Rogier,
Thanks for your answer. One person likes DJI, the other likes MK better. That's just the same with fruit although fruit seldom crashes.

There was nothing wrong with the frame. There is with the aluminum standard frame. We have built a frame from carbon. It survived the crash expect the motor support thingies.

"But there is a function I've paid for ... so let's use it ..."

As I see it, care free is the feature that makes it a LOT easier to learn to fly. I have seen it take 2 weeks to learn to fly without care free and 15 minutes to learn to fly with care free. So should somebody be allowed to fly if they can only fly with care free?

Again, I use the analogy of the automatic transmission in a car. You can take your road test with an automatic transmission car and get a license to drive. If you take your road test with a standard transmission, you can fail your road test when the instructor makes you stop on a hill and start again without rolling backwards.

You can learn to drive much faster with an automatic transmission. People who love to drive learn how to use a clutch and shift gears. People who just want to drive to work or to a store don't need to learn how to use a clutch and shift gears.

So if you fly because you love to fly, you will learn how to fly without care free. If you want to fly to take aerial photography, you are interested in the photography, not the flying.

Everybody on this forum keeps saying you must learn to fly without any navigation features. But you all sound like a very old person who goes on about, "Back in my day, you had to know how to shift gears, with no synchromesh, to drive." So what, it isn't back in your day anymore grandpa! I do a lot of engineering work, and I don't know how to use a slide rule. My TI30XA works just fine and is a LOT easier!

You all give Holger permission to say the extra features that you paid for don't have to work. I encourage a change in attitude. If somebody looses a UAV because he was relying on navigation features, instead of telling him he should not have been using navigation features, tell Holger the navigation features have to work right.

If I buy a car and pay for an automatic transmission, and it doesn't work, I don't want the car dealer to tell me I should have learned how to drive a standard!

Hardware_man

I agree with you Hardware_man
but this discussion keeps popping up time after time.

I would love it if Holger would bring out 2 sets of firmware ;-)

My MK is a for me a tool. A tool to get my camera into the position I want it to be. I want to do this the easiest and quickest and SAFEST way possible. I have bought MK hardware and together with MK software I was able to do this using AH & PH. And when I didn't like to "fly" the MK home I sometimes flipped the CH switch and it came home.

These so called pioneers of the sky can fly it all by hand manually as much as they like but the statement the use "never to rely on AH, PH or CF" is totally wrong. I can't agree with you more. If the feature is in the SW it has to workw flawlessly without the Solar-Storm and the "you must have soldered it wrong".

But all these remarks will not bring my MK back to life ;-)

As mentioned before fact is that GPS is not
reliable 100%. Working professionally you have to
be aware of that. Even flying manually there is
the chance that something is going wrong.
The customer is not interested if there are technical
problems. Have a complete second flying system ready
to do the job.

It's still DIY system, and the system relies heavily on external factors. You cannot ignore things like solar activity, local magnetic deviations and so on. Well, you can, if the system would ground you when these thing weren't within threshold.

The system should ground you if it would decide it was unable to fly. And it shouldn't be allowed to override this in the settings.

Would't the second system be as affected by the solar activity and also crash?
Do you have a spare car? (or perhaps just a lot of money)

There should be a big update on safety in the MK-SW next release.

A second system would be affected However, if you then know how to fly it manually, you could still do the job.

There is already a lot of security features in the system:
- You cannot engage PH/CH if you have too few sats or magnetic problems
- you can enable an option, preventing you from starting if you have magnetic issue
- the whole fail-safe setup.
- and others...

So all the problems reported here and in other forums are all due to the fact that people don't know how to fly manually? Seriously wizprod.

Yes, a lot of safety features Wizprod, but I have to agree with Bart, if something has some feature, it MUST work properly

If not, specify it´s a beta function, but if it´s not beta but standard you can´t say when someone crashes "it´s because you did rely on it"


I had always thought this is the difference between beta and standard, if something goes standard it´s because you should be able to rely on it, if not it´s still on development.....


Anyway I have to say I also agree in some terms of "the other side". If you use it professionally you should be able to fly it manually, if not you´re taking lots of risks. Even cars with all their quality controls break from time to time, and MK is a small company, you can´t think it´s as reliable as a $100-200k UAV, and even those crashes. USAF lost lots of Predators in Afganistan because of the weather.....

Those Afghanistan drones should have been flown manually!!
;-)

hm im using my old quad ( fc 1.0 bl 1.1) for a couple of years now. always updated to the latest firmware.
no problems at all.

gps or kompas is not reliable, you have to be able to fly you copter manualy every second.

herrmann_s
We know people who never have suffered serious problems are the die-hards! The always fly manually! (Why do they update I wonder?). But you are missing the big point; the MK SW has features! features that are updated all the time (AH & PH are dynamic now!) and those features should be marked beta or should be usable without any hassle.

MartinW meinte

coptaire meinte

- Am sorry, but an hexa losing a arm/motor/propeller, is totally flyable by a skilled pilot.

No, that's not true, sorry. It depends on the Payload and if it's a coaxial/symetrical one.

symetrical Hexas can fly as well with one propeller or engine missing:

http://youtu.be/6VSJYdD-Xr0

Thinking that any DJI System is more reliable and more redundant than the MK system is false, both can and will fall from sky, whatever type of Quad, Hexa, Okto or Dodeka. That’s why in most countries insurance is obligation because an accident can always happen. It’s a call for your discipline to do everything you can to prevent any accident.

