Mikrokopter Is mikrokopter finished??

J

jdmagoo

Member
Just wondering if mikrokopter is on a downward decline? There hasn't being a firmware upgrade since march last year and no real major announcements since. Although they still have more features than the competition (DJI) the competition seems to have something new every other day, I willing to invest in mikrokopter but their lack of updates or announcements makes me worry and am on the verge to invest in the wookong m.

Can someone give me good reason to invest in mikrokopter and not DJI?

cheers

james
 

Bartman

Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
James,
I haven't seen anything yet that can handle itself in wind as well as MK can. In fact, I flew on a day where it was blowing 22 kts gusting to 30 and the MK was dead solid stable. The MK speed controllers can sometimes be finicky and if you're going to go heavy and fly in hot weather then you probably wouldn't want to use them anyway. MK's camera controls can be weak compared to the competition but it's still a fine flying controller with mature GPS features that work very well and include waypoint capabilities.

What are your needs and what do you intend to do with the finished helicopter? Are you already flying other equipment or will this be your first? Any prior RC experience? Sorry, standard questions all worth asking. :)

Bart
 

J

jdmagoo

Member
Thanks for the reply Bartman,

i own a f550 with Naza and GPS, had an awful experience with the quality control of DJI, 3 motors fail and 1Esc fail from the same kit. I spent a lot of time replacing these, whilst trying to track down the reasons for a continuous twitching issue which ended up been poor bullet connectors. I ended up replacing these for new ones and solved all the problems. As you can imagine, the time and money spent sorting out these problems has left a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to DJI quality control.

Anyway, it's time to upgrade. So really require waypoint flight, accurate PH and AH. I have read the AH on the DJI is more accurate than MK? I plan to use POI and hope the new soon to be released brushless gimbal controllers will work well with either MK or DJI. I plan to do a number of airborne video and airborne stills for projects i have at home (only at the hobby level) and want ensure the equipment I purchase today will be well supported into the future. From what I have gathered DJI are the only ones in the last 12 months to move forward with their product line.

anyway thanks for the reply

james
 





hexa

hexa

Member
Yes Mk is dead.
Just like every thing out there they all will die one day. Uvax died xaircraft died, gaui quad died. Clone mk died and so will Dji one day but for now Dji run things. Only the strong shall stand stiff in the end.
Soon it won't matter if copter sits still in wind as there will be cheap cam mount which can handle tuff shaky copter where by Tom **** and Harry will be able to afford or make one.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

J

jdmagoo

Member
hexa said:
Yes Mk is dead.
Just like every thing out there they all will die one day. Uvax died xaircraft died, gaui quad died. Clone mk died and so will Dji one day but for now Dji run things. Only the strong shall stand stiff in the end.
Soon it won't matter if copter sits still in wind as there will be cheap cam mount which can handle tuff shaky copter where by Tom **** and Harry will be able to afford or make one.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I guess my dilemma is that I can invest in DJI now knowing that I will probably have a reasonable future of software updates, or I could invest in Mikrokopter which is feature rich but appears to have stalled with both software and hardware updates. DJI will probably spend the next 12 months fixing bugs and bringing there features up to speed.

hmm would be nice if mikrokopter announced something new soon
 

Droider

Droider

Drone Enthusiast
Aye Up Jdmagoo, welcome to MRF. Whee in the world are you?

Just MO. If you think you have had a poorish experience and had to do a lot of fiddling taking time and money with DJI than that would pail into insignificance if you went down the MK route.

If you buy local and taker good advice from soemtone who knows what they are doing you wont go far wrong. At least with DJI they have dealers everywhere. With MK is patchy and the support for the product is poor. I gave up with it and fly DJI.

I here waht Bart says about wind but if you check my vidoes out you will see the WKM and WHOLE MR can be set up to tackle it.

If you want to fly more than tinker DJI had good wind capability (depending on craft) spot on height and GPS hold, waypoint etc etc.

Dave

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheDroider
 

Macsgrafs

Macsgrafs

Active Member
Why is everyone so sure MK is dead? Because they haven't released a new firmware update is a good sign...shows it does what it's supposed to!
Here is an MK octo flown by Holger (the founder of MK) shot in October 2012...4 months ago!

 
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J

jdmagoo

Member
Macsgrafs said:
Why is everyone so sure MK is dead? Because they haven't released a new firmware update is a good sign...shows it does what it's supposed to!
Click to expand...

yeah I am hoping that, how do you find AH? I have read somewhere that AH isn't too good with MK.

