'S T U F F'
Concerning the etheriality of 'stuff'
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What's it all about Alfie?
So! That is indeed the question. I'm referring of course to flight controllers, those things that translate your stick movements on that expensive RC transmitter that you sold part of your soul to own (unless you bought a cheap Turnigy one that is) to meaningful movements or actions on the thing you sold the rest of your soul to own, namely a multirotor, AKA tri-copter, quadcopter, hexacopter, octocopter (and all variants of).
For my part, I see them as dumb translators, things that do lots of clever stuff behind the scenes, rarely complaining, but still enabling one to make that electro-mechanical object of desire travel through the air, in the desired direction & speed, with as much dexterity as one requires.
Of course, this is accomplished with the aid of advanced computation and programming algorithms, and invariably involves a PC/Mac of sorts for innitial setup and maintenance. Since becoming interested in multirotors several years ago, I have formed opinions of various flight controllers, based on my own personal experiences. I will share those opinins with you here and now, dear reader.
I feel I must begin, by stating my full daytime profession (for reasons that may become obvious later on) which is that of a computer & network technician/administrator/supervisor, at a large educational establishment somewhere in the East Midlands, and as such, I feel I may be qualified in some way, to gauge the relative ease or otherwise of the processes that one needs to go to, or through, the hoops through wich one must pass, to accomplish ones end game. I will say, here and now, that there are always going to be folk, who refuse to take the easy route, preferring to slave themselves to hours and hours of soul searching on forums and the wider internet almost for the 'fun' of it. I say to those folk, have fun, and farewell!
I think anybody coming into this hobby may start by entering the words 'flight controller' into Google, This is the result of my search:
I think it seems to include pretty much all of the current popular multirotor flight controllers, and their variants on the market today, if not the best prices! lets just say you would need to do further research for those. My first flight controller was a Gaui GU-344. as far as I am cocerned, the only good feature about this controller, is that it is more or less plug and play. When I say plug and play, I am generalising somewhat, as of course you would still need to set up your transmitter to talk to the GU-344 itself, which is done after binding your transmitter (Tx) with your corresponding receiver (Rx). Now, this (as i recall) is a fairly easy process, which took me about 10 minutes, so nothing really complex there.
Now, I could go on to describe the poor experience I had with this first controller, but I won't bother, suffice to say, that this FC is what can be described as a '6 DOF' controller, or, 'six degrees of freedom'. So, when its in the air, it's mechanical sensors can sense its position in two directions over three axis, namely pitch, roll & yaw.
So far, so good! I won't go into how it does it, of course it's important, but if you want to know more, I'll leave that up to you.
Basically, if it says 6DOF on the box, you'll get a pretty basic flight controller, one that will interpret your instructions, but will need those instructions from takeoff to landing, so to say it'll be 'lively' may be hiding the full truth.
Ever since enthusiastic software engineers took up the mantle of designing algorithms for these things, others have gradually added extra sensors, over the years, to make the flying of these craft even easier, or in other words, more accessible to everyday hobbyists who cannot afford the years and years of dedication required to fly those original primitive multi rotor's. Enter the Naza!
Here it is, in all its orange glory, the DJI Naza v2, in my opinion, the best value, most reliable and easy to setup GPS enabled multirotor (only) flight controller on the market today!
Even though I am a technician for my sins, and well used to setting up all manner of computer peripherals, I'm sure, if I forgot all I've ever learned about computers over the years in one fell swoop, I'm certain that I'd make a good go of installing, setting up, and flying this FC, and that's no idle boast.
Oranges aren't the only fruit
So, now that we know what they do (more or less) how do we choose one that will help us to achieve our end goals? Will the Naza V2 (or Lite version) do all we ever need? Simple answer no, but from my experiences, it will do most things that I've needed it to do, and with the promise of more interesting things to boot.
DJI, in my opinion, have managed to encapsulate, in a nice tangerine coloured compact package, the nuts and bolts of semi autonomous flight control.
However, of course, there are other flavours of FC that basically do the same thing, but perhaps demand a little more in terms of the setting up of the hardware and software that enables them to communicate with the rest of your equipment.
Arduino Pilot Mega (APM) developed as an open source project utilising hardware designed & built by 3DR (3D Robotics inc.) is another semi autonomous flight control system, which has far more diverse applications than both the Naza & Wookong M FC's. This, from a consumer point of view, is where the dilemma comes in, in terms of choice, as on paper, the APM would appear to be the logical choice. If and when you make your way on to one of the many forums given over to the pursuit of multirotor madness, you will find opinion keenly divided between the two camps.
I'm going to leave out any real reference to the 'how', and instead focus on the 'why', From the outset, I have found all of the DJI products I have owned, to be extremely easy to setup. In fact, it was the look of the 'GUI' or 'Assistant' software that particularly attracted me to their products in the first place. It was a welcomed break form the more CLI (command line interface) based applications that tend to get used by open source programme developers, simply because thet are used to working in that environment, and seem to expect users of their associated hardware to be able to do the same.
This fact is the reason I felt the need to mention my particular day job, as I am well used to manipulating PC's and network hardware using such CLI's, and unless you have a particular mind-set, or were introduced to these methods from an early age (vis MS-DOS & certain games etc) you may lose your way, and this can lead to very undesirable results, particularly as these FC's coupled with their obvious GPS dependecies, are more than capable of following thier own chosen flight paths, much to the horror and surprise of the operator, as he or she witnesess the disappearance of their beloved creation over the distant horizon!