DJI Zenmuse has no value anymore.

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DennyR

Active Member
The DJI Zenmuse may have set the bar higher in terms of stability last year but that has now changed. Several brushless gimbals have shown that they can achieve the same level of stability without all of the stupid quirks like not being able to turn the camera ON and OFF in the field without the use of some kind of implement to reach the obscured switch. These new devices once set do not drift all over the place. Zenmuse has another draw back in that it is overcomplicated, overweight and overpriced. Horizon drifts continuously and HDMI is troublesome. But worse is yet to come. iF THIS POS GOES WRONG FOR ANY REASON THERE IS NO WAY TO HAVE IT SERVICED OR GET ANY SPARE PARTS FOR IT. yes thats right folks. no matter how small the problem is, your investment is now scrap value. In Europe nobody, even the European HQ, has any facility to fix it or wants to send it back to China. If the customer sends it back it will not be accepted.

The S800 was and still is a disaster area. I can think of at least six carbon Hexa's that are better and the WKM has for sure been surpassed by at least 4 other controllers that are better by far and more reliable.

About the only item that I still use is the Naza-H but as my guys don't like flying Helis in anything but manual mode, I guess I will be using the tried tested and approved V-Stabi instead.

DJI has gone a long way to piss off all of their customers around the world. It would be hard to imaging a company with a worse PR record. So if you are a dealer then how do you feel about shouldering the blame for what they alone create. As time goes on DJI will become less and less contactable and they will become just another Chinese crap supplier with no regard for warranties or service issues. :upset:
 
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LordoftheCrabPeople

Member
MK works for me but still ridiculously expensive when **** breaks. Carbon Core 950 hex frame just came in the mail, looks very high quality and lightweight. MK crap with a brushless gimbal on a CC frame should be it for me. I was torn between WK-M and MK but ended up keeping the MK/Graupner set up. Graupner has good customer service if you DON'T go through the US distributor in Florida, he's the biggest douche in the universe. MK will respond to emails quick and will fix broken boards if you ship 'em to Germany. We need an American company manufacturing American-sourced electronics packages for MR. I heard Google is thinking about manufacturing Glass in California and Apple makes one line of MacPro in Cali too. Maybe America is coming back...
 


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Stacky

Member
LordoftheCrabPeople said:
We need an American company manufacturing American-sourced electronics packages for MR. Maybe America is coming back...
Click to expand...

Maybe America never actually went away...

Im not an american but as mentioned above there is a company called Hoverfly who have a superb board called the HoverflyPro that came out a couple of years ago and the Hoverfly guys future engineered it with a ton of memory and processing power and now 2 years on are realizing all that potential.
 



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RTRyder

Merlin of Multirotors
LordoftheCrabPeople said:
MK works for me but still ridiculously expensive when **** breaks. Carbon Core 950 hex frame just came in the mail, looks very high quality and lightweight. MK crap with a brushless gimbal on a CC frame should be it for me. I was torn between WK-M and MK but ended up keeping the MK/Graupner set up. Graupner has good customer service if you DON'T go through the US distributor in Florida, he's the biggest douche in the universe. MK will respond to emails quick and will fix broken boards if you ship 'em to Germany. We need an American company manufacturing American-sourced electronics packages for MR. I heard Google is thinking about manufacturing Glass in California and Apple makes one line of MacPro in Cali too. Maybe America is coming back...
Click to expand...

Unfortunately Graupner declared bankruptcy in December 2012 and the company has been sold. Remains to be seen what products the new owners will continue to produce and sell but the supply of E props has pretty much dried up and that may well be the end of them. A company statement says they remain committed to the Hott product line but makes no mention of anything else, I also wouldn't plan on getting great support from them for a while either.

http://www.graupner.de/en/newsdetail/0d57a0df-e859-4fb4-8177-6209865d4a03

Ken
 
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RTRyder

Merlin of Multirotors
Teco said:
Who makes better FC than DJI?
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Depends on how you define 'better' and what features are important to you. Better in terms of cost, better performance, better in all conditions...

I have an APM 2.5 that matches anything I can do with any of the three Naza I currently have and matches or exceeds what my Wookong-M can do and it costs less than $400 with every conceivable option there is for it, no additional license costs for unlimited distance waypoint flight and capable of fully autonomous flight from takeoff to landing. The YS-X6 easily flys as well or better than a Wookong-M and is much more configurable in tuning parameters as well as being a lot more flexible on the setup meaning it can use a far greater range of props and motors than the Wookong and still maintain the flight characteristics and stability, something the Wookong can't do.

My MK controllers while being a bit more effort to fly can maintain the same level of performance and stability from dead calm to very windy conditions and I know it can be relied on to get the job done in conditions that leave the Wookong on the bench because it can't handle the gusty winds that are blowing at the time.

I know all of this because I own all of the flight controllers I mention and each have their own merits and quirks. Bottom line is there are much better value flight control systems available than what DJI offers, really depends on what you need and expect from it.

