Opinons on multiwii pro??

[andybenton]

I understand, I just really am fond of the idea of the lcd screen being on board, frees up a lot of tuning in the field. but id be willing to break away for a different flight controller with more options... one day maybe, just maybe, someone will get the idea and put an lcd on something like a multiwii with all the bells and whistles of gps and what not

 

[Mustang7302]

The MultiWii does have a serial port next to the receiver inputs which is intended for a LCD to be hooked up; just needs to have pins soldered to the PCB and a LCD screen of the right resolution. Once the LCD feature is turned on in the code, there is a menu of parameters you can change via input from your transmitter.

 

[Craftydan]

The right versions of Multiwii also support bluetooth tuning from a smartphone.

With the right board and the right adaptor, it could be a nice feature if you've got the smartphone/tablet, but finding details on it -- and many of the other features of multiwii -- can be a bit frustrating.

 

[cranialrectosis]

The KK2 with the LCD screen is my first choice too and for the reasons you state. The board is ridiculously simple and tuning the board can be done in the field. I am fortunate in that my field is my backyard so it is 50 ft to get to my PC to work on the board.

Just tuning ESCs from a transmitter is beyond some folks.

I think the issue is that the KK2 is simple enough to have all the options display and work off a 1" lcd. Somehow I think programming a MultiWii on a 1" by 3/4" LCD would be a challenge.

 

[Cyberdactyl]

Moving from the three pots on the earlier Atmega boards to the digital input of the KK2 was like moving from a slide ruler to a handheld calculator.

 

[andybenton]

The MultiWii does have a serial port next to the receiver inputs which is intended for a LCD to be hooked up; just needs to have pins soldered to the PCB and a LCD screen of the right resolution. Once the LCD feature is turned on in the code, there is a menu of parameters you can change via input from your transmitter.

thanks for the info brother, got any info on what screen works? maybe im just not googling enough...lol!

 

[Tritium]

thanks for the info brother, got any info on what screen works? maybe im just not googling enough...lol!

http://www.rctimer.com/product_797.html

Thurmond

 

[cranialrectosis]

I am attempting my first MutiWii. Unlike the KK2, it does not come with a convenient foam pad to mount the board on.

I hear tell of using the pyle side of hook pyle (Velcro). I have considered using a chunk of sponge.

What did you use?

 

[Craftydan]

I am attempting my first MutiWii. Unlike the KK2, it does not come with a convenient foam pad to mount the board on.

I hear tell of using the pyle side of hook pyle (Velcro). I have considered using a chunk of sponge.

What did you use?

CR,

(you're in the US, right?)

Michael's crafts sells foam sheeting nearly identical to the KK2 shipping box in 8.5"x11"x10mm. Other stores sell it, but they're the only one who'll sell the 10mm, instead of the useless 3mm sheet. Costs roughly $1 a sheet IIRC. you find it in the aisle with the felt sheets and similar kids craft materials.

 

[cranialrectosis]

Thank you, Dan. I am in Colorado. Will head over to Michaels today.

 

[cranialrectosis]

Good call on Michaels. Turns out I have a store that stocks 1/2" square dowel, foam, 1/8" plywood, paint and solder 1/4 mile from home. At better prices than RC Foam 5 miles down the road!

Too bad they don't stock CF at Michaels.

Thanks, Dan.

 

[jhitesma]

I've been itching to do a "real" multi for awhile. So far my multi rotor experience is limited to a Syma X1 I picked up about a year ago. Had fun with it but the limitations of the stock TX and not being able to do flips when bound to my 9x mean I fairly quickly lost interest in it.

I've had the KK2 on my wishlist for a few months and every time I get the e-mail it's in stock they're gone by the time I see the e-mail and try to order one. So I've been leaning more and more towards the multiwii.

Did a lot of reading on the multiwii last week and decided to go for it...but just before I placed my order I realized I have an Arduino mega that's not currently being used for anything...I have a wii motion plus and nunchuck that haven't been used for over a year...hmmm....

So I finally bit the bullet and ordered motors/esc's but left off the controller board. Since I've got a few weeks to wait on my motors on the slow boat I'm working on rolling my own controller. I did add in the bluetooth module though since tweaking the board from my phone sounds even better than tweaking it from an LCD and buttons (I wince everytime I see someone on a video reach into a quad and start hitting buttons on the controller with the battery connected....I don't like getting that close to props without the battery out!)

Last night my first tests went well. I was able to get the multiwii code configured, built and flashed to my Arduino, with a few bits of wire I was able to hook up my WMP - then plugged it in and fired up the multiwii config software and got a huge smile on my face when I was able to move the WMP around and see the results on my screen. Next I'll try to incorporate the nunchuck and then strip them down to bare boards and figure out how I want to mount it all up.

