First Time Builder Advise Please : Octocopter or X8

[roycruse]

Ive been flying RC planes for over 20 years and helicopters (occasionally) for a few years (my helicopter flying is not great)

I run a 360 virtual tour photography company and have been offering aerial photography using compact cameras and planes or helis.

However - I need to up my game a bit and have decided to build a rig that can lift my DSLR

My main quandary at the moment is whether to go Octocopter or X8 (sorry of these are not the accepted terms)

I have been looking around and taking into consideration my budget and needs I am currently looking a self built aluminium airframe (carbon is way too expensive) and i like the look of the Hoverfly Pro controller.

My theory so far is that an Octocopter will have more total thrust but with the downside of the extra weight of the 8 arms. where as an X8 may save a couple of hundred grams but how does the total thrust compare when 2 motors are counter rotating one above the other. and can you run slightly steeper pitch props seeing as they are in effect helping each other move the same column of air.

My other main problem is finding boom clamps for my 3/4" (19mm) aluminium tubing for the motor mount end and the central frame end.

My current attempts to find anything have only turned up these two possibilities :-

http://www.esska-tech.co.uk/esska_eng_s/jaws_for_pipe_clamps_plastic_light_serie.html

or

http://www.supremeplumb.com/cgi-bin/DMdatabase.cgi?action=/home/suprem13/public_html/cgi-bin/home/Shop/Hydraulics/RSB_Clamp_Components.txt&item=00183

The first looks quite lightweight but the second would be great for vibration dampening but could be very heavy.

Any help or advice on these would be great.

 

[Droider]

Hi Roycruse and welcome to MRF..

What weight are you looking to lift? There are lots of vaired opinions on configurations.. I like my ADX3 (Y6) it offers some reduncency but I dont ever plan to use it!

Not sure about the HFP set up.. I would be taking a serious look at the WKM. Its getting acclaimes from who I concider the best guys on this forum and if thet say its good.. ITS GOOD.

I fly a full stack MK and am very happy with it but I think the new WKM is going to be a standard setter for the whole multirotor FC market. So much so I have one sat in my mailbox ready to build a quad out of.. unfortunatley I am sat in London 270 miles away from it!

Looks like my weekend is going to be busy again!

Take a look at thread in the DJI section of the forum especially RTryder and DennyR's posts

Dave

PS where on the globe are you?

 

[roycruse]

Hi

Im looking to lift a canon 550D and standard wide angle lens so about 1kg + .5kg worth of batteries + the aircraft itself. But i would like room to expand as i can see a fpv feed from the camera being a really usefull addition later on.

Im down in Cornwall about as far away from everything as you can get in England.

I am drawn to the Hoverfly Pro by its £300 price tag as opposed to the WKM which seems at least twice that. The hoverfly also look pretty solid in the all the you tube videos ive watched - but i would be happy to hear any horror stories with it.

I was even considering the much cheaper again Xaircraft FC unit but i think the hoverfly looks leaps ahead comapred to that - maybe the WKM is leaps ahead again - thats what Im here to find out

The Flight Controller will be the last thing I buy so I have a few months before I need to make a decision - ive just ordered a couple of motors and some props to start doing some testing with to get an idea of amp draw vs thrust in various configurations.

I am leaning towards X8 - i really dont want my canon to fall out the sky and ive fried enough brushless motors and esc's on the front of planes to know they dont last for ever.

 

[Droider]

You will probably need more than 5000mah.. give Geoff at quadcopters.co.uk a ring for his advice.. PM RTryder for is opinion on HFP.. dont forget that the WKM has GPS that works.. If you add up the various parts of the HFP to try and get anywhere near the WKM its almost the same price..

Also have a look around the forum.. do you see any HFP users?

Dave

PS.. I know its a long way but check this out

http://www.multirotorforums.com/showthread.php?959-UK-Europe-MRF-Community-Meet

There is a goodly number coming up from the south.. If you really want to get in to this then making the trip north could save you a fortune in trying stuff and finding out it does not work!

 

[roycruse]

Why are there hardly any hoverfly pro users on here - is this forum biased to the sponsors? Theres not much talk of them either good or bad ???

I am limited 100% by budget even the Hoverfly is really pushing the limit of spend - im literally having to by a couple of motors this month - and then test and gather data - if im happy with the selection I will start buying some more - if not - ill find use for them on planes.

Im very interested at the moment about how the loading of a brushless motor with a given prop is affected by having another counter rotating one directly below it.

Also if anyone can point me in the direction of some lightweight 19mm tube clamps that would be great.

