question about flip 1.5 flight computer

[cory045]

Hello
im sorry if this is in the wrong place. feel free to move it to a more appropriate section. i am about to start building my first quad and i selected the electrohub as my first. about the flip 1.5. does it have the loiter mode capacity. and what else cool features does it have that i can take advantage of. thank you in advance for your help

 

[joshuabardwell]

Flip 1.5 does not have GPS functionality, so it cannot loiter or return-to-home. It has a barometer for altitude-hold and a magnetometer for heading-free mode. I don't find the altitude-hold mode to work very well, and don't use it. IMO, you need a GPS in addition to a barometer for alt-hold to work decently.

If I were to buy today, I would get an Acro Naze 32 instead of the Flip 1.5. If you want GPS-based loiter, RTH, and such, think about the MultiWii Pro with GPS.

 

[cory045]

how much tuning is required for the multiwii. the reason why i am interested in the 1.5 is that it is flashed and ready to plug and go

 

[midnightdaylight]

In my case, I was able to plug it in, arm it, and fly. It's basic, and for your first build it's probably a good idea given the fact you are going to crash allot, and maybe even worse...

 

[Balu]

In the Multirotor forum there is an interesting thread about the TauLabs firmware that can be run on different controllers. "Sparky" is one of them with version of that being in development.

It's supposed to be a nice mix between the Naze32 (which is bad with GPS and stuff) and MultiWii, but it requires more fiddling - so it's not really newbie friendly.

I'd suggest to start with the Flip and learn to fly first. You can (and will) always upgrade your copter to a different setup later. That's the beauty of DIY.

 

[jhitesma]

Having played extensively with several MW varients and Naze I have to say they're great if you're just wanting to fly and handle great in the air in acro mode as well as horizon and angle modes with self-leveling.

But if you really want GPS features - they aren't great. I've used my homemade "MW Pro" equivalent board with GPS and with a LOT of tuning was able to get it to sometimes position hold and occasionally do something resembling a return to home. Even with lots of tuning the altitude hold doesn't do much more than keep it within about 5-10 feet. It's better than nothing - but it's not very impressive.

Naze is basically MW ported to a 32bit processor - it doesn't really have any improvements over MW for GPS functions unless you go with the Harikiki firmware which is anything but plug and play (I'm still working up the nerve to try it and I regularly compile my own flight software and have built two controllers from "scratch".) CleanFlight is an easier to setup alternative firmware - but it's still using the same GPS code as Naze/MW - though it sounds like the lead developer is interested in improving them soon.

The big thing Naze has going for it over MW is the config program is far more user friendly and you don't have to recompile/reflash firmware to change settings like you do on MW.

The Flip may be pre-programmed but it's not plug and play - You may luck out like FT did and have it work very well out of the box...but it will need tuning to fly at it's best and there's a very good chance you'll need to do tuning to get it to fly well on just about anything.


I believe Balu is talking about my Tau Labs thread and I keep getting more and more impressed by their code. I'm rolling my own hardware for the controller so my setup is considerably more difficult and complex than what most people would experience. The Sparky and Quanton boards should be just as plug and play as Naze...in fact I'd say they're even better for a beginner than Naze because:

1) The configuration program (Ground Control System) is even more user friendly than Baseflight and includes some great wizards that walk you through setup of the airframe, FC and TX step by step. It really holds your hand far more than KK/MW/Naze.

2) It flies great. Even on the stock settings my quad flew better than it did on MW by a very noticeable amount.

3) The autotune rocks - took just a few minutes and wow does the quad feel locked in now!

4) I haven't hooked up my GPS yet but did just get my baro sensor working today and altitude hold with no tuning is WAY better than MW/Naze after extensive tuning. However it's a different type of mode. On MW/Naze altitude hold just attempts to hold altitude and overlays on the other flight modes. On Tau alt hold is it's own flight mode and is a "variometer" mode where you throttle now controls climb/descent rate instead of directly controlling motor speed - more like a Naza than MW/Naze. That's either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your personal opinion. But with the baro enabled and no GPS it's holding position for me better than my MW/Naze setups do with GPS. I can't wait to hook up my GPS and try a real position hold mode (soldering iron is heating right now to try this in fact.)

The Tau team is also actively developing their code more than MW/Baseflight. Just in the two weeks I've been following it I've seen a number of great changes. Their GIT repo has over 13k commits compared to Baseflight which has 644.

Tau is a fork of OpenPilot started by a number of key developers from OpenPilot who didn't like the way that project was going. So while Tau is fairly recent it has a longer and more impressive pedigree than it's age would suggest.

The one big drawback to Tau right now is that the last release was in April and is missing a lot of the great features like autotune and the extensive setup wizards. But they're working on getting a new official release out the door very soon. And the nightly builds are currently stable enough to fly with.

The other smaller drawback to Tau is it's a considerably more complex system than MW/Naze and is aimed more towards advanced features than pure manual flight. So for those who want to do crazy acro flying it's probably overkill. And it can be intimidating when you see all the options in the GCS - but as a beginner you can safely ignore most of them.

The final smaller drawback is that the documentation isn't quite as up to speed as the code. But since it's a fork of OpenPilot for a lot of things you can refer back to the OpenPilot docs for more details...other than features like autotune which have been added after the fork. But those features tend to be better documented in the Tau Documentation.

