Hoverfly FC Comparison

[Aerovideo]

Bear with me on my FC rant

When I first started out in multirotors I was flying a Gaui 330x like I suspect a lot of people did. I moved that FC to several different frames and it served me well but definitely had its quirks. I then thought I needed accelerometers for safety so I picked up an FY90Q, talk about quirks... YIKES that thing was awful.

I did a lot of searching after that and finally landed on the Hoverly Pro. I've been flying those for quite a while now and have 3 pros (1 dead), a GPS, and 3 sports.

But being adventurous, I finally got a CC3D FC. This thing is TINY! I can fit it into just about anything and the software runs on my Mac... hint, hint, wink, wink. It also has the ability to work with just one cable to the Rx with PPM, SBus, or even a satellite Spektrum rx. It comes with a nice little all in one PWM cable as well for traditional setups. It has both gyros and accelerometers plus you can do simple gimbal stabilization. It doesn't have an OSD though.

Now before you run me out of the Hoverfly section let me just describe my "out of box" experience with this tiny little thing.

I setup my QAV500 frame with the same gear that I had on it when it was controlled by one of my HF sport boards. I went through the setup wizard and went out into the back yard and did some test flights. YIKES!!! This thing was ALL OVER my back yard. It was everything I could do to land it in one piece. WOW, the default settings were terrible.

So off I went to learn about tuning this thing. This is where it gets complicated, PID tuning is not my bag baby and it looks like I'm going to have to learn all about it. Oh how I longed for the simple gain setting in my transmitter as well as the out of the box settings that were at least flyable. I ended up cheating and copied someone else's settings, which we all know doesn't really work but, at least it is flyable now. I have a lot of reading and youtube videos ahead of me.

While I have seen a couple of people get fantastic results out of this thing it looks like it's going to be a LOT of work to get anywhere near what I'm used to.

In conclusion, this tiny little FC is cool, I just wish it was a Hoverfly! Nothing beats the ease of use of a Hoverfly. It's just that the HF board is HUGE! It can be tough to work with on a lot of frames unless you're flying some monster sized hex or octo. I don't suppose a new smaller version of the Pro board is in the works? Maybe about the size of the current sport board even?

I have yet to try a Naza as they seem to be all the rage but all the video I see from those is wobbly. But a nice self contained case does make it seem to be more of a finished product and less hobby looking. Given Hoverfly's high end professional target market I think it would be a pretty good idea to create a nice small FC board with all the features of the pro maybe minus the OSD and put it into a nice fitted case, that would look professional and it would be a lot easier to work with.

Do the Hoverfly guys have anything up their sleeves?

Wish list:
Smaller FC w/Pro board features
Professional Form Fitted Casing
PPM or SBUS Rx connectivity
Macintosh Software

Okay... blast away! :nevreness:

 

[Stacky]

Paul,
I have finally after well over a year given up on the cc and cc3d boards. They take for me a huge amount of time to tune and even then they have never flown anywhere near as well as my HFP boards. Even once i have got my cc and cc3d boards tuned via auto tune or testing etc if I have a bad landing I seem to always need to hook the board back up to the software to retune it. On top of that every flight is different. The price difference for me now has become a non issue simply because I have wasted so much time on the cc and cc3d boards that I would have been better off buying a 3rd HFP board. On top of that all my crashes have been with those boards.

I literally yesterday put my HFP into my folding quad having spent the last 3-4 months messing around with cc3d boards in the smaller machines. The first flight with the hfp was simply the best flight I have had in a small quad and I wish I had simply left the cc3d and kk2 boards alone, I would have wasted far less time and would be much closer to the goal Im chasing at present. The difference in flight quality wasnt even close.

I also have the KK2 boards and I find those quicker and easier to tune but again i cannot get them anywhere near the flight quality of the HFP. I did own a NAZA and that was good but the AL was far too stiff for me and the normal mode far too loose, however I never got round to tuning it. The AH was excellent. I did like the NAZA, the case and size was excellent.

I would love to see HF produce a board thats trying to compete with the NAZA on size and price if possible, however the big lesson for me has been that even though the HFP is more expensive the ease of use, flight quality and lack of hassle makes it in the long run more cost effective for me.

I jokingly told Pete (efliernz) yesterday I wanted to buy another HFP, might end up not being a joke comment yet.

