After starting on Gaui and then MK for the best part of 18 months when I moved VERY reluctantly to DJI it was because of the necessity to have a FC that worked without 12c errors that would just happen for no reason and the necessity to turn up in front of the client and get the job done. Yes there are reported issues but for me its a system that works and works with the minimum of effort. I will probably regret saying this but so far its been bomb proof. ALL 10 CAA approved craft we have are DJI flight controllers, Guess thats my case for DJI. There will be others but they will have a mountain to climb to convince me to move. Right now I can rock up, check out, preflight, fly, post flight go home. When you are doing the miles we are to push this concept thats is worth its weight in gold. AND we still have hair!
Dave
I hear you and totally agree. I'd like to thank you guys for all the great advice and info you post here. It's very helpful and it's great to have people to bounce all this off of. This has been a bit of process for me. I was bald to start off with so nothing to risk in that area.
I'm putting energy and time in to the APM largely for personal reasons. One of the developers is a friend of mine and just an incredible guy. Over the years he and his fellow software engineers have made very significant contributions to software such as rsync, samba and keeping MS at bay during a 10 year court battle where the big guys were trying to shut down all open source software use in Europe. He got me involved with the Canberra UAV group knowing that I was a commercial photographer in the past. That group went on to win the prestigious Outback UAV Challenge and continues to work on creating affordable professional systems for Search and Rescue use. As an ex Unix Sys Admin and the founder of an organisation that provides tech support to not-for-profit organisations I am very heavily committed to the Free and Open Source Software ethical stance. It's a very powerful model.
The APM development curve is extremely steep. What was there six months ago is significantly improved at this point. The advancements they are making are impressive and I am totally confident they will far surpass other flight controllers in the very near future. Then again, their goals are not based around 'plug and play' simplicity so the APM may or may not ever be as easy a platform to use as commercial based FCs. But I suspect that may happen naturally as the APM continues on it's very impressive path of improvement. I am more that willing to accept that the APM may not ever be suitable for the type of professional work being done by users here. I think that would be sad, but at the end of the day you need to get your work done.
At this point I'm going to put more time in to tuning my DW copters by putting them in a rig that restrains them. I will video that process for those interested. Apparently this method results in the best tuning parameters possible for a specific craft. I think it's best to make sure I've gone all the way in my testing of the APM before trying other FCs. That way I can say with confidence that I've done everything recommended and gave it my all to test it's suitability for my purpose. If I succeed it might result in a default configuration that will save others the issues I've dealt with and if it doesn't I'll just move on.
Cheers from down under.