I did go ahead and order a baro sensor and mag sensor off ebay for a few bucks each...but I'm not in a huge hurry for them. I love the idea of slowly building up my controller as I go and adding more features.

I'm hoping that by the time my motors and ESC's get here I'll have a frame built (Doing something similar to the knuckles H) with a controller on it ready to go.

Of course - being the kind of guy who has spare arduinos laying around this level of rolling my own doesn't scare me at all. For someone who hasn't been soldering since grade school the KK2 makes a lot of sense. But for someone like me who was opening their 9x and flashing it before they even bothered to bind it to anything (and only powered it up first to confirm it wasn't DOA) the multiwii is looking very attractive.

I'll weigh in more in a few weeks once I've got more experience with my hacked together multiwii...just trying to remember to take enough photos to do an article for the main site right now

 

[jhitesma]

Good call on Michaels. Turns out I have a store that stocks 1/2" square dowel, foam, 1/8" plywood, paint and solder 1/4 mile from home. At better prices than RC Foam 5 miles down the road!

FWIW I would stay away from the ply at Michaels. At least the ply I got at my local Michaels was horrible. Heavy, weak, lots of voids in the ply and it's all but impossible to cut cleanly. Just really cheap stuff but priced the same as much better stuff at my LHS.

I may have just lucked out with a bad batch...but I won't be buying ply from them again.

 

[baddox]

Where do you guys get plywood? I got some 1/8" ply at a building supply store for next to no money (literally $3.50 for two 18x24 inch sheets), and it was fine except it was very difficult to get a good focus with the laser cutter because it was so warped. On the other end of the spectrum, a local hobby shop sells aircraft plywood that is awesome, but ridiculously expensive ($18 for a 12x24 sheet). Is the best bet to look at hardware/supply stores for some plywood that's decently flat?

 

[xuzme720]

The stuff I found at Micheals has been the same stuff I found at the local hobby shop, but cheaper. jhitesma may have been on a bad batch but what I got was from Revell/Monogram and was the birch ply.

 

[jhitesma]

My Michaels seems to get the scraps other stores in the chain can't sell I was just blown away at the difference in quality between the ply I get there and the ply FT uses in their laser cut stuff. The firewalls I cut out of my local ply break if I look at them funny, but the FT ones last crash after crash after crash. So while I generally prefer making my own stuff I've come to rely on FT for firewalls since it's cheaper and easier than buying ply at my LHS (whose ply is much higher quality than the Revel/Monogram stuff) and making my own.

Back to the topic though...my homebrew multiwii is looking really viable:



It's ugly, and by no means anywhere near airworthy yet. But it works. I can hook it up to the multiwii config app and see responses from the WMP and NK, I also hooked up a spare RX (not currently flight ready due to an antenna issue) and while I only had enough wire at hand to hook up the throttle...it works as well.

Sure, buying a pre-made all in one board would have been quicker. But so far this is $0 out of pocket since I had all the parts on hand and it gives me something to keep me busy while I wait on motors/escs/props! Half tempted to try and get it it flight worthy by this weekend and try it on my Versa in wing mode....

I know I have a spare GPS module laying around here somewhere...but haven't seen it in about 5 years and it wasn't in the first three places I looked tonight. Did find a bluetooth GPS but I kind of hate to strip it down. Guess I'll have to get brave and dig into the big stash of project bits later this week

 

[pelotron]

Nice job assembling your own FC. I tried to go the Multiwii route with my Arduino Uno and the sensors and everything soldered onto a proto board. The sensors and receiver worked, rear servo worked... but I could never get it to arm the motors. I ordered a KK2 out of frustration and have never revisited the Multiwii build. Keep posting updates; hopefully you have better luck than I did!

 

[cranialrectosis]

I rebuilt my Anycopter with the MultiWii pro and put my KK2 on the Knuckler. I have been waiting 5 weeks for HK to get KK2s in stock (I am on the list) and I got impatient and bought a MultiWii.

The MultiWii is a larger board and needs to accommodate the USB port on the side so that you can plug the board into a computer while the board is installed on the copter. I was spoilt by the KK2 as you flash it once in the box it came in and then install it on the copter and you no longer need to connect it to a computer.

That USB port on the MultiWii looks VERY tender. I don't intend to put any stress upon it at all. That means you have to accommodate the plug which is larger than the USB port itself. You may pass the plug through the Anycopter frame to connect to the board while it is mounted, or you need to expose the MultiWii by mounting it above the Anycopter hub high enough to accommodate the plug not just the USB port on the board itself.

