fltundra
Member
Thanks Mike.
XAircraft SuperX
- Thread starter envy
- Start date
Motopreserve
Drone Enthusiast
What would be great is if there was google doc that had people's experiences with each combo. That way at least there would be some form of reference....
Hmmm....
fltundra
Member
That's my biggest gripe with the SuperX, manual is terrible. Leaves us to figure all this out.
Motopreserve
Drone Enthusiast
Sadly, my experience with the international manuals has been so bad that I honestly didn't even think this one was too bad (by comparison).
But it no manufacturer's manual is going to compare and contrast specific 3rd party components. Especially if they make their own. That's what the forums are for suppose.
DucktileMedia
Drone Enthusiast
In this day and age of world commerce its not like the one english speaking person in China has to be the one to edit their manuals. Why the hell cant they just pay someone in the country the product is destined to ship to and have them edit the manual?? it's pretty easy.
"You can make easy flight with flip switch for transmitter top to user preset." = "assign a switch to go from manual to atti to atti gps." I made this up but you have all seen it's real life counterpart. it's absurd. we buy all this rubber dog **** from their country and they dont have the decency to give a starving American the job of helping make understand good flying time. I always joke, if the US could only make the "Made in China" stickers, we might be able to get back on our feet!
"You can make easy flight with flip switch for transmitter top to user preset." = "assign a switch to go from manual to atti to atti gps." I made this up but you have all seen it's real life counterpart. it's absurd. we buy all this rubber dog **** from their country and they dont have the decency to give a starving American the job of helping make understand good flying time. I always joke, if the US could only make the "Made in China" stickers, we might be able to get back on our feet!
Motopreserve
Drone Enthusiast
I'm right there with you. It would cost about the price of one transmitter for futaba to pay someone to translate. Heck, forget translation - proof read and correct. We all know the translation software they use gets it close...sort of. But there is no incentive to change this process. We all own this stuff already, complain about it, and then buy some more.
speaking of...
I had been speaking with the superx English speaking reps for help getting the ESCs working with the FC. No real success on that front. So eventually, after all the help here, I got the futaba working. Figured I'd push my luck and try for the taranis since that's what I'd like to ultimately use.
Bad move. An hour of round and round, and no luck at all. Same damn procedure as the futaba - no love. Fortunately I was able to get the futaba working again. If not, the nice aluminum cased FC we all [want to] love would have been a tiny heap of smoldering ash in the driveway....
Av8Chuck
Member
I don't want to make excuses for XAircraft but I'm doing a lot of work for some Chinese companies and there is definitely a cultural divide. I'm not sure how much influence their distributors have, I'm also not sure what their distributors are telling them. But they are probably reading websites like RcGroups.com where myopic fanboys, who seem to be determined to impress everyone with their knowledge, have become the gatekeepers of information.
Its probably not that the Chinese don't listen its that they don't understand cynicism and don't know who to listen too. There are pages of worthless debate where one person argues to protect the status quo, I guess they're trying to endear themselves to XAircraft, but this type of useless debate totally derails constructive suggestions. In the case of the manuals I can't tell you how many times I read these back handed replies to any questions or suggestions I had regarding the SuperX manual.
So if you worked at XAircraft what would you take from these sorts of discussions? Also, I'm guessing they're using Google Translate and as we all know it doesn't work. Also there are a lot of different version of Chinese, simple, traditional, Mandarin, etc..
If they were smart they would give there distributers a bigger percentage so that they could leverage their local expertise and have them translate the manuals.
Its probably not that the Chinese don't listen its that they don't understand cynicism and don't know who to listen too. There are pages of worthless debate where one person argues to protect the status quo, I guess they're trying to endear themselves to XAircraft, but this type of useless debate totally derails constructive suggestions. In the case of the manuals I can't tell you how many times I read these back handed replies to any questions or suggestions I had regarding the SuperX manual.
So if you worked at XAircraft what would you take from these sorts of discussions? Also, I'm guessing they're using Google Translate and as we all know it doesn't work. Also there are a lot of different version of Chinese, simple, traditional, Mandarin, etc..
If they were smart they would give there distributers a bigger percentage so that they could leverage their local expertise and have them translate the manuals.
