Best controller for Arducopter in a heli?

Can you elaborate on what parts besides the MCU are outdated on something like the H743 Wing? Also, you have to DFU flash only once because it comes out of the box with iNav. Once you flash DFU hex you’re good forever uploading as standard.

As far as reliability goes, I have hundreds of logged flights and probably at least a thousand hours in the air so far on my Matek F405 Wing and I haven’t had any problems that weren’t related to my own misconfigurations or software bugs. Still flies today and likely will for a few more years. But dual gyros would be nice for peace of mind, next build is based H743 Wing because it’s not that much extra cost, going to try and maiden it in the next few days :slight_smile:

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I have upgraded my trex 500 with Matek 405 STD. It fits inside frame just bellow receiver shelf. Downside is that every wire has to be soldered and access to FC is very poor. I have attached it with screws to the fuselage.

I have also the Matek 405 and 722, they have memory constrains that makes the Ardupilot firmware lack some of the features.
They work excellent under INAV but poorly under ardupilot.

Thanks ZvikaF. I’ve just taken delivery of a Mini Pix, so hopefully that won’t have such an issue.

If you own radiolink mini pix don’t forget it have a different firmware and MP

Thanks Dave84, but I don’t understand the significance of that. Different from what?

The instructions that came with it, or on the Radiolink web site, did confuse me a little because they seemed to be talking about loading Mission Planner from their web site. Anyway, I connected the board to my laptop by USB, opened up the MP that I’ve been using with my Pixhawk 2.4.8 board and Arducopter, and flashed the latest Arducopter to the Mini Pix. I’ve now started configuring it, and all seems normal, with GPS and two compasses (internal + external) recognised and calibrated. Have I screwed things up?

Did you read the Warning at the top of the Wiki for this Flight Controller? I don’t know why anyone would buy a Radio Link Product.
Radio Link

Oh dear! I thought I was ordering a Pixracer R15, as someone recommended earlier in this thread, but Google and it’s paid ads seems to have steered me in the wrong direction when I searched for a vendor :unamused:

Having now read the Wiki (not my normal first port of call) it looks like maybe I’m okay, for my Mini Pix does seem to be running Arducopter okay – at least, configuration thus far has gone without a hitch.

However, it might be prudent to save the Mini Pix for some other project, and order myself a genuine R15. Does this one look right?

Many make that mistake

The only genuine PixRacers some from mRobotics. All others are clones. That one lists only 1 IMU, PixRacers have 2. You don’t know what you are getting.

Well, as i suggest you before… just look for the oem pixracer by mRobotics…, the others are clones and may work well.
Mini pix it’s a bad clone… quality and components are out of date

Ah, I didn’t realise the implication of the “mro” in your original post because there’s others which describe themselves as “Pixracer R15” – how on earth are they able to do that without getting lawsuits? In fact I’m now sure that the Pixhawk 2.4.8 that I use with Arductopter in my hexcopter is a clone, but I don’t know which one, and so far it’s working well.

As I said earlier the mro R15 is not avable in UK, and it’s price (seemingly without case, power monitor board, and safety button) is way beyond what I was expecting to pay.

In a later post you suggested a Matek H743, and you show yours on a quad Dave84. Others have mentioned other Matek boards on helis. If I go for Matek, using Arducopter, do I need the power monitor board and safety button, or can Arducopter be programmed to bypass these?

Edit: A bit more reading tells me they can be disabled in Arducopter.

Ha! Who would you sue, a Chinese manufacturer? And anyway it’s open source, all the Altium files were available when it was released.
Edit: Actually they are Eagle files making them even easier to clone.

You can’t really call that a clone because an original of that version never existed. It’s a component reduced bastard of the Pixhawk reference standard.

I think you have the wrong Dave showing that FC.

Sorry, it was dkemxr Dave.

But if technically none of the various pixhawk large or small boards are clones, just different people’s implementation of an open source spec, is there a reference somewhere showing which brand makes the ‘best’ ones? What makes mRo special, and CUA which is another brand mentioned in this thread?

Take something with housing, F7 cpu, so you can use FFT notch filters, good insulation tape to attach it to the frame.
I took Matek std F405 and every wire I need to solder, notch filters are set to static frequency, many downsides, cant use crossfire protocol as only one port supports it.
Don’t go cheap as you will loose a lot of time for stupid things as I did :confused:

Thanks K4cus. As it happens, I’ve taken the advice given in some earlier posts and last week received an mRo R15. Even though the RadioLink item seemed to perform properly on the bench, there’s still a doubt in the back of my mind about whether or not it’s going to crash my heli. Only issue is the R15 didn’t come with an enclosure, but I see that mRo have a 3D-printed one which I’ll be ordering.