If all you want to do is fly LOS or if you are still learning to fly, the KK2 is far simpler and does not need a laptop in the field to make field tweaks. The KK2 is smaller and you connect to it from one direction while it is mounted, not two.

I built my Knuckler to have something to fly while my AnyCopter is down. I expect to be down for weeks or months while I figure out this new board enough to get in the air.

My opinion on the MultiWii Pro is that for $50 I can buy a video game to give me 50 hours of fun. This board costs $65 and is likely to take me a year or more to master. If mastering a board is fun to you, the MultiWii should pay off handsomely.

If all you want to do is fly and you don't have a laptop you can tote out to support your copter in the field, get a KK2.

 

[jhitesma]

Hope to have some more info on my homebrewed multiwii in the next few days. I was going to try and get it running as a stabilizer on my Versa this weekend...but Hobby King surprised the heck out of me and delivered the parts for my quad build over lunch today.

Never had an order from them show up this quick before, <2 weeks since I ordered! Only bummer is the ESC's I picked up were listed as having 3.5mm bullets on them but actually have 2mm. So I'm debating whether to try and find some 2mm bullets locally and pay through the nose or do something different...may just go ahead and solder it all together for now and at some point in the future if I pull it back apart I'll add bullets back on.

And since I got my order so quick I'm just not ready for it yet. No chassis built and my board is still just a pile of bits on a breadboard! Guess I'll be doing some quality time with my soldering iron and some bits of wood the next few nights!

I did order the bluetooth module to integrate into my homebrewed multi-wii...since honestly that sounds like an even better option than the buttons/LCD on the KK2 to me. And well, KK2's still aren't back in stock so even if I did want to go with the KK I'd still be waiting to place an order - at least this way I'm making progress. Just wish the servo extensions I ordered to hook my RX to my board would show up, I ordered them from a US seller expecting them to get here before my quad parts!

 

[jhitesma]

Going to have to start my own build thread so I stop hijacking this one

But until I do....

Since my wife is working tonight and I'm on toddler watch I wasn't able to make too much progress...on the airframe.

I did make some good progress on the controller once the toddler was tucked away in bed. Got the WMP out of it's case...still too lazy to heat up the soldering iron (and until I build the frame and decide how things are going to be mounted I'm hesitant to do any final wiring anyway.) One order I placed on ebay for servo extensions came in - but it only had 2 because I misread the listing and didn't notice they were selling them per extension and not 10 at a time like most sellers Still, I now have throttle, pitch and roll hooked up and working (Pitch is backwards but that's because I haven't setup a profile in my TX yet and am using the profile for my X1 which has the pitch reversed.)

I also hooked up the bluetooth module I ordered and it turns out that was a piece of cake to get working. Four little wires, quick pair with my phone...and boom 2 different WiiMC apps I downloaded were up and running and talking to the board like magic! Super happy to see that as I hoped this was an easy bit to setup and the interface on my phone is real easy to use. I haven't used a KK2 but I can't imagine a tiny LCD screen and 4 buttons surrounded by swirling blades of death can be any easier

I do have one new issue...but I'm not super concerned about it just yet. For some reason while both the PC based MultiWiiConf program and the apps on my phone show the gyro values changing when I move the WMP and show my stick values changing from my TX (once I remembered this is a new RX and I hadn't bound it yet)....the little artificial horizon and other indicators of what the "quad" is doing aren't moving anymore in either the PC conf program or the phone apps. I actually ran into this a few days ago when I was experimenting with hooking up the nunchuck so I suspect it's a config value I messed up somewhere as it started after I tried calibrating the ACC. I'm sure I'll get it figured out at some point...I suspect it might be because with no yaw input I can't arm the board. Need to dredge up one more servo cable to test that theory.

Oh, also found the GPS I knew I had laying around over the weekend. Actually stumbled across it by accident while looking for something else Unfortunately I now remember why I haven't used that GPS for anything. It's got a prolific PL2303 serial to USB on board and only has USB output. And while I'm not scared of soldering most SMT components...this little QFN sure doesn't look easy to hook into, and I've never finished tracing out the circuit to figure out how to power it without USB. Though since MW doesn't have very good GPS support yet I'm not in a big hurry.


Here's tonight's iteration with the caseless WMP, 3 channels hooked up and the Bluetooth module. I'd have the Nunchuck ACC in there as well but my tri-lobe screw driver isn't long enough to get the nunchuck open...going to have to get creative on that tomorrow