I have tried some different flight controllers for my different multicopter projects. I have only used open source flight controllers, and none of the commercial ones such as DJI Wooking M, Mikrokopter or Hoverfly Pro. The ones I own are KKmulticopter, Open Pilot Copter Control and Arducopter.
KKmulticopter vs Open Pilot Copter Control vs Arducopter
Even though my flight controllers are very similar in many ways, they also have some differences. Here is my brief comparison of the multicopter flight controllers. I will tell you what I like and what I don’t like about the different boards.
KKmulticopter
The KKmulticopter is the simplest board of the three. It’s developed by a norwegian dude named Rolf Bakke aka Kaptein KUK (I guess KUK also is an acronym or something, and not the only norwegian word for the male genitals, which it is in swedish) My specific board is the blue board from Minsoo Kim in korea. I bought it with pre-installed firmware for my first quadrocopter, and it was easy to reprogram it when I wanted to change to Y6 hexacopter control.
The components are very simple. It uses cheap piezo gyros instead of the more modern MEMS gyros that Arducopter and Open Pilot Copter Control uses. You set the gyro gain using analog dials which is very convenient if you quickly want to tweak your settings.
It has no accelerometers and cannot auto-level, but it’s a really great flight control for beginners who want to learn basic maneuvering.
There are cheaper KKmulticopter boards available from Hobby King, but I honestly think it feels better to support the KKmulticopter community and buy it from Rolf Bakke or Minsoo Kim. Even though Minsoo Kim runs a commercial business with his online store, he has also made a huge achievement for the KKmulticopter community by providing improved code and many new ideas and concepts.
The pros for the KKmulticopter is that it’s super simple and easy to get started for beginners. You can practically only buy it with preinstalled code, so you don’t need to connect it to your computer, and make a lot of setup etc.
The cons are that it has less features than my other two boards. It does not autolevel and it has only 6 pwm outputs, so I cannot use my servo stabilized camera mount on my Y6 frame. Actually am I not sure if it supports camera stabilization even on a quadrocopter, but there are so many different versions of the code, so don’t take my word for it.
My card was about 100 dollars, but you can buy them cheaper from Hobby King.
The KKmulticopter is the best choice for anyone who quickly want to try the multicopter concept. It’s pretty much a ready to fly product. You can almost just plug it in and take off.
Open Pilot Copter Control
Open Pilot Copter Control has the fastest and most modern hardware of my three flight control boards. It has a faster processor (STM32) and the code seems to be well written too. A major difference from the KKmulticopter is that the Open Pilot concept consists both of the flight board and a ground control station (GCS) that runs on your computer. The GCS is used for setup, flight data, flight planning and more. Open Pilot GCS is also available for Mac (which I use) and for Unix.
What I first noticed is that the board is really really tiny! Yet it’s the best performing FC board of the three when it comes to basic flying maneuvers. It’s very stable, quick responding and generally easy to control.
The setup using the GSC is very quick and easy. Here is a video how to configure it within 10 minutes.
It has support for camera stabilization, but it only has 6 pwm outputs so that doesn’t go for my Y6 hexacopter. I think there might be some workarounds using PPM etc, but I haven’t tried that yet. Since I really like the performance of the board, I might build a large quadcopter with camera stabilization just to be able to use the Copter Control for aerial photography.
I haven’t tried the Copter Control with GPS or any other support for autonomous flying, but there seems to be solutions for that too. There is also a more advanced version of the Copter Control advertised, that is called Open Pilot PRO/INS, but there is not any info about it yet.
The pros for the Open Pilot Copter Control is that it flies so well and it’s easy to setup. It has some advanced features too and support for telemetry. A very appreciated feature is that the motors are always spinning slowly when the multicopter is armed. The armed mode is then very visual and helps you to avoid NASTY accidents while handling those powerful deadly flying lawnmowers.
There are actually some cons too. It seems to be out of stock most of the time. It has only 6 PWM outputs. The progress tracker on their site indicates that the project doesn’t develop very fast. It has been stuck on 289/310 for many weeks now. I know it’s not right to criticize the very generous team that gives us all this good things on as open source, and the pace of the progress is not really a problem since the available versions work magnificent.
Open Pilot is about 100 dollars and is the best choice for someone who want’s a well performing multicopter platform, but don’t need tons of flight modes and autonomous flying tasks. It’s the best performing platform when it comes to basic flying.