Motopreserve
Drone Enthusiast
Chuck, sadly I saw a bunch of the back-handed comments you're talking about. But frankly, I think a business should know that people want a good manual, despite what some yahoos say. I don't think if you read someone defending a bad manual you should be giving it much credence, no matter the cultural divide. For most cultures, bad is bad.
Bottom line: if you want to do business internationally, you need to spend the time and money to figure out how to handle it as best you can. I would hate to think you're doing business with the Chinese without taking your clients culture, needs and preferences into account. I would advise against "I'm American, I don't understand your language and don't care if you understand mine, so f^#k off and give me your money."
Of course at the end of the day, we are not incentivizing them to act differently if we keep buying the product, regardless of our displeasure with certain business practices. I think most of us figure, what's the alternative. And at this point, we may have few choices. But if the industry grows at the predicted rate, it's going to be the company that not only makes a good product, but that builds the infrastructure to support it (manuals, forum presence, native toque tech support etc) who will be among the top of the heap.
Bottom line: if you want to do business internationally, you need to spend the time and money to figure out how to handle it as best you can. I would hate to think you're doing business with the Chinese without taking your clients culture, needs and preferences into account. I would advise against "I'm American, I don't understand your language and don't care if you understand mine, so f^#k off and give me your money."
Of course at the end of the day, we are not incentivizing them to act differently if we keep buying the product, regardless of our displeasure with certain business practices. I think most of us figure, what's the alternative. And at this point, we may have few choices. But if the industry grows at the predicted rate, it's going to be the company that not only makes a good product, but that builds the infrastructure to support it (manuals, forum presence, native toque tech support etc) who will be among the top of the heap.
I've gotten totaly lost in all this BEC talk and counter talk thing. Zero issues here, never have been any with either of the two SXs I own. For future reference, here's what I know and verified by ringing out the I/O box prior to ever installing either one: The 5V center pins on the M1-M6 ports are dead-ended. They go nowhere, they cross-tie to nothing. Use a BEC bearing ESC, non BEC ESC, Opto ESC, whatever, matters not as the wires and hence, any 5V rail supplied by any ESC BEC, go nowhere, do nothing. Makes sense, the FC runs off it's internal BEC supplied by the fight pack. On the M7-M8 ports, the 5V rails *are* cross-tied to each other and to the "GB" port. (Gimbal Battery) For folks using a servo-based gimbal system on a hex, this allows a single external BEC to be used to isolate the servo loads from the FC's internal BEC. If you're flying an octo and using those ports for motors, best to float those two motor's 5V leads as the ESC's internal BECs may, or may, not like being cross tied to each other. If your using optos, no issue as there's no internal BEC to start with. Hope this helps if there's any remaining issues.
DucktileMedia
Drone Enthusiast
Ok, well that was a productive post electro. Makes more sense that way.
What I would like to know is, aside from bec or opto, if the fc cares what esc you use. I would think the combination is most important to be compatible between motor and esc, not fc and esc. The fc is outputting the same signal regardless. Do different escs interpret the 0-100 signal better than another ? Mk aside, with 99% of the controllers seem to be the same signal, right? I do know certain manufacturers have stated using certain esc are not a good match. But are those escs good on any fc? I've only used may tech v1's and turnigy plushes and I've never had a single problem other than a bad esc.
What I would like to know is, aside from bec or opto, if the fc cares what esc you use. I would think the combination is most important to be compatible between motor and esc, not fc and esc. The fc is outputting the same signal regardless. Do different escs interpret the 0-100 signal better than another ? Mk aside, with 99% of the controllers seem to be the same signal, right? I do know certain manufacturers have stated using certain esc are not a good match. But are those escs good on any fc? I've only used may tech v1's and turnigy plushes and I've never had a single problem other than a bad esc.
Motopreserve
Drone Enthusiast
It's been suggested to me (good call RT!) to reset the SuperX to the default, since I've now gone 'round and 'round with this SuperX/Taranis/HW Platinum ordeal. Rt mentioned reformatitng the superx drive (after taking precautions to copy everything off there including/especially the CFG/CALI file).
