I enjoy using Ardupilot / Mission Planner, etc, and I enjoy all the tweaking that can be done, and the depth of customizability.
But…
I was wondering if it might be possible to have a “simple/advanced” button somewhere in Mission Planner, that lets the 95% of users not who are not interested in parameter tweaking for days, a way of using the system in a much more simplified and straightforward way.
Some folks just want to take off, enjoy a few flight modes, maybe tune just a bit, fly a couple auto-missions, and that’s about it. For them (and I’ve been one of them for sure), Arducopter can seem quite overwhelming.
Sure their frame might not fly quite as well as it could, etc, but at least it would be successfully flying without having to read countless web pages.
I know iNav, etc is out there, but personally my brain has trouble keeping up with ONE system.
In addition to the options in Mission Planner, you can follow these “standard build” topics to eliminate a lot of the guesswork in a new build. Use the components suggested with as few substitutions as possible. The tuned parameters are available for download.
If these suggestions are not satisfactory, then it’s possible that ArduPilot is simply not the best choice for your application. There are indeed more newbie-friendly experiences available in iNav, Betaflight, or similar with the likely sacrifice of flexibility and/or extensibility.
Choosing the Basic layout seems to me to be akin to a “3 Wise Monkeys” approach When its inadvertently selected it has generated posts here on the Forum “where is the xxxx parameter, I can’t find it…”
When its inadvertently selected it has generated posts here on the Forum “where is the xxxx parameter, I can’t find it…”