Ken
 

Teco

Teco

Member
Good explanation bro, I ask because I am new on multirotor world , just got 1 octo 1000 CarbonCore and I try to learn more about controller, but this will be my camera ship bird, I just got a naza today for my other CC 650 , already got ESC motors props, waiting for the batts now, I see u are in Boston! I am in RI , maybe we can get together and fly and you can give me a hand to get this birds up n fly,

thanks

richard
 

yeehaanow

yeehaanow

Member
But yet, DJI has good marketing because they keep selling these POS Phantoms and S800's...
I lost a lot of cash buying into the S800 BS. Thankfully my time with it was brief.

If you want to know what to buy there is an inverse relationship between the forum thread/post count and the product's quality.
The more posts, the worse it is. When you don't hear much about it on the forums, it's probably pretty good! (uh hum cough hoverfly cough)
 

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RTRyder

Merlin of Multirotors
yeehaanow said:
But yet, DJI has good marketing because they keep selling these POS Phantoms and S800's...
I lost a lot of cash buying into the S800 BS. Thankfully my time with it was brief.

If you want to know what to buy there is an inverse relationship between the forum thread/post count and the product's quality.
The more posts, the worse it is. When you don't hear much about it on the forums, it's probably pretty good! (uh hum cough hoverfly cough)
Click to expand...

I might disagree with the last statement, forum post count is more a measure of a products popularity with the majority of users, meaning possibly that a lot of people with little to no experience have them and are having issues with things more experienced users know and take for granted. I would say it's a safe bet that the ratio of DJI to H/F users is probably on the order of at least 500 to 1 if not more so yeah, you're going to see a LOT more posts in the DJI forum than in the H/F, really has nothing at all to do with the quality of the product IMO. I have a H/F, two actually counting the Sport board, neither one is currently on a frame and flying, 'nuff said...

Ken
 

homer911

homer911

Member
I have had my WKM for over 10 months now and I have recently wondered about the "other" flight controllers. Hoveryfly does sound like a good contender.I havent even researched them yet. Will have to do a Youtube searh : )
 

D

DennyR

Active Member
The two top contenders are Autoquad-6 and Zero UAV-Y6 and if you can get one, then my choice would be the Russia one from Vickor

DJI obviously know that failures are good for business.
 
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RTRyder

Merlin of Multirotors
DennyR said:
The two top contenders are Autoquad-6 and Zero UAV-Y6 and if you can get one, then my choice would be the Russia one from Vickor

DJI obviously know that failures are good for business.
Click to expand...

I've looked at the AQ-6 and really the only thing stopping me from picking one up is the somewhat weird and lengthy setup process you have to go through to get one flying properly. Lately I've been having fun with the new generation of Multiwii boards, the 2.2 firmware release is light years beyond the 1.7 that I started with on a Quadrino board a year or more ago. The fact that new sensors have also made the boards far better at leveling and position/altitude hold help tremendously as well. I currently have one of the Mega boards on an F450 frame with a Ublox6 GPS and this thing flys better than a Naza in Manual, just as good or better in autolevel, and GPS position hold is pretty darn close too. All that for around $85 inclusive of the GPS, how can you not like that deal? Yeah you do have to tinker with the tuning a bit to get it dialed in but the new firmware and sensors really do minimize that, I'm not that far off default settings and it flys beautifully, it's become my second favorite FPV quad behind my heavily tweaked TBS Discovery.

I've got a brand new "real" APM 2.5 that I'm considering mounting on the Cinestar frame to see how well it handles that. First I think it's going to spend some time on the Droidworx AD-6 until I get a feel for how it wants to be tuned on a large hex hauling some weight. I have spares for the AD6 and though I'd be PO'd if I crashed it, not nearly as much as I would if I crashed the Cinestar and did substantial damage.

One of these days I'll get around to updating the firmware on the YS-X6 and give that one a go again too. I parked it mainly because the gimbal stabilization sucked badly and that was pre-RSGS days when the only alternative was an unobtanium Picloc so there really was no alternative for APV + YS-X6 at the time. Now that I have the brushless gimbal I don't need the built in stabilization so suddenly the YS has become a viable alternative again. :)

Ken
 

K

Kari

Member
But with Naza you can do automatic flips like this today: ;)


@Ken: Be careful if updating your YS-X6. Looks like something has gone wrong with zerouav december 2012 onward updates. I've found september/october versions the best and most reliable. Latest version of WKM with 5.16 works really nice now, it's much better, at least for me, than "old" 2011 version of wkm.
 
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Stacky

Member
How many multirotor failures are due to operator error and how many are due to the FC?. I know a couple of people using NAZA fc's and they have had a year of trouble free flying.
 

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Kari

Member
Stacky said:
How many multirotor failures are due to operator error and how many are due to the FC?. I know a couple of people using NAZA fc's and they have had a year of trouble free flying.
Click to expand...

Or just bad quality frames, dji vibrating arms or other cheap parts, bad install, bad connectors, wrong settings, too long motor screws, cold solder joints ... My naza unit has been unfortunately very unlucky and unreliable one of all flight controllers i've used. That's why it's in my fpv discovery to bring some extra thrill ;)
 

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