Good day, good choice about mro pixracer r15.
it’s not an issue if you don’t have purchase the enclosure… many devevelopers during the build usually remove it. In case you need it you can find in thingiverse… ultealibrariar many options for pixracer that you can print by yourself if you have the 3d printer

Thanks David, the enclosure is already on its way, and I don’t have a 3D printer anyway :grinning:

I was planning to mount it using isolating standoffs, but the rubbers on the ones I’ve got clash with some of the components on the board. So installing it in an enclosure, then mounting that with 3M tape seems to be the simplest way. It also helps isolate the baro.

Epilogue

Thanks to those in this thread, and others in my numerous specific query threads, I now have two TRex 500 helis flying in Stabilised, Position Hold, and RTL modes with Arducopter. Just in case any other newbie to Aurducopter helis reads this, here are some of my observations:

My first TRex 500 is actually an HK500 metal frame, with all moving parts replaced with Align gear, plus a Tarot FBL head to convert it from flybarred. Following advice here I used an mRo R15 controller and, apart from its size, it was a plug-in replacement for the BeastX that I had been using. Because of the size I had to mount it sideways on the frame with 2mm 3M tape instead of horizontally between the frames on the tail drive gearbox. I used a piece of carbon tube, bolted to the side of the frame by longer bolts replacing the tail drive gearbox ones, as a mast for my GPS unit. Once I’d got the hang of programming Ardupilot I was impressed by its flight performance – nobody at our field has seen a heli performing automatic landings before!

My second TRex 500 is a genuine Align one, with carbon frame and tail boom, and a 4-blade head for use in a scale fuselage. For this one I decided to go with a Matek H743MINI board, partly because it’s much cheaper than the mRo R15, and partly because the R15 isn’t available at the moment. Installation was much more involved than with the R15 because the Matek’s PWM 1-4 signal outputs are from a mini 8-pin plug which also includes the Vcc + and GND inputs, and PWM 5-8 are on regular pins on another edge of the board. My solution was to make a separate ‘break out board’ to gather the needed 6 PWM output into one pin header, and to separate the servos’ and ESC’s signal leads from their 3-strand cables to connect to this header. The Matek board is powered direct from the 6S motor battery, so the red and black wires from the servos were connected to another ‘break out board’ supplying 5v from the ESC’s BEC backed up (isolated by diodes) by another stand-alone BEC. Once I’d got all that sorted, my first test flight showed that vibration was way over limit, so I replaced the 3M 2mm tape in this model with Kyosho 5mm gel type tape. That got the vibration back within limits, but it became unstuck as I was preparing for my second flight. Not trusting the Kyosho tape for side mounting, I realised the Matek unit in the housing I’d made was narrow enough to fit between the frames on top of the tail drive gearbox, so that’s where it’s now located. Hanging the GPS unit off the side of the frame wouldn’t have fitted inside my scale Hughes 500 fuselage, so I made a ‘bridge’ of fibreglass plate, which straddles the tail drive gearbox using its fixing bolts, and places the GPS unit centrally over the geargbox. This version has now flown successfully in my usual three modes.

Vibration was not an issue with my original heli with the R15 controller, so why it is with my Matek one is a mystery to me. Could it be the R15 is electronically damped (or something) whereas the Matek isn’t; or is it the frames’ materials (metal vs. carbon), or is it simply something out of balance in the rotating parts even though I’ve balanced everything I can?

Thank you to those who helped, and thank you for reading. :slightly_smiling_face:

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@abenn1 I’ve used 4 mRo X2.1 controllers (on 2 Trex 550E’s, on 1 Trex 450 and on 1 Trex 470) and 2 Matek H743 V2 Wing controllers on Trex 470’s, I’m installing the second Matek now. All are mounted to the side of the Trex frames with 3M double sided tape (as shown), very low vibration readings on each, not an issue unless blades are not tracking or unbalanced. The Matek controllers have a lot going for them, will continue to use them from now on.

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Thanks ggibbons. I’ve got a TRex 550 in a scale fuselage to convert next. I’ll be looking at the other Matek H743 versions to see if they simplify the wiring. My blades are well balanced and are tracking perfectly, so I can’t figure why so much difference between the vibe data of the two TRex 500s.

Is there a baro on that Matek board? How are you protecting it from false pressure readings?

Edit: I’ve just looked at the H743WING variant, and it certainly looks more suitable than the MINI from a connections point of view. All servos can take power from the board so long as you trust that the board’s 8A BEC is adequate, so simply plug all three wires in to header pins without the need for breakout boards.