Talking about the announced S800 EVO: Still the same rig as the normal S800, exept the stronger arms, the vib dampening kit, the retracts and some small extention plates arround the center frame. The ESC's look the same (exept the LED's), just with a heat sink. The older motors are just re-branded Tigers and had a KV of 320, now it looks like on the EVO is the same motor with a KV of 400 and a different housing (that might be the reason they need the heat-sink on the ESC's)....folding propellers: mhhh, do we really need that ?
Chris
From what I've seen the Evo is what the S800 should have been when it was released. It was quite obvious that the S800 wasn't fully baked when it hit the market and we saw the same old 'let the customer pay to beta test' method of product development until they finally got to the Evo version. The only difference is now they have a fairly well developed product and the price has increased significantly, anyone that bought the original version can now pay for priviledge of fixing the problems of the original model by either upgrading the parts or outright throw away the old S800 and buy an Evo. If nothing else, they know how to bring in the $...
As for Xaircraft:
http://www.multirotorforums.com/showthread.php?11256-SuperX-unboxing&highlight=superx
http://www.multirotorforums.com/sho...o-with-SuperX-and-SuperX-OSD&highlight=superx
They had issues due to known facts, but I think it they will have a "come-back".....
As for Mikrokopter: They might have been good some time ago, but they have more concentrated on their internal issues than on developing the software....so to me they lost it to Arducopter, althought there is still a bunch of harcore MK users out there....
As for Zero UAV:
http://www.multirotorforums.com/sho...ot-KRATOS-quot&p=112015&viewfull=1#post112015
This doesn't look like that it's not possible to set up the YS-X6 (forgot to put the link in my previous post)
There will be millions of pro's and con's for
every flight controller, that's why I gave him this advice:
.....at the end of the day it's alway a risky decission.
Chris
Unfortunately I think XAircraft damaged their credibility to the point they will never fully recover and become a major player, again a case of putting something out on the market that wasn't fully tested and debuged, a pattern that keeps on repeating itself with various manufacturers and not just the ones in China.
I wouldn't write off MK just yet, the upgrade to V2.2 on the flight controller literally transforms the way it flys. MK was my first "real" multirotor flight controller system several years back, I still have that same Hexa V1 and its currently outfitted with the 2.2 upgrade and a brushless gimbal. Still very much a viable alternative in the mid range keeping in mind the limitations of the BL controllers. There is however now an alternative that looks like it may resolve some of those issues for not a lot of $
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/..._Motor_Speed_Controller_SimonK_Firmware_.html "MikroKopter I2C compatibility has also been built in as standard. A DIY port is available under the shrink wrap which allows using the ESC with MikroKopter hardware that uses I2C control." Maybe not quite enough for some of the larger and heavier configurations but it's certainly a less expensive and more honest solution than repackaging off the shelf 40 amp Chinese ESCs and charging outrageous prices for it...
http://www.quadrocopter.com/Freefly-Motor-Control-Set_p_926.html
As far as Arducopter goes, they're getting better but still not up to the standard of MK. To me they're somewhere between the current generation of Multiwii Pro boards and DJI systems. I currently have two of them and what I found is they work really well on some configurations and not so well on others. My FlipFPV/APM 2.5 quad flys almost as well as any of my Naza powered FPV quads, when I put the second APM 2.5 on my Droidworx AD-6 it was nearly impossible to find settings that made it fly with the same level of smoothness and stability I see in the FlipFPV quad, it seems as though the APM doesn't really like large heavy lifter frames. The other issue I've had with them is the disturbingly high occurance of uncommanded motor starts when doing configuration work on them to the point I will not connect a battery to one on the bench without first removing all the props and I'm always wary and on high alert when connecting or disconnecting the battery on the flightline.
My YS-X6 system was posted for sale to the classified section last night. The system showed promise when I was testing it but at the time the gimbal stabilization was poor and with my intended use being APV that simply wasn't going to work. Not an issue these days with the proliferation of brushless gimbals that do their own stabilization, but at that time I swapped the YS out for a DJI system and never got back around to reinstalling the YS on a frame. I really do not have time to play with all the flight controller systems that I would like to and the more complex the system the less likely that I'll be able to devote the time required to master the setup and configuration so unfortunately the YS must go as I simply do not have the time to go through the entire ramp up once again.
I've pretty much settled on a few flight controllers that I've found to be cost effective, reasonably easy to setup, and have advanced features that work as advertised. My FPV quads use both DJI Naza and Multiwii Pro and I don't see that changing anytime soon, both work well and have similar feature sets. My APV multis are mainly Mikrokopter once again with the 2.2 upgrade installed, the one holdout being the Cinestar with Wookong-M mainly because I don't have an MK stack to put on it and I'm not in a position to spend that amount of $ right now to purchase a new set of boards. The other part of that decision is I suspect we'll be seeing some new and interesting things from MK in the not too distant future so I'm waiting to see what comes along. Finally, my aerobatic quads are all using basic Multiwii boards, they have the tuning capability needed to make them respond the way I want and the cost for these boards is in the $20 range, Two of them do basic flips, rolls, and funnels easily, the third has some specialized software that extends the flight capability to being able to hover inverted and fly some limited 3D stuff. Still working on getting the pilot up to speed on being able to do everything the quad is capable of and for the anticipated August delivery of the collective pitch Stingray 500 quad I have on order
Ken
