Hi all - pretty new to multi-rotors and I've only been in the RC hobby for a couple of years now. After buying an RTF Super Cub for my fathers day present a couple of years ago, I decided to strap a $10 hobby king thumb cam to it one day, and from that day on I decided my photography/video hobby would mesh nicely with the RC hobby. The following winter I built a big slow foam AP plane that can carry a payload as big as a DSLR or 2-3 helmet cams.
The big plane was/is nice for a lot of my video/still photography needs, but I could clearly see that some kind of heli platform would have to be added too. So, after reading umpteen threads about building bicopters/tricopters/quads & arduino/KK/quadrino/hoverfly etc. I soon was suffering from information overload and decided to just bite the bullet and put a $100 gift certificate my kids had bought me towards a Gaui 330X last fall. Now, I now realize the Gaui has lagged behind the rest of the crowd in a lot of aspects, but it got me up and flying pretty quick, and other than being able to get into more trouble a lot faster, did not find it terribly different from the little indoor Blade tandem rescue I bought for $80 to practice on.
After breaking a couple of arms a couple of times, I decided to get a VC-450 frame as I heard they would take a bigger beating than the Gaui frame, plus a couple of 330 arms were about 1/2 the price of the 450 frame. By then I had done a lot more reading about multiwii boards though, and when it was in my cart figured that the heck and added a quadrino zoom board. Once that was in the cart I figured since I already bought 4 more 12a ESC's for spares for the Gaui, I may as well just get the 4 Keda motors while I was at it and have a whole 'nother copter.. You get the picture..
I found the quadrino (once I turned the PID's down) easier and steadier than the Gaui, but still have a lot of work to get really smooooth for video, but I was heading in the right direction. Enter my latest acquisition. Last week I was ordering a flamewheel 450 frame (because they are REAL tough) to put my Gaui gear on because I broke my last spare 330 arm and didn't want to spend another $45 on a couple of more arms when I could get the flamewheel frame for $32 total. I had that in my cart when I noticed that I could get free shipping of my order was over $50, so I was looking at what to add to the cart and lo and behold, the Naza FC was just the item (see a pattern here yet?) to get me over, and I had read a lot pf good about them.
So that's where I sit now, a working witespy quad(with a 2 axis gopro , and a flamewheel almost ready to go, all I have to do is bind it to my futaba 9chp now and set it up. Once I get comfy with it a Gator or similar camera mount is next on the list, and possibly the GPS add on.
The big plane was/is nice for a lot of my video/still photography needs, but I could clearly see that some kind of heli platform would have to be added too. So, after reading umpteen threads about building bicopters/tricopters/quads & arduino/KK/quadrino/hoverfly etc. I soon was suffering from information overload and decided to just bite the bullet and put a $100 gift certificate my kids had bought me towards a Gaui 330X last fall. Now, I now realize the Gaui has lagged behind the rest of the crowd in a lot of aspects, but it got me up and flying pretty quick, and other than being able to get into more trouble a lot faster, did not find it terribly different from the little indoor Blade tandem rescue I bought for $80 to practice on.
After breaking a couple of arms a couple of times, I decided to get a VC-450 frame as I heard they would take a bigger beating than the Gaui frame, plus a couple of 330 arms were about 1/2 the price of the 450 frame. By then I had done a lot more reading about multiwii boards though, and when it was in my cart figured that the heck and added a quadrino zoom board. Once that was in the cart I figured since I already bought 4 more 12a ESC's for spares for the Gaui, I may as well just get the 4 Keda motors while I was at it and have a whole 'nother copter.. You get the picture..
I found the quadrino (once I turned the PID's down) easier and steadier than the Gaui, but still have a lot of work to get really smooooth for video, but I was heading in the right direction. Enter my latest acquisition. Last week I was ordering a flamewheel 450 frame (because they are REAL tough) to put my Gaui gear on because I broke my last spare 330 arm and didn't want to spend another $45 on a couple of more arms when I could get the flamewheel frame for $32 total. I had that in my cart when I noticed that I could get free shipping of my order was over $50, so I was looking at what to add to the cart and lo and behold, the Naza FC was just the item (see a pattern here yet?) to get me over, and I had read a lot pf good about them.
So that's where I sit now, a working witespy quad(with a 2 axis gopro , and a flamewheel almost ready to go, all I have to do is bind it to my futaba 9chp now and set it up. Once I get comfy with it a Gator or similar camera mount is next on the list, and possibly the GPS add on.