FC-choice

[Ludodg]

hello chaps,
Due to life-changes been away from flying and this forum (allthough kept on building foamboard-gliders with my students )
I am planning to get back into the hobby of multicopter-flying.
eons ago I was testing, learning, tinkering with the F3-flightcontroller but I am thinking about starting all over with a new FC. I never was of became very good in tuning the multicopter-settings, balancing the drone, ... Simply a lack of skill and time.
Should I go for the F4-flightcontroller of are there other more easy beginner-friendly FC's nowadays?

Considering buying a couple of new fc, maybe even with the esc build in?
Wanting to build a new stable mc, re-launching my old versacopter ...
any advice would be splendid.

And now onto some reading and caching up

 

[PsyBorg]

Welcome back to the real world mate.

FC's today are so much better with the tech constantly changing. I don't think there are many out there now that won't fly a quad respectively when properly set up. It all boils down to what features you want / need and to how fiddly you want to be with your gear.
Maybe how much hair you have left to pull out as some can be tasking in nature.

the best thing is people here will probably have what you decide to get and have already been thru the issues you may face. After you finish looking around come back with more specific questions and I am sure some one will pop in to answer.

 

[LitterBug]

I'd stick with an F4 controller with built in OSD at this point. F3's are starting to become obsolete pretty rapidly. F7's, meh, more gimmicky at this point, but do have some merit. I'm hesitant to go with an FC with ESCs built in, just from the standpoint that if anything goes wrong, you have to replace the whole board. Guess it depends on what your ultimate flying goals are too.

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[ElectriSean]

F3's are still pretty viable, a huge upgrade will be in flashing the latest Betaflight. If you really want a new FC, I would go with either the Bardwell F4 or the CL Racing F4.

 

[Ludodg]

hello and thx for the answers so far.
I re-visited mr Liangs website and did some homework. ( https://oscarliang.com/)
When I started with building multicopters Betaflight was just "invented".
I ended up with a naze32 v6 if I recall well, using Cleanflight. The last MC i build was the versacopter, with the "soft" hardware-kit from FT.
I thought it would be easier to find a start-setup by using a mc-platform that was used by others as well ... but felt a bit mislead when FT only went for the race-version, faster ESC's and motors .. so again I could not find a basic start -setup for my versacopter.

I just would want to build an easy, stable mc to learn howto fly.
Going for an DJI, which are very stable and beginner-friendly is not an option because of the budget .. AND because i love building DIY too much.

I think I would indeed go for an F3 or F4-board which could run betaflight.
I have the intention to go to FPV so OSD onboard would be swell.
I have a Taranis so I understood that the Taranis-receiver uses a converted signal which I'll have to invert or something when I use a F3-board.

SO I went for this one:
Matek Betaflight F405-CTR

 

[LitterBug]

That matek board should be a good starting point. I've been revisiting my old A450 (flamewheel F450 knockoff) with a modern F4 Flight controller, GPS, FPV, Taranis with telemetry, etc... You can pick up a bare flamewheel 450 frame, Good PDB with BEC/Current sensor, 4 motors, and some decent 30A ESCs pretty cheap these days if you want to go down the big/slow route. This is similar to what I have been playing with in my A450 thread. (have an F550 hex That I play with too)

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[ElectriSean]

hello and thx for the answers so far.
I have a Taranis so I understood that the Taranis-receiver uses a converted signal which I'll have to invert or something when I use a F3-board.

F3 boards can use inverted signals on all of their UARTs, it's the F4's that have issues with this. The Matek board you chose has one inverted UART which is compatible with FRSky SBUS. To use Smart Port telemetry you will have to do an 'uninvert' hack on the receiver, as Smart Port is also an inverted signal. This is a fairly trivial hack on the newer RXSR receivers.