 

[Stacky]

I have the HFP and I absolutely love it.
HF have their own forum here http://www.rcgroups.com/hoverfly-technologies-711/ and it would be a good idea to have a good long read through that to check if the support given is what you might need. All issues and problems with the HFP are out in the open on that forum. Before I bought my 1st HFP board I spent a long time reading through their entire forum as well as numerous MK forums. I was sold on the desire by the HF guys help and the other users on that forum being very friendly and helpful. Compared to MK and DJI (who have been around for ages with RC Helis etc) HF are a very young company and platform so they have a fair bit of catching up to do with their firmware.
I had a brief period where I felt I had made a mistake when i couldn't work out a problem I had which dragged on for a couple of months. I was absolutely convinced at one point that i had a faulty board but finally found the fault was with my radio receiver and since then have had fantastic performance from the board. Virtually all of the problems I have had with the HFP during my various builds have turned out to be errors on my part. I had one problem which was flipping when auto level was engaged. After a firmware upgrade my version of that problem disappeared but others still had problems. All of this is on their forum.

I have 2 of their boards, the original green board and the new black board, one in a Y6 and one in a currently dismantled X8.

I have relatively limited experience with other platforms, I have the KK board, 2 CC boards and a Lotus T580. Just yesterday I got to try an ardu pilot system and none of those I have mentioned fly anywhere as nicely as my 2 HFP boards. I plan to have 3 machines in use for work and will buy a 3rd board soon. I have had 1st class support from HF and the forum is a very friendly one with lots of good people on it. Also Dan, Al and George, 3 of the designers of the board are on there all the time trying to help with problems.

If I do have one complaint it is that the user manuals are not as comprehensive as they could be. All the information needed is in the manuals but some of it could be explained in greater depth which might help to reduce the number of repeat questions asked on the forums.


There are a couple of very experienced HFP users on this forum who have had real problems with the HFP and have given up on it so you might want to talk to them. PM RTRyder or Mactadpole and you will get an alternative view to mine from them. Both of those guys are very experienced and helpful.

 

[wayno complaino]

Im a HFP user and here! I'm happy, but new MR's and no other FC's to compare it too.

 

[Bartman]

Why are there hardly any hoverfly pro users on here - is this forum biased to the sponsors?

I would like to say that we are absolutely, positively not beholden to sponsors. While it may seem that way, the reality is that I manage to secure advertising from the companies that I interact with the most in the course of operating my own small fleet of copters. Some have come to me and asked about advertising but the same standard applies that they must be a respected member of the community and accessible to their customers. I personally invited the Hoverfly folks to come join us and they eventually did but their participation has been virtually nil so I can't offer any supporting evidence as to why there aren't more users of their boards here. HV may have an active forums area of their own as some of the other manufacturers do. That may partially explain it.
FWIW, I was hoping to see HV's product evolve to the point where they could challenge the upper tier of FC makers. SO far it's been slow to happen, don't know why.
Welcome to the forums. If there's anything you need feel free to contact me or another moderator. You could also just post freely and have the wild hoards of site members help you out.
Bart

 

[roycruse]

Im very much a build it and find out myself (the hard way) kind of guy so i am looking forward to trying, failing and trying again so i will be no doubt on here lots asking for second opinions to all my experiments and findings.

I am really looking forward to this project... wherever it takes me.

Thanks for you welcome to the forum.

 

[Stacky]

Bart,
I think its simply a case of HF having a busy forum elsewhere, where they are having to work hard to keep up and as they develop they are having to work very hard to catchup to MK etc. This forum is in truth pretty low volume. I expect this forum to grow simply because its full of so many helpful people but its going to take a long time to challenge the regroups multi rotor forum for volume..... kind of similar in a way to the HF situation.

HF also do this part time. MK started 9 years ago from what i understand and whilst HF were preceded by the Quadpowered board which was George on his own the HFP is only 14 months old and they are 2 separate entities in reality.
I am biased and will happily admit it but I am seeing plenty of progress from HF. My own personal experience is that every new firmware release has brought improvement in flight quality. Their GPS board has just been released and they have teething problems there that as far as Im concerned are to be expected.
The one thing that I have not been able to work out is how come everyone seems to have forgotten just how bad and how many problems MK had when they first started all those years ago and how people in this very specialized but also relatively new field expect newcomers to have everything perfect the day the products are released. I have been battling with my CC boards since I got them and am still fighting to get the best out of them and part of that is my fault. However its a great board, a great project.

The HoverflySport has been very successful and everyone I have seen who is using it have expressed how happy they are with it. Its one stumbling block has been price which is I would suggest why its not a big volume seller.

I think Hoverfly will evolve to be able to challenge the upper tier, the electronics onboard are the best you can get, but I don't expect them to challenge for another couple of years. Once George etc at HF get the camera stabilization nailed then you will see real progress forward.