 

[DucktileMedia]

I'm with you. The hoversport flew very well but is feature-less. I loved how easy it was to setup and it was small. The lack of enclosure was not a big deal. The Hoverfly pro is great but at half the cost teh Naza has a lot more, is half the size, easy as hell to double stick on the frame due to its enclosure and is relatively straight forward to setup. but the Hoverfly pro is unbeatable in basic flying characteristics. The gimbal control on the hoverfly is also light years superior to anything DJI has ever come up with. The OSD being built in is also quite nice. The problem I have is that on my small fold-n-fly frame, the board is a little big and is unprotected. So if you dont need GPS it is certainly a candidate, but by the time you add the GPS board and satellite, it is way too big for a small heli. It will be interesting to see how the CC3D and the APM2.5+ do in the near future. And MAC support is a freaking blessing come true! I would love nothing more than to rid my macbook of the cancerous partition.

 

[Stacky]

Yeah mac compatibility would be nice.

I am happy to pay a reasonable price for quality. I was just thinking about all the stuff I have bought over the last 2 years that was cheap and all of the cheap stuff has been a pain. NTM motors, cheap but horribly balanced, rctimer motors the same, Turnigy TX9 radio, poor build quality and even with frsky modules still drifts etc, cheapo props break, cheap gimbals twitch etc etc.

 

[Bartman]

FWIW, I'm working with the other moderators to publish a "2013 Flight Control Assessment" that will try to objectively compare the features and performance of the various flight controllers. Maybe we can have it ready to go in a week or so but everyone's so f'in busy it's hard for us to even get an email exchange moving with any fluidity.

Bart

 

[Emowillcox]

I have gone through a few Flight Controllers starting with a gaui. Realized I wanted to learn more about the multi rotors, but no one at my flying field had any experience. Got on the web looking for info which is how I found this forum. My first big purchase over a year ago was a DJI woo-kong. I went with DJI over MK because they were supposed to be easier to set up, but I still had a few issues and took extra time to set up. I learned that my lack of experience and the Chinglish instructions made it a bit of a challenge to set up. Thanks to the support on the forum here I was able to get my DJI going. Looks like now the directions from DJI have gotten better and there are alot more videos and post about setting up DJI. About 6 months ago I took the big for me and decided to try Micro Kopter. My experience was not so great. The machine flew nice, but after a handful of flight I had something on the board burn up. The MK machine was my biggest purchase to date and I was surprised by the lack of customer support. Thanks to a good friend fixing it I was back in business, but only for a short time before something fried on the board again. MK is really hi tech and actually a little intimidating to someone who might be lo tech ... like myself ... :dread::nevreness::black_eyed: basically sounded like something on the built in speed controller was getting fried on my machine for some unknown reason. I became a little nervous about what my next purchase would be. After doing some research I decided I needed to get some advice. Spent some time talking to Bart and he felt with my level of experience and needs that the Hoverfly FC might be the best fit for me. I know just enough about multi rotors to be dangerous :02.47-tranquillity::dread::highly_amused: I was interested in flying a machine with 8 motors. For Christmas I got myself a hoverfly FC and was pretty surprised that this lo-tech pilot was able to get it set up and ready to fly with out too much trouble. When I did have a question there was alot of information all ready out there and it was nice to see the Hoverfly guys had some great videos out there on setting up the FC. I'm still learning about the Hoverfly FC, but I have since picked up two more for new builds.
There is a lot of great information on the forum here for helping point people in the right direction of getting the best FC. I think there are a few important things to think about when trying to figure out which FC to get. What kind of experience do you have and what do you plan to do with your multi rotor. For me it was a FC that could handle 8 motors, not be too over the top to understand, and have good customer support. Its pretty nice to see the Hoverfly guys on here responding to threads.

 

[Webheadfred]

I had ZERO RC experience. None. I couldn't even make a fly able paper airplane. I've been in the aviation industry for 35 years and have always been a photographer. Before aviation, I was a sidelong photographer in NCAA football and a wedding photographer. I've had my eye on all this flying camera stuff for a while and had read up on the MK, DJI, etc and saw the Hoverfly folks a couple years ago and thought I'd keep my eye on them. The ONLY REASON I went with them was the Parallax Propeller processor on board. As a amateur radio ham and a electronics junkie, I had played around with this microprocessor and knew well of its power. The HFP has TWO of these 80mhz beasts and each has 8 parellel cores. That's 16 parallel cores running at 80mhz to monitor all the necessary sensors. It was a no-brainer. Add the HFP GPS unit (another 8 cores) then there is a hell of a lot of computing power.

I built my own designed quad with plastic parts cut from my AI design. Slapped some Home Depot towel rods on and 4 Hacker motors. SWOOP! Even this knucklehead could fly. It took me a few flights to figure it out but with a sturdy quad, a little learn as you go, a lot of nerves, and I got it up and stable. I'm on my 4th multi and I'll never use anything else. They are just that good.