Also, fail safe and auto land? Do these work well? Watched the YouTube vids and it seems auto land after fail safe is a bit rough. Has this been improved with later firmware?

thanks for your replies

james
 

Macsgrafs

Macsgrafs

Active Member
jdmagoo said:
yeah I am hoping that, how do you find AH? I have read somewhere that AH isn't too good with MK.

Also, fail safe and auto land? Do these work well? Watched the YouTube vids and it seems auto land after fail safe is a bit rough. Has this been improved with later firmware?

thanks for your replies

james
Click to expand...

James I fly manual, never tried to RTH function or auto land as of yet. PH seems fine, alt hold seems fine. Have you seen a DJI autoland? would love to see a heavy weight cam ship with DJI doing all this...my problem is being a MK user I don't search out DJI stuff. Droider Dave is the guy to speak to re DJI, he seems to have his setup at the sweet spot.

Ross
 

Bartman

Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
droider,

has dji fixed the limitation on camera tilt travel? as i recall you couldn't have the camera go fully from level to straight down with the WKM's resident controls.

thanks,
bart
 

R

RTRyder

Merlin of Multirotors
There's some rumor going around that Holger & Co are working on a new flight controller board, or at least an update of the existing one. Would make a lot of sense as the current version has been around for a few years now and with all the features they've added it wouldn't surprise me if memory space is close to being filled up as-is. I think MK is far from dead, just in a development cycle and there will probably be news of new things coming in the near future.

As for the DJI autoland feature, my CS6/WKM autolands perfectly, as good or better than my Naza which tend to take a couple hops on touchdown before they settle and shutdown the motors. I have yet to try autoland with any of my MK although I have made use of the RTH and know that works as well as it does on DJI.


Ken
 
Last edited by a moderator:

J

jdmagoo

Member
RTRyder said:
There's some rumor going around that Holger & Co are working on a new flight controller board, or at least an update of the existing one. Would make a lot of sense as the current version has been around for a few years now and with all the features they've added it wouldn't surprise me if memory space is close to being filled up as-is. I think MK is far from dead, just in a development cycle and there will probably be news of new things coming in the near future.

As for the DJI autoland feature, my CS6 autolands perfectly, as good or better than my Naza which tend to take a couple hops on touchdown before they settle and shutdown the motors. I have yet to try autoland with any of my MK although I have made use of the RTH and know that works as well as it does on DJI.


Ken
Click to expand...

all good info guys thanks.

im hoping they r in a development cycle, it would be sad to see MK on the downward spiral.

i guess auto land is a nicety and not really to important but am interested on how MK performs. My naza seems to do a pretty good job along with fail safe although its only on a small f550 frame though
 

Tomstoy2

Tomstoy2

Member
What a great vid, Ross!

I know back when I got into this I took a serious look at MK. At the time, about a year ago, there were a ton of people jumping ship for DJI. I, for one, gave up interest for MK, not because of the abandonment of MK users, ( you really have to take all that with a grain of salt ), but because I was turned off with all the boards, wiring and soldering involved with one.
I remember the cost was slightly higher, but what swung me towards my WKM was it's simplicity.

The WKM, in my limited experience, has been everything they have advertized it to be. Sure, there have been a lot of firmware upgrades, but I see this as a good thing, a company standing by their product doing what needs to be done to make it competative and keep the customers.
Sure, there has been issues. Hell, just look at the auto industry as an example. It wasn't until about 10 years ago that cars were finally made to not be a disposable item.
For me, at least DJI has delivered and I have never regretted it's purchase.

One thing I can say that I have never read about MK is one trying to return to Europe on its own!

As far as MK becomming part of the past, I think that a lot of that is due to speculation from new hobbyists not reading anything about MK. To me, that just shows that they have a product that just works!
However, the future is deffinately directed towards simplicity. Just looking at the pictures of all those stacked boards was enough for me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

For anybody looking to get serious in this hobby, do your homework! There are good and bad points about every flight controller. There are a hell of a lot of companys that are just rip off's. FeiuTec is a prime example!
Do your research and ask questions, make an informative decision.
 

Mactadpole

Mactadpole

Member
I'll just throw in that I am a happy MK user too. Although I wish there was a different solution (=more economical) to the ESC situation. I have tried the converter for using regular ESC's and it was a huge waste of time.

All GPS functions work great and so does altitude hold. I can attest that it holds fantastically well in high winds.

I sure wish HFP would release a solid functioning GPS and waypoint navigation as it is the smoothest and simplest board I have used. But I had to leave them long ago because it became clear they were not going to release the waypoint feature.

I have also been looking a lot at the progress of AutoQuad. Once you get past the tedious calibration part it looks to be an amazing flight controller with a huge list of features and more in the works.

I must admit I would rather support the Germans than the Chinese. Sure wish I could support the American made one though.
 



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