I'm not a Windows guy, so I am wondering which formatting preference I need: FAT, FAT32 or exFAT? The netbook I have (XP) has the option for all three.
Thanks!
I'm not a Windows guy, so I am wondering which formatting preference I need: FAT, FAT32 or exFAT? The netbook I have (XP) has the option for all three.
Thanks!
Motopreserve
Drone Enthusiast
You are correct, the FC couldn't care less which ESC you use provided it talks the same language at the same speed. The Chinese ESCs we all know and love (?) are PWM devices that are expecting to see a signal with a value of between 1000 and 2000 which is the width of the signal in the PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) stream that the flight controller outputs on the motor ports in response to the signal sent by the TX. Typically the value is measured in milliseconds and the lower number is of course no throttle and the higher full throttle. Anywhere in between tells the ESC to run the motor at some level of reduced power between 0 and 100, i.e. a PWM signal of 1500 would be mid-stick or hover.
The problem many people think is a compatibility problem and run into is this, if you calibrate the throttle settings of the ESC directly off a throttle port on a RX, then you are telling the ESC that the low and high points are whatever value the endpoints of the throttle channel are set to when you do the calibration. Those values get stored in non-volatile memory on the ESC (an Eprom) which means once the values are written there they stay until either erased or overwritten. Now, if the low throttle value that gets written into the ESC memory happens to be lower than what the flight controller outputs on the motor ports the end result is that the ESCs will never initialize because they are looking for a signal level that is lower than what they are seeing from the F/C thus they think the throttle is not at zero. One of the safety features of pretty much all ESCs is that they will not arm unless the throttle is at zero, so in that case you can see how this could become a problem and lead people to believe either the ESC or flight controller is broken or the ESCs aren't compatible when in fact it's just a matter of mis-calibration.
The true compatibility problem between certain ESCs and flight controllers usually refers to the refresh rate measured in Hz being higher than what the ESC is capable of receiving. Older design ESCs used refresh rates somewhere between 50 and roughly 200Hz, today most flight controllers send out 400Hz signals and modern ESCs are capable of 400Hz or higher although they can process anything below that as well, so an older design ESC where the firmware can only handle refresh rates of say 200Hz or less is going to have issues when connected to a flight controller sending a 400Hz signal out from the motor port and that is what the manufacturer means when they say certain ESCs are not compatible with their controllers. That isn't to say they won't work at all, the problem is that the ESC that can only process 200Hz is only going to process roughly half the commands sent to from the flight controller the rest are lost so the end result should you wind up with that combination is a very wobbly multirotor that defies any and all attempts to make it fly smooth.
Ken
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Av8Chuck
Member
Again, I'm not making excuses for them, I was simply trying to point out that if their relying on feedback from these forums to help determine the effectiveness of the manual and about 35+% of the comments are fanboys telling the rest of us we don't know how to read then that might change how XAircraft prioritizes solving this issue. Translation is much more difficult than most people realize and remember they have to translate into many more languages than just English. Actually after spending the last couple of years translating English speaking productions to Japanese, Chinese and Korean, its more of a re-write issue not simply translation.
I'd say that DJI is at the top of that heap and I'd also argue I don't like the smell of what that heap is made of ; )... People buy into a products development at different times depending on their aversion to change. Early adopters of technology rarely care about the manual because they don't rely on it anyway. They also don't care whether the solution is complete because they like providing feedback in an effort to influence its development. Unfortunately forums have been used to seed the market with products that weren't ready by developers who lack the experience to filter out the crap and agendas of a lot of users on these forums so the idea of "Beta" testing products on these forum is total BS.
Its unfortunate but it brings to mind that old adage "Those who can do, those who can't teach, and those who can't do either do social media."
Priceless! An update of an old adage for the modern age, I'm going to have to remember this one
Ken
Av8Chuck
Member
Priceless! An update of an old adage for the modern age, I'm going to have to remember this one
Ken
I put that on a T-shirt and everyone loved it, except teachers.
The irony here is the hypocrisy of posting this on a social media site...
Motopreserve
Drone Enthusiast
I fly Turnigy Plushes, as well. I burn them in on the bench for 72 hours before putting them in an aircraft, never had an issue to date.