 

[Razzil]

All postive comments come with negativity, and I hate to be that 1st person in this thread. I started on the Hoverfly Pro and GPS boards, loved it, loved the learning process, loved the stability, loved the video results, really smooth ... overall opinion ... love hoverfly and the tech support appears to be the best around. Although I find the support from this forum more helpful on explaining things sometimes.

Now the negative ... One day I updated the firmware, went through the various steps, then went out to fly ... enabled GPS and it dropped from the sky like a rock ... luckly I was able to recover and land shortly afterwards ... thank god. That one day changed my mind forever towards Hoverfly GPS. I spent well earned money on a top quality product, and it failed me, as I didn't do anything wrong. The only thing I did wrong that day ... was not tell the wife I had stollen her hair dryer. Really got it that day lemme tell ya, she was gone looking for it, for over an hour. hahah ... me out in the shed working away.

GPS was a feature I wanted, so I upgraded to the newer GPS module and that helped a lot. I find the carbon fiber plate between the boards have even better results, although one is to question that scenerio. I was able to use GPS again although the results were not what I wanted.

Overall ... I switched to DJI. Within a few days I had my machine flying exactly how I wanted it to. I've switched from Hoverfly to DJI for that main reason ... GPS. Why purchase a $450 board that doesn't provide the best result !!! Hoverfly PRO, sure, love it, but I want GPS functionality.

Hoverfly needs to improve several things IMO ... GPS hold and the option to choose ATTIT mode similar to DJI. Other than that, I love the Hoverfly PRO, but not impressed with the GPS board.

PS: I have a Hoverfly Pro and GPS board for sale ... hair dryer not included.

 

[jcmonty]

I love my HFpro. Flies great and super smooth. Smooth is the word for Hoverfly. I use the HFPro gimbal controls on my rig with good success as well.

I have an APM2 running the latest firmware for a smaller FPV quad. They have made leaps and bounds with that thing. It's not as smooth, but the capabilities are greater and improving day by day. Opensource definitely has it's place - but it's for the patient tinkerers that like learning as much as possible

 

[Benjamin Rowland]

We've been using a Cinestar 8 with Hoverfly Pro, Freefly 3-axis gimbal, and Radian gimbal controller. Very happy with this setup. I haven't tried the GPS yet because I wanted to keep things simple, and we're flying indoors half the time anyway.

 

[Aerovideo]

I love my Hoverfly gear, it flies so well. But when it comes to setting up a new quad I curse the size of the board and lack of a protective case, not to mention all the wires I have to hook up. But then all is well when it flies so smooth, with the occasional vibration problems of course but those are my fault

I did finally try out the GPS recently. Started a new thread for it, interesting results!

http://www.multirotorforums.com/showthread.php?9304-GPS-Twitches

Hoverfly is like the Macintosh of the quadcopter world, sure it costs a little more and takes a little longer to get the same feautures but it just works! Okay... cept GPS

Given that you would think they would have a Macintosh setup/firmware client! not to mention a pretty case... hehe

 

[Aerovideo]

I have to admit one of the reasons of trying the CC3D FC is that the Open Pilot forums are a very active place and it's fun getting a lot of feedback/help. It seems the Hoverfly feedback has slowed to a trickle which I can't decide if that's because everyone is having a wonderful time without any issues or if the market share is dwindling?

I hate to say it but just look at the DJI thread on this very web site, it has 29,000 posts compared to 3,000 for HF. The more the merrier I guess that's why I started the lurker thread as well.

I love my Hoverfly gear and put it in all my videos as I want more people to know about the awesome gear but it seems there's not much activity!

hehe... maybe in the end I need to get a life and quit reading forums

 

[Stacky]

DJI hit a home run with the NAZA, then with the Zenmuse, then with the Phantom. Hard to compete with such a big company. Its been 2 1/2 years since the original HFP board hit the market. I think from what they have said they tried to future proof the engineering on it and 2 1/2 years on it is still as good as it gets. Took my waterproof hexa for effectively its first real test flight today, perfect flight from the moment I armed it, its like that with every build. Im looking forward to whatever and whenever they produce a new FC no matter what market they target. I even think for the first time I would do the preorder thing despite having always been wary of those.

The Heli-Shot guys down here in NZ are using the HFP and are producing lots of great work, too busy to mess around on forums I think.

 

[Photronix]

I hope to change the game with a few new things we will release in the next few months. One of those is a rewrite of some of the firmware features in the next week or so.

