lot of other controllers can do (my personal record is 22 kts gusting to 30 kts/35 mph!). Not too long ago MK was the gold standard and what other controllers wanted to be when they grew up, it's going on three years now since the FC2.1 came out.
THe one big weakness with Mikrokopter is the infamous MK BL, or BrushLess controller. They're good to about 30 amps (up to 4S) and are pretty reliable if they don't pop and die the first time they get full battery power. When they do eventually die (usually without warning) it's usually spectacular with fire and smoke. Lesser failures without the fire/smoke leave a good chance your Hexa or Okto will keep flying just fine and come back to the ground unharmed, albeit with a dead motor. There are many examples of MK motor out performance on the internet.
There's a converter board that lets you use whatever cheap ESC's you'd like in place of the expensive MK BL's. Flght quality can suffer a bit although I've seen these heli's do better with more weight instead of less. There is a line of ESC"s coming out that will use the MK's native I2C motor control architecture providing both inexpensive motor control and better overall flying qualities than with the converter. I haven't tried these yet but the 30A/4S model is already available with a 6S version coming soon.
So why write all this? I"ve seen good used MK electronics in the classifieds area and people are almost giving them away! It costs about $1800 new to set up an Okto with the full FC and GPS/Navi boards plus the 8 motor controllers. If you can find the FC and Navi/GPS boards in great condition and at a great price, it's worth the effort to give it a try.
There's definitely a learning curve but you'll be rewarded with a very capable flight control system.
Just thought I'd throw that out there! Thanks for reading!
.
.
.
.
.
.
Mikrokopter!
There are a lot of them available second hand and the prices don't reflect what a good, stable, capable flight controller the FC 2.1 is. I'd also say the firmware is the most stable in our industry at the moment. There's a mod that improves the altitude hold and the GPS can hold steady, as in dead steady, in winds well above what a lot of other controllers can do (my personal record is 22 kts gusting to 30 kts/35 mph!). Not too long ago MK was the gold standard and what other controllers wanted to be when they grew up, it's going on three years now since the FC2.1 came out.
THe one big weakness with Mikrokopter is the infamous MK BL, or BrushLess controller. They're good to about 30 amps (up to 4S) and are pretty reliable if they don't pop and die the first time they get full battery power. When they do eventually die (usually without warning) it's usually spectacular with fire and smoke. Lesser failures without the fire/smoke leave a good chance your Hexa or Okto will keep flying just fine and come back to the ground unharmed, albeit with a dead motor. There are many examples of MK motor out performance on the internet.
There's a converter board that lets you use whatever cheap ESC's you'd like in place of the expensive MK BL's. Flght quality can suffer a bit although I've seen these heli's do better with more weight instead of less. There is a line of ESC"s coming out that will use the MK's native I2C motor control architecture providing both inexpensive motor control and better overall flying qualities than with the converter. I haven't tried these yet but the 30A/4S model is already available with a 6S version coming soon.
So why write all this? I"ve seen good used MK electronics in the classifieds area and people are almost giving them away! It costs about $1800 new to set up an Okto with the full FC and GPS/Navi boards plus the 8 motor controllers. If you can find the FC and Navi/GPS boards in great condition and at a great price, it's worth the effort to give it a try.
There's definitely a learning curve but you'll be rewarded with a very capable flight control system.
Just thought I'd throw that out there! Thanks for reading!
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