An update on my earlier post (I bought mine during the sell off 3DR was having a year ago just prior to Christmas 2015) ..
Initially I was very uncomfortable flying the X8+, it just did not "feel right". It surged a lot (enough to create shakes in the video), would take off randomly when switched to loiter mode, crashed more than landed when "land" was activated (many lost props this way: every single one of my crashes occurred when activating "land"), and once went nose up and butt to the ground when I switched from one mode to another.
I am not blaming the machine, a lot of this was my own inexperience esp. with the Pixhawk.
Meanwhile I've done some reading over the summer, some experimenting, and a bit of upgrading. I built a better mount for the Tiny2 gimbal, upgraded the firmware, installed larger props for the uppers (these at reduced pitch), changed the receiver to the Frsky X4R, bound it to my Taranis transmitter and setup with the Craft And Theory Telemetry (am now running their 3.4-rc5 firmware). Some fun tinkering.
Aside from these small hardware changes the biggest difference for me was learning about the Pixhawk "Autotune". After auto-tune it was night-n-day in feel of the craft, this went a long way toward making me more comfortable flying it.
RMills72 mentioned some wind in the post above. Today it was very windy here in New Hampshire, gusts sufficient to make for a
fun bit of practice in Stabilize mode. The gimbal does a pretty decent job keeping up up and down down and so that video hides a lot of what the craft was doing above it (however there is a brief section where I put the gimbal into heading lock and turned the craft around above it).
As my drone army increases in size and complexity, the x8+ is still sitting upside down in my living room, Pixhawk controller, 3 lipo flight packs, and DJI’s lightbridge taking up the same space/tying up the same money all these things were the better part of a year ago.
I rebuilt the P3Pro again after a small tree branch mishap last fall, all is in good order but for DJI building a proprietary SHAFT into their latest firmware, so that only DJI OEM branded batteries work in this drone. Aftermarket batteries, which have always worked perfectly for me, now return error messages and prevent flight. Litchi is ambiguous~~ I order OEM batteries, and Ebay/Amazon yank the listings, boot the sellers, and I end up with a refund.
Before taking this bird up again, I’m going to try to figure out what’s going on with Litchi, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll just reformat the 16gig nano chip, and backdate the firmware a year or so. This should take care of it. If not, it’s headed to Ebay.
Finances improved a bit over the holidays, so I bought a Phantom 4, a Solo package from Best Buy, and a Yuneec Q500 package with handheld stabilizer.
My heart has been long set on integrating Pixhawk with Lightbridge Air module for the x8+, though if this isn’t going to work, that little DJI maesterwerk still commands $400 or more on Ebay/Amazon, and if I can’t use on any of the drones I don’t have up and running, that’s exactly where it’s going to go. I now have 2 DJI transceivers, stock P3P and P4 [not Pro.] These manufacturers and engineers don’t co-operate with each other at all. They could improve each others’ technologies exponentially, but money talks and those folks take the shame paths of corporate greed. Everybody else trudges along in sorrow....
This is a real disgrace, most primarily orchestrated by Chinese designers, manufacturers, and exporters, but also tolerated by importers and subsidiaries of these garbage mills who transform cheap sweatshop and slave labor of junk, into immense profits for one and all, save the American consumer, who ends up with crap, throw-away merchandise, designed not to be repaired, but trashed at the slightest insult to its auto-destruct, eggshell infrastructure.
I bought a wrecked P3P last spring for $180, and within a few weeks/minimal replacement parts, had it flying beautifully. Halves of the two part plastishell body were secured by graduatingly smaller metric hex key bolts, that threaded into equally tiny metal anchors, molded in throughout both segments of this extremely brittle shell. Correct closure is further complicated by means of a series of interconnectedly alternating juxtaposed plastic clips running about the entire airframe. Get one clip out of alignment, and it snaps off. Measurement of the smallest metric screws needed to complete the rebuild to factory specs came in at 50 microns. Titanium shaft drill bits under 400x microscope enabled me to take things apart, and put them back together. On occasion, the most difficult operations required the use of laser technologies......
No horn blower here, but I have access to equipment and knowledge of its proper use to accomplish a great many things. DJI’s Phantom 3 is a superb, user friendly operational airborne photography platform-- and I’ll go one step further to say that it’s very forgiving of beginners’ and experts’ errors alike.
The importers and marketers of the Phantom 3 have implemented its design and manufacture to be a simple, throw-away product, appealing to a large, convenience addicted American consumer base. OK~~ that concept was great for Dixie cups, flushable diapers, maybe still even Slinky toys, but this is 2017~~ and this cheaply conceived toy, albeit with excellent electronics [most probably pilfered, (sic,)]-- has a price tag just now going below $1,000 US.
$1,000/month is more than the average family of four has to live on in mainstream China, this with 2 adults working 80 hours a week, in sweat shops the US department of Labor would have shut down a century ago.
Slave labor in China, while slowly decreasing, is just that:~~ work and live; refuse or become unable to work, you die.
That’s why the country calls itself, “The People’s Republic of China.”
I’m set employed now~~ no more answering to clocks, nasty and overbearing bosses...... plenty of time for the drones, and airplanes too.....
One great girlfriend, whose name is Diane, with one n; my sister has two.....
Back to the real matter at hand:-----
3dr x8+ octocopter, Pixhawk controller, DJI Lightbridge Air module.... I have both P3P and P4 Lightbridge transceivers to make this work, also Devo f12e
ground station, st-10 and st-16--- please help here... from this thread, I just want to know how to get the x+ up and flying. I’ll decide about its gimbal and camera later.......
Thank you, God bless America, save us everyone, and please do whatever you can to get the bigot clown Donald Trump OUT of the White House......