Arducopter
Arducopter has the most features of my control boards, and you can add on lots of sensors and stuff such as telemetry. There are also many other software platforms using this hardware, such as ArduPirate and Aeroquad.
Arducopter is the trickiest board to configure and it has a lot of flight modes and advanced features for autonomous flying and more. Just as the Open Pilot, the Arducopter too uses a Ground Control System on your computer. You use it to configure your multicopter, collect flight data, program autonomous flight tasks and more. It’s not quite as easy to use as the Open Pilot GCS, but it’s not rocket science either.
I bought my board pre-assembeled from Udrones with magnetometer and GPS. Those two sensors opens up for some useful flightmodes. You can put your multicopter on a specific position, pointing in a specific direction. That might be useful for some aerial photography tasks. You can add more sensors, like sonar for better measuring of altitude. That enables features like soft autonomus take offs and landings. I should also mention that Arducopter has basic functionality as auto-level etc.
The pros for the Arducopter are all the features, and that the Arducopter community is very large, so all code is thoroughly tested by many people. It’s Arduino based, so there is a lot of knowledge about the hardware. Arducopter also has camera stabilization and 8 PWM outputs which is why this FC works best for my DSLR Y6 hexacopter.
The cons are that the hardware is slower and older than Open Pilot. A slightly annoying thing is that there are many releases of the 2.0 beta. I get the impression that they add functionality in each new 2.0 build, instead of closing the scope and release a stable Arducopter 2.0 and then add more functionality in the 2.1 and so on. I think there has been 42 different betas so far. And if you have a pretty secure and stable version, it might suddenly get buggy and dangerous next time you update it.
But then again, it’s not fair to complain when the developer team gives us all this as open source, and overall the Arducopter is a fantastic fully featured multicopter platform.
Arducopter is about 300 dollars. Arducopter is the best choice for someone who is into aerial photography, or like to program advanced autonomous flying tasks. Arducopter is my main board that I use in my XL carbon Y6 for aerial photography.
I hope this will help you find a platform that matches your needs.
Hi Carl,
thank you for that nice overview and profound insight to the topic. I myself have the KKboard and the Open Pilot CC in use and can 100% agree with your statements. As I have no experience yet with autonomous navigation I am really looking forward to the progress on this within the Open Pilot community.
By the way, you have a nice blog on a even nicer topic.
Regards,
ArrowX
I’m not trying to stir thing up but Hobbyking pays royalties to KK for every board they sell. There is no reason not to buy the HK board.
“There are cheaper KKmulticopter boards available from Hobby King, but I honestly think it feels better to support the KKmulticopter community and buy it from Rolf Bakke or Minsoo Kim.”
Thanks, I didn’t know that.
Hello Carl,
Thanks for sharing! As a part of the OpenPilot Team, I was happy to see your review and want to confirm your assumptions as listed, and yes while the software moves slowly that is because the real development in going into the OpenPilot Pro aka “OpenPilot Revolution” which is a full on UAV system to rival them all. The CopterControl is a small taste of what is to come in the Revolution. I will be re-syndicating your feed on my personal lab website.
Thanks
Franco
Community Manager – OpenPilot.org
Hi Franco! That Open Pilot Revolution looks very interesting, there wasn’t much info about it at the time I wrote the review. When will the hardware be released?
BTW, if you send me a board, I promise to write a review of it
Thanks for taking the time to write this up. It is a very fair analysis of some of the leading hardware in the autopilot world. I would just like to correct a couple facts re the OpenPilot CopterControl.
1) It is capable of up to 10 PWM outputs. Only six are available on the header, the other four are available through the large port on the side. I have successfully configured OpenPilot to fly a variable-pitch quadcopter and I know others have already flown octocopters.
2) I think you might have looked in the wrong spot for progress. My guess is that you were looking at bug reports on the Jira, not feature upgrades that have occurred outside of that. Just in the last few months, OpenPilot has been upgraded to support gimbaling cameras (This has been demonstrated on a flying octocopter with camera gimbal); helicopter support; ground vehicle support; Spektrum and S.Bus direct inputs (saving weight and pinout, all while increasing precision); and several other major and minor upgrades. Progress is fast and furious, but this isn’t necessarily represented on the Jira, for better or for worse.