 

[Mactadpole]

Hey roycruse,

Welcome! I started flying Hoverfly back when it was a solo project by George (creator/developer) called Quadpowered. It was rough going but before going to HFP board it was flying pretty well. With the release of the HFP board there was definitely some growing pains at first and a lot of us were beta-testing. Unless you move up to MK electronics you are going to be beta-tester, IMHO. Even new firmware releases for MK have issues, just read some of the posting around the forums from their last release a couple weeks ago. I have flown the HFP in quad, hexa, X8, and now Y6 formats. The only one that I could never get to fly well was the X8 and this is most likely because I flipped two opposing sets of motors for maximum redundancy in case of motor failure. For some reason the standard layout for coax copters flying HFP boards is to have all the props on top spinning the same direction and all those on the bottom spinning the opposite. I'm not sure I really understand this decision because to my knowledge having the top motors spinning opposite their neighbor and the bottom motors spinning opposite their top motor counterpart provides greater redundancy. When I couldn't get the X8 to fly well with HFP I decided to move to Mk electronics. I have had some hardware issues but that seems to be worked out and I could not be happier with how it flies. I actually flew six flights today at some Pre-Incan ruins in Ecuador at 3100 meters (~10,200 feet) AMSL right on the equator and didn't tweak a single setting from my normal flying altitude of ~250 meters in central Texas. It took a lot more throttle and it was the windiest conditions I have flown in to do photography and it was just absolutely amazing. I should also mention that we have all been waiting for the GPS board from HFP (and Quadpowered before that) for a long time. I am using mrc's for research purposes and had finally reached a point in my development progress that I had to have GPS waypoint flying capability. This is another HUGE reason why I just went to MK. With all that said, I have to tell you that my HFP hexa's were some of the best flying copters I've had and the recently converted hexa to Y6 is flying very nicely with the HFP board after some unknown initial issues (a re-flash of firmware seemed to have fixed the problem or relocation of the rx, not sure which). The problem with flat hexa is there is no redundancy. I was in Ecuador a few weeks ago doing some work with BBC/Discovery crew and was flying over the Amazon when I lost a motor (actually a BL-Crtl) and it was barely noticeable. That right there convinced me I will never fly another mrc that is not a coax (X8 or Y6) or flat octo copter. And for my purposes I will probably never use a flat octo because they are just too darn big. I am able to fold the arms on my rc-carbon X8 frame and remove the landing gear and I can fit it all in a giant suitcase (barely within airline baggage size limit).

Almost done...I have to say I actually prefer the ability to do so much parameter adjustment on the MK vs. HFP but the learning curve is steep! It is really nice to not have to mess with a bunch of PID settings on the HFP but after a lot of messing with it on the MK the performance is on par with my HFP hexa's AND the camera stabilization works way better. Although I know HFP has been working on improving their's. Obviously I have kept an HFP board with the hope that someday soon it will have a well functioning GPS with waypoint navigation and excellent camera stabilization. Until then the MK X8 is my main machine.

Best of luck whatever you decide to do! Feel free to contact me with any particular questions you might have.

Shawn

 

[Emowillcox]

Hey Shawn.. sounds like your getting to fly your machine at some cool places.. are you going to share any photos?

 

[Bartman]

adding to the plug for MK I wouldn't recommend an I2c/PWM converter for anything other than hobby grade flying. Not only is stability degraded with the converter, the MK GPS isn't as calm and battery life is shorter. This has been learned after months of trying to make the converter work on a dedicated AP/AV Droidworx Okto rig. The converter made it fly pretty well at one point but the GPS didn't love the reduced competence of the FC and there was also a persistent uncontrolled 90 degree yaw that would pop up every so often.
Bart

 

[Mactadpole]

adding to the plug for MK I wouldn't recommend an I2c/PWM converter for anything other than hobby grade flying. Not only is stability degraded with the converter, the MK GPS isn't as calm and battery life is shorter. This has been learned after months of trying to make the converter work on a dedicated AP/AV Droidworx Okto rig. The converter made it fly pretty well at one point but the GPS didn't love the reduced competence of the FC and there was also a persistent uncontrolled 90 degree yaw that would pop up every so often.
Bart

+1 - I too wasted way too much time trying to get the I2c/PWM converter to work. I think it might be fine for small/super-light rigs but not heavy lifters. When I finally dropped the $$$ on the Okto XL distro board with BL's it made all the difference in the world.

Shawn

 

[Mactadpole]

Hey Shawn.. sounds like your getting to fly your machine at some cool places.. are you going to share any photos?

Here's a few: http://www.multirotorforums.com/entry.php?4-Cochasqui-Pyramids-Ecuador

Shawn

 

[Bartman]

This forum is in truth pretty low volume. I expect this forum to grow simply because its full of so many helpful people but its going to take a long time to challenge the regroups multi rotor forum for volume.....

More often than not, we have more viewers than RCGroups has in their multi-rotor forums. By low-volume do you mean we don't have a lot of people or our conversations are productive and polite?

I'm all for Hoverfly being successful. I'd welcome it. As for MK's teething pains, I'm too late to the party to be familiar. Why not post a blog and bring the pre-2010 years into focus for us?

Regards,
Bart