The thing is, the features do work properly. But every system will eventually fails, and that can be from a lot of factors. It could be a hardware failure, yes, but the operator could also indirectly be the cause of that failure.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm kinda sick of people always blaming the system.

Topper, yes, a flat hexa will fly like that if it's carrying no load. Did you see his throttle stick? Full left rudder. Imagine this happening in-flight and with a bit too much payload.

Fully acknowledged wizprod.

Guys, remember that the MK is NOT an industrial system, but a hobby system with some "industrial style" features.
A fully "out of box" plug and play system with a real industrial controller costs a lot more!

Example: Astec Falcon, payload about 500 gr., costs for s complete system about 25.000,00 €
Or the Kestrel IMU, costs about 8.000,00 €, and thats just the controller!

Why is that so? Because there are much more specialists involved in designing, engineering and manufacturing of such a system.
And that is not the intention of HI systems.

So be happy that there is a really cheap and guite reliable possibility to earn money with fun and ease.
Just compare the costs to professional film equipment like dollies or cranes..... It 's peanuts, and earns similar rental fees.


By the way, there will be CE-certified MK Rtf systems for aerial work available soon ;-)



Cheers Wolf

wizprod meinte

The thing is, the features do work properly. But every system will eventually fails, and that can be from a lot of factors. It could be a hardware failure, yes, but the operator could also indirectly be the cause of that failure.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm kinda sick of people always blaming the system.

Topper, yes, a flat hexa will fly like that if it's carrying no load. Did you see his throttle stick? Full left rudder. Imagine this happening in-flight and with a bit too much payload.

thats right, but flying any copter with too much load in a professional job is a no go. As someone stated already some posts before a skilled pilot has a good chance to get a Hexa with lost propeller/engine back to ground with less damage. I had the experience and it did not fly well, it did not feel good but it was going to ground without crashing and less to zero damage to a save area.

A Okto loosing a Prop or engine will start to yaw as well but not so dramatic as a Hexa. Only Coax systems do compensate missing props/engines without steady yaw. If I compare available systems on the market i can't see any bulletproof one that is more save, more redundant and more secure.

Flying has always the risk or drop down from sky, your should always be aware of that and take that into account when planning flights and/or jobs.

cfx-wolf meinte

By the way, there will be CE-certified MK Rtf systems for aerial work available soon ;-)


Cheers Wolf

Guaranteed not to crash while using any of the features?

lol - try to get a car that does not crash while using the advertised features ( e.g. steering )

Strange, when my (WKM-powered…) Octo lost a motor inflight (happened two times already) it didn't feel much different than with all motors running. It didn't start to yaw but at the first occurrence I had just to use some more stick input to get it flying backwards (front motor stopped). The second time I saw the motor stop without any influence to the flying characteristics at all (octo changed from + config to V or however you call that in the meantime). BTW: both times with full load!

Sometimes it is good to have a massively overpowered machine hanging in the air .

It's all about balance like in a good game of GO ;-)

Knilch meinte

Strange, when my (WKM-powered…) Octo lost a motor inflight (happened two times already) it didn't feel much different than with all motors running. It didn't start to yaw but at the first occurrence I had just to use some more stick input to get it flying backwards (front motor stopped). The second time I saw the motor stop without any influence to the flying characteristics at all (octo changed from + config to V or however you call that in the meantime). BTW: both times with full load!

Sometimes it is good to have a massively overpowered machine hanging in the air .

by nature the WKM does try to keep heading by influence of the compass. With an Okto that does work quite well, with the Hexa he tries as well but can't compensate it unless your yaw gain setting is something unusual for normal flight. Per my current knowledge the MK does the same if compass influence is activated in the MK Tool. For a Hexa both systems fail to compensate you have to manual stick against it.

Wizprod wrote, "It's still DIY system, and the system relies heavily on external factors. You cannot ignore things like solar activity, local magnetic deviations and so on. Well, you can, if the system would ground you when these things weren't within threshold."

This is true. But the newest car navigation systems use dead reckoning during times of GPS drop outs. The car navigation system is a convenience. If using navigation features, the MK GPS is mission critical. Dead reckoning is never as accurate as GPS. And errors accumulate (the longer you run without GPS, the bigger the errors get). But it won't do something totally stupid, like fly east when it should fly west.

But why would Holger take the time and trouble to write and test dead reckoning code if everybody on the forum will always say it is the operators fault for relying on navigation?


Yes, it's a DIY product. But it is past the days of being an open source project where nobody guarantees anything. With things like the FC code won't run without the boot loader, and the boot loader isn't posted. And key elements of the navi code, like gps.c not posted, we have to consider this a "real product", not an open source project. And it is the key component of several expensive RTF systems.

H&I don't maintain a customer service department where you can call up with a technical question and get a quick answer. So this forum becomes the customer service department. So when someone says their UAV suddenly took off in the wrong direction and crashed. Instead of telling him, "Real men fly without navigation, it's your fault for not flying manually" why not ask Holger why he doesn't have any dead reckoning code to back up the compass and GPS?

Hardware_man

Again, my first goal was to warn people. This topic is turning into an interesting discussion. I have to say I agree with hardware_man.
All those who are in favor of the MK products only come up with
- have you read the WIKI?
- you have to fly it manually
- did you solder it wrong
-you can't rely on the hw and sw
- the thing will eventually crash

Let's see what this topic turns into!