What exactly does "fly nicely" mean? If you are talking about the fact that Naza filters and dampens the pilots inputs, we'll have that on the next release, 3.2. A lot of people in the market actually hate this about the Naza. Some love it. So we've added it as an optional function.
If "fly nicely" means something else, you'd have to explain more precisely what you're talking about.
And talking about GoPro footage, you mean solid mounted without a gimbal or what? If you mean solid mounted, that gets back to my first point about filtering and damping the outputs, smoothing it out. If you're having a problem getting smooth footage with a gimbal, then I don't know what problem you're having as I've demonstrated, it works great with a gimbal.
1. Fly nicely means I am able to smoothly fly my f450, f550 with both plastic arms where I feel confident and in complete control. I fly mostly in ATTI mode and occasionally in gps mode. I haven't attained the same type of smooth, controllable feeling I have achieved on the Naza with the Pixhawk yet. This is after many flights adjusting PID's where I thought it flew pretty well in calm winds and later after auto tune. I have been flying with those auto tune settings lately, although I'm contemplating going back to my own PID's and trying again. The wind definitely affects this, so sometimes it hard to figure out.
2. I have a 2 axis and 3 axis go pro gimbal. Both are mounted on 4 ball type dampeners that came with the Tarot and DYS gimbals. I've also tried swapping the Tarot dampeners with softer dampeners, but went back to the originals. I'm on Tiger 900kv motors and 10 " props when on the 450 or 550. Props are perfectly balanced on an magnetic/ air balancer. I have checked them 2x in the last 8 days with no crashes. I could run the go pro video through a stabilizer and use a fair amount of it. However, it's not as smooth as I was getting on the same rig w/ the naza nor when I put either gimbal on my 650 quad.
That being said, I am well aware of Alexmos gimbals being a challenge and will probably put the dys back on my 650 quad and give it another run to make sure it hasn't come out of tune or balance. I'm also considering, putting the Naza back on the 550 quad and do a few flights with the gopro to compare the footage. It's always possible that something else is amiss.
I'm waiting for apm 3.2 to be release, but understand that may be a while. They seem to have suspended the first beta version while they are testing a 2.15 bug or something. I am hoping for the best and can wait. I am very much aware it may be me, but checking out youtube video to see how others are doing, I don't see a lot of high quality videos up there yet, so it makes me wonder if maybe I'm not that incompetant.
I'm going to hang in there and keep trying, but my post was just about my experience so far. I have a small & medium quad, and large x8. The small, which is now the Pixhawk, is the MR that I'd fly most for logging flying time, some scouting of shots, or putting it in places where I don't want to put my more expensive MR's. I was hoping to play with the waypoints, circle flying, follow me etc. but I haven't done those yet because I'm still trying to get my Pixhawk to fly in way that I enjoy and am confident in as well as get some stable video.
I can't master flying in stabilize mode on the Pixhawk. I'm constantly going up and down like a yoyo with or without expo on my sticks fomr 15-40. I end of flying in alt hold. I've found GPS (loiter) mode to be good for sitting there, but I have to push on the sticks a fair amount to fly around and don't really like the way it works, so don't use GPS for anything but holding in place or a rescue hold when orientation is lost. It jumps around abit in GPS mode and wind. The Naza, I fly mostly in ATTI mode, with an occasional GPS hold for video work and an occasional gps lock to rescue myself when I lose orientation. Right, wrong, or indifferent, I just enjoyed and feel very confident flying my 450 and 550 with the Naza. I'm also very pleased with the Naza that is now on my KDE 3520 based quad.
If I can ever get the Pixhawk to fly to my liking, I will try it on mny 650 quad and probably on my x8. My x8 flies great in calm winds, but not so good in wind.
Until I can achieve nirvana on my 550 with the Pixhawk, I'm not going to try it on anything bigger or more expensive.