I love MW/Naze and they still support some features I love (like multiple flight profiles so you can switch between a beginner profile with settings tuned to make it easier to fly and an acro profile with things tuned for crazy acrobatic flight without having to hook up to another device to change between them.) but for more "flying robot" style GPS assisted flight...IMHO Tau is the way to go. And Tau is currently working on bringing more flight modes from MW/Naze over with a stated goal of making sure that their acro mode is as good or better than MW/Naze.

Personally though - I say start simple and work up. Get a Flip board or an acro Naze and learn to fly with it. Once you've mastered manual flight - then and only then start looking into more advanced flight modes. Otherwise you're just asking for disaster. Before you can teach a multi to fly for itself you need to know how to fly it!

 

[cory045]

If it's any help I have been in the rc scene for a few years cars, airplanes, micro helicopters. And I heard quads are much more stable than regular helicopters

 

[Dandyfunk]

jhitesma, I am a total noob to the quad scene. while I am building and electrohub with the flip 1.5 I spend my time trying to self educate. I got a little lost during your Tau description, I understand that its software that can be downloaded and configured but the question is on to which control boards?? Or is the Tau a control board and software. Thanks for you help Df

 

[Balu]

"Tau Labs is an Open Source project aimed to create high quality code for controlling multirotors and other UAVs." - so it's the code, not the controller

http://taulabs.org/

There is a list of "targets" that run this software in the Wiki:

https://github.com/TauLabs/TauLabs/wiki

 

[jhitesma]

@Dandyfunk - TauLabs is the firmware and ground control software. It runs on a number of boards (as linked to by Balu above) using the STM32 chips - though there are really only two commercially available boards that are really a good option for it right now.

The first is the Sparky which uses a stm32F3 chip slightly limiting it. That's still a more powerful chip than Naze32 or CC3D but to really take advantage of everything TL can do a board with a stm32F4 chip is best and currently the Quanton is the only board available commercially. And that board runs about $80 IIRC and is somewhat larger (54mmx54mm) than the currently popular 35mmx35mm format of the CC3D/naze/Flip.

Tau can also run on the Naze and the CC3D but the features supported are considerably limited due to those boards using the stm32F1 chip which is pretty restrictive.

The Sparky can do altitude hold, Position Hold and RTH with a GPS - but that's about it for advanced features.

The rest of the targets that Tau can run on are more hacker oriented than consumer oriented. The FlyingF3/4 for example are large stm32 development boards with sensors attached to turn them into flight controllers like I'm using.

The RevoMini is a F4 based board...but it's closed hardware so support for it is tricky and they're kind of crazy expensive and hard to find from what I can tell. (and from what I've been able to gather it sounds like the Revo is a big part of why the TL team split off from OP in the first place.)

There is one board not listed there yet which is in the official source and that's the board being used in the new BlackSheep Gemini - which I suspect will bring a lot more attention to TL when it's released soon. But that board is pretty tightly integrated with their airframe and I don't believe it will be available commercially by itself and would likely not be a good choice to base a design around.

So - while I'm blown away by Tau and very impressed with it, and the software on the next release (which should be happening VERY soon) will be the most user friendly I've tried....the hardware situation is currently a bit limiting unless you don't want to do fully autonomous flight, or don't mind a 54mm x 54mm board, or are up to rolling your own.

Hope that helps explain it a bit. I know it can get confusing!

The Sparky2 is in development and will be a F4 based board in the smaller footprint used by the Sparky. But it's only available to testers and developers working on TL code right now. Since it's developed as a hobby the time frame for it to hit the market is "when its ready".

x5004 and I have been talking about trying to do a F4 based design in the 35mm x 35mm footprint...something kind of between the Sparky and the Quanton. More like a Sparky upgraded to F4 without the other features of the Sparky2. But we're also mainly interested in doing it so we can integrate it into one or more PDB's (similar to the motowii for the warpquad) for things like Twitchity's designs and x5004's foldy quad (RIP).

I'd fully expect Sparky2 to be finished and available before we have anything to show though as we're also just doing this as a hobby and have even less time to work on things than peabody124 does for working on Sparky2 and we have a lot less experience

 

[Ludodg]

hope you don't mind me barging in with another flip 1.5-question:

Am I right if I understood that the Flip van switch to ANgle-mode, or Horizon-mode, .. but can also be used without one of these two modes?
Which mode would be recommended when learning, doing first multicopter-steps?

thx.

 

[joshuabardwell]

Here is my two cents: learn in Acro (manual) mode. There will be more of a learning curve, but when you are done, you will really know how to fly the quad. While I was learning to fly, I kept Horizon mode on a switch, so that I could use it as a failsafe if the quad started to get away from me. But now that I know how to fly in Acro mode, auto-level just feels weird and unnecessary.

IMO (and this really is just my opinion--there are many others who disagree) there are two main ways to fly a multirotor. If I am flying it around (proximity FPV, fun flying, aerobatics), I want Acro mode. If I am using it as a mobile camera platform or an AUV, then I want full GPS/Baro/Mag/Autolevel/etc... In other words, either I'm "flying" the quad, or I'm "directing it". I don't see much room for anything in between.

If the choice is between Angle or Horizon, the official word from the MultiWii developers is that Angle has been deprecated and Horizon is its replacement. The way Horizon works is, when the sticks are close to center, the quad is in Angle mode. As the sticks reach full deflection, you approach Acro mode. This allows you to do flips if you want to, while still having the quad auto-recover when you center the sticks. In Angle mode, the quad won't exceed a certain max angle, and can't do flips. This may sound like a good safeguard, but it's not like you're going to accidentally push the stick to full deflection. Ultimately, it's up to you.