MultiWii / NAZE / SP Racing F3 Quadrino success

RTRyder

Merlin of Multirotors
Last week I got my hands on one of the new Quadrino advanced boards with autoleveling, altitude hold, and compass. Initially I put it on an extended Gaui frame with ESCs and motors that I had been flying with a KK blue board but no amount of PID tuning could get rid of the wobbles. While I was able to find some settings that made it flyable it didn't really fly all that well with those settings so I removed the board and went back to the KK controller.

I was on the verge of selling the Quadrino when I ran into problems with a bad board on one of my MK Hexa so the X8 project gave up its borrowed MK electronics stack to get the Hexa back to normal. Without a full set of boards to drive the X8 I decided to break it back down into a quad allowing use of any of a number of other controllers I have on hand. Removing the MK XL landing legs and Avterical camea mount gave me a basic quad platform with a good set of Turnigy Plush ESCs and Flycam 925 motors. I briefly put a Hoverfly board on it to see how much better (or worse) the latest firmware release is, my opinion is that its much better than the previous release but still quirky, not good enough to make me want to go down that road again at the moment.

Curiosity satisfied I removed the Hoverfly board and installed the Quadrino, figured I had nothing to lose by trying. To my amazement it flew rather nicely even on the somewhat odd PID settings I had on the board. Resetting everything back to where it was when delivered tightened things up considerably and the end result is it flys as well, perhaps a little better than the Hoverfly board. The Quadrino autoleveling actually seems to work better than the H/F, the altitude hold not quite as well as that was an area of huge improvement in this release of H/F firmware (almost anything would have been an improvement over A/H in their last release!).

End result is the Quadrino turns out to be a pretty nice little package, still need to do a bit of trimming and maybe a little bit more work getting the settings right for the setup. I was right about the board not liking the ESC's on the smaller frame, given a set of Turnigys the difference is night and day so I guess there's cheap speed controllers, and really cheap speed controllers, you get what you pay for! ;)

Ken
 


Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
I agree, good update Ken and thanks. Are the turnigy plush the cheap ESC's or the really cheap ESC's?
 

RTRyder

Merlin of Multirotors
I agree, good update Ken and thanks. Are the turnigy plush the cheap ESC's or the really cheap ESC's?

The Turnigy are just cheap ESC's, the no name really cheapies are on the Gaui frame soon to be hooked to a Copter Control board, got the shipping notice in email this AM.

Ken
 

Crash

Defies Psychics
I got my motor and esc problems sorted out on my old Jakub frame. I pulled off the old homemade multiwii and popped in the Quadrino. I'm quite pleased with the board so far.

The Alt hold is only good for 2 meters or so and I cannot get it tuned any better. Hopefully they will beef up the Alt hold code soon.
 



RTRyder

Merlin of Multirotors
If my recent success with the CC board is any indication, I think much of the problems I ran into intially with the Quadrino was the refresh rate for the ESC's. Soon I'll verify that by changing the rate in the code and uploading it to the board, I suspect that once that's done I'll be able to pop it onto any of the frames I've already tried with little success and it will probably fly fine with minor tweaking to the stock PID settings.

The next thing I want to do with it is swap out the Hoverfly Pro board I have on an MK quad frame with Hisight II camera mount to see if the Quadrino can at the very least work as well or better than the H/F for a basic AP application. Only thing I won't have is the ability to manually tilt the camera platform from the TX when using the Quadrino, have to get creative and see if there's a way around that limitation if it turns out to work well.

Ken
 


RTRyder

Merlin of Multirotors
Ken can you detail your build and cc set up.. how is it flying and what made the difference?

I'll get to that as soon as I finish the build of the new quad frame for the Quadrino, almost done just have to fab a wiring harness for the battery to ESC hookup and then test fly it.

Yes Dave, I built yet another quad, currently at 8 ready to fly multirotors and heading for 10 or maybe I'll make it an even dozen... :p
 

moslow

Member
My cc is to be here monday so I too would appretiate any help you can give. I think i read to much last night about the esc build at the openpilot forum.. Way WAY WAY over my head... Thanks in advance Ken...........jamie
 

RTRyder

Merlin of Multirotors
My cc is to be here monday so I too would appretiate any help you can give. I think i read to much last night about the esc build at the openpilot forum.. Way WAY WAY over my head... Thanks in advance Ken...........jamie

It's like building any other quad really, only difference is the GUI to setup the board is somewhat different from anything else I've seen but easily mastered after the third or fourth time through it. Once I figured out what the CC board was fighting with in the rest of the electronic bits it went rather nicely, matter of fact it would be nice if some of the other flight controllers I have around here were as configurable as the CC, might then be able to get those fully straightened out finally as well!

Just finished up with the last bits of the Quadrino build, flys a lot like the other two mini quads I have, next trip to the big field I'll find out how agile it really is, or isn't...

Next rainy day I'll get some pics of the three minis and do some write ups of the builds, for now I'm busy outside burning electrons with them.

Ken
 

Breezer1

Night Fury
I have heard that the Quadrino Zoom board does everything well EXCEPT altitude hold and that it was only good for +/- 20'. I have a Quadrino Zoom that has not been touched and I've been told to leave it that way and go with a Naza FC.
Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Breezer1
 

Glen_S

New Member
I have heard that the Quadrino Zoom board does everything well EXCEPT altitude hold and that it was only good for +/- 20'. I have a Quadrino Zoom that has not been touched and I've been told to leave it that way and go with a Naza FC.
Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Breezer1

I've got the revD zoom board with 2.0 on it, going to reload 1.9 on it because the only way I can comfortably fly it in my semi confined yard is in acc mode with 2.0. As soon as I switch the acc off it wants to drift forward badly, and the yaw wanders as well. When I fly it with my gopro it amplifies the forward drift, with 1.9 it was actually more docile with the extra weight of the camera on.

Just got a Naza and Flamewheel 450 frame, not just have to figure out how to set up my Futaba 9chp tx with it and try her out. I'm hoping it's as easy as they say!
 

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