 

[Steve Townsend]

This thread should be re titled "Why isn't everyone using HFP!" I'm using a Naza and a WKM but all this admiration is making me want to try the HFP for sure

 

[RTRyder]

I'm with you. The hoversport flew very well but is feature-less. I loved how easy it was to setup and it was small. The lack of enclosure was not a big deal. The Hoverfly pro is great but at half the cost teh Naza has a lot more, is half the size, easy as hell to double stick on the frame due to its enclosure and is relatively straight forward to setup. but the Hoverfly pro is unbeatable in basic flying characteristics. The gimbal control on the hoverfly is also light years superior to anything DJI has ever come up with. The OSD being built in is also quite nice. The problem I have is that on my small fold-n-fly frame, the board is a little big and is unprotected. So if you dont need GPS it is certainly a candidate, but by the time you add the GPS board and satellite, it is way too big for a small heli. It will be interesting to see how the CC3D and the APM2.5+ do in the near future. And MAC support is a freaking blessing come true! I would love nothing more than to rid my macbook of the cancerous partition.

This will probably come as a shock to a lot of folks here but I just completed an upgrade of my original TBS Discovery, adding reflashed Silabs based ESCs, a set of Avroto 2814 motors, and swapping the flight controller to a... Hoverfly Sport... from the original Naza that was followed by a Multiwii Mega. I have an OP CC and CC3D boards but they can be tuning headaches and are at somewhat of a dead end as far as further development, OP is focusing on the Revo now, so they weren't candidates for the swap.

Yeah the Sport doesn't have all the features, but what it does do is produce a great flying manual mode FPV quad with none of the bad habits of a Naza in FFF and none of the tuning headaches of a Multiwii. For a totally manual gyro only board it's sometimes hard to tell that it doesn't have autoleveling when flying sedately, but once you start banging the sticks around it does exactly what you want without any of the fight that an autoleveling board can have. That said I'm not giving up any of my Naza, there's plenty of use I still have for them, with the Discovery I wanted a fully manual flight system that I could fly fast and hard and not have it do weird things as the Naza is prone to flying hard in ATTI mode. I suppose I could use manual mode on the Naza but it really isn't very good at it, I have KK boards that do better in manual, plus if you do tune the gains for decent manual flight it doesn't fly well in ATTI so you have keep changing the settings to use one or the other.

Now if the 30 mph wind gusts would stop for a while so I can head out to the field and try this monster out with the FPV goggles...

Ken

 

[Aerovideo]

I hope to change the game with a few new things we will release in the next few months. One of those is a rewrite of some of the firmware features in the next week or so.

AHHH ha! That's what I like to hear! Glad you guys are still alive and kickin and developing new stuff, that rocks!

 

[Aerovideo]

DJI hit a home run with the NAZA, then with the Zenmuse, then with the Phantom. Hard to compete with such a big company. Its been 2 1/2 years since the original HFP board hit the market. I think from what they have said they tried to future proof the engineering on it and 2 1/2 years on it is still as good as it gets. Took my waterproof hexa for effectively its first real test flight today, perfect flight from the moment I armed it, its like that with every build. Im looking forward to whatever and whenever they produce a new FC no matter what market they target. I even think for the first time I would do the preorder thing despite having always been wary of those.

The Heli-Shot guys down here in NZ are using the HFP and are producing lots of great work, too busy to mess around on forums I think.

Yeah, I think I need to spend less time on forums

Agreed, DJI did hit a sweet spot with the NAZA although I've not yet tried one. Everything else of theirs is out of my price range

This will probably come as a shock to a lot of folks here but I just completed an upgrade of my original TBS Discovery, adding reflashed Silabs based ESCs, a set of Avroto 2814 motors, and swapping the flight controller to a... Hoverfly Sport... from the original Naza that was followed by a Multiwii Mega. I have an OP CC and CC3D boards but they can be tuning headaches and are at somewhat of a dead end as far as further development, OP is focusing on the Revo now, so they weren't candidates for the swap.

Yeah the Sport doesn't have all the features, but what it does do is produce a great flying manual mode FPV quad with none of the bad habits of a Naza in FFF and none of the tuning headaches of a Multiwii. For a totally manual gyro only board it's sometimes hard to tell that it doesn't have autoleveling when flying sedately, but once you start banging the sticks around it does exactly what you want without any of the fight that an autoleveling board can have. That said I'm not giving up any of my Naza, there's plenty of use I still have for them, with the Discovery I wanted a fully manual flight system that I could fly fast and hard and not have it do weird things as the Naza is prone to flying hard in ATTI mode. I suppose I could use manual mode on the Naza but it really isn't very good at it, I have KK boards that do better in manual, plus if you do tune the gains for decent manual flight it doesn't fly well in ATTI so you have keep changing the settings to use one or the other.

Now if the 30 mph wind gusts would stop for a while so I can head out to the field and try this monster out with the FPV goggles...

Ken

The sport board is my board of choice for small FPV craft. It does need some of the latest pro board firmware goodness and some love in the setup client but as it stands right now it is just plain easy and fun!

Although I am giving the CC3D a go