Again, thanks for taking the time to write this post.
Thanks for the info!
That sounds just great! Unfortunately I don’t have a PPM system so I can not use the extra outputs. If I would buy me a PPM system one day, how much power can I get from the outputs? Is it enough to power the servos in a DSLR camera mount? Or should I assign those optional outputs to the ESCs and power the servos from the regular PWM outputs? What is best practice?
The PWM outputs are exactly the same outputs as the signal lines on the servo headers. The upshot of this is that you don’t get any power out of those lines at all, not on the header and not in the expansion plug. As such, the easiest thing to do in your case would be to have the ESCs connect through the port and then your servos through the header. This approach reduces wiring complexity, vs. the other option of using the ESCs on the header and the servos on the port.
Personally, I prefer to use a Spektrum Satellite over PPM. It’s easier, and the support is built right in. You can plug it into the FlexiPort, which completely frees up the main port for PWM.
P.S. For posterity, might you consider posting an update to your original blog post, taking into account the information in my first comment?
Agreed on the Royalty paid KK board. We at multircshop also paid for every single board sold.
Hi Admin,
Your comparisons are excellent!.
This gives very good idea for the people who have dilema.
However there are many Flight Controllers available nowadays..
Howabout making a wider comparison?
Thanks
Dominic Ancelm
dompower@gmail.com
Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia
Thankyou
I would like to know how the DJI Wooking M, Mikrokopter or Hoverfly Pro would compait to these.
I know this is a difficult question.
I haven’t had the opportunity to try any of DJI Wookong M, Mikrokopter or Hoverfly Pro. I would say that the DJI Wookong is the most interesting FC of them, it seems to perform very well, but then again I don’t have any real life experience of it.
Being the Uk and a European Distributor for DJI , We stock the DJI Wookong Controllers and have tested them extensively against all other Flight controllers out there at the moment .
The Wookong is the probably the best if not the best Multicopter Controller out at the moment.
Always in stock from the Uk’s No1 Multi Rotor Specialist http://www.quadcopters.co.uk and we will be happy to help out on your blog here with technical help and set up tips.
just wanted to let you know that OpenPilot CC has 10 pwm channels now..
http://forums.openpilot.org/topic/7087-coptercontrol-has-10-outputs-octocopter-plus-camera-stabilization-support/
Great site!
The best quadcopter boards review around!. but please, multiwii boards (quadrino zoom, hoverfly, etc) deserves an update for this post.
thanks!
Thanks!
Multiwii and Hoverfly etc are also common flight controllers for multicopters, but I have no personal experience of using them so I can’t really tell how they perform.
If I should take a guess I’d say that the Multiwii has about the same performance as Arducopter when it comes to stability etc, but it has less features.
Hoverfly has two product lines, Hoverfly Pro and Hoverfly Sport.
If I should guess again, I’d say that Hoverfly Sport is in some way comparable to Open Pilot if I should only use my own boards as a reference. Hoverfly Pro is competing with other professional flight controllers like DJI Wookong and Mikrokopter. All of those boards are better than my boards if you have professional demands.
Hopefully I’ll get the opportunity to make a comparison of pro boards one day, but unfortunately that will definitely not be in a near future.
Can you tell me why my kkmulticopter version 2 board only allows 3 of the four motors on my quad copter to start at 1/4 throttle? I have to give full throttle in order to get the fourt motor to even start and it lags behind the other three all the time unless I am at full throttle. I have calibrated my escs and still I have problems.
Things change very fast in this arena.
The KK v2 board is a major evolution over the original KKmulticopter board.
It has an LCD display and the setup is menu driven. It also includes accelerometers in addition to gyros – so it now has autolevel capability. It’s only about $30 from HK and is an excellent way to get started.
The MultiWii Pro board has seen a hardware upgrade (v2) to now use the same 6 axis integrated accel/gyro chip as the newest APM (Arducopter) board. In theory they have the same capabilities. The MultiWii boards come with their own firmware – which is quite good, but for increased capabilities they can be flashed with MegaPirateNG – which is essentially Arducopter ported to run on alternate (MultiWii, AIOP, etc) hardware.
The APM mission planner can not be used to load the MegaPirateNG firmware onto the MultiWii board (must use Arduino), but it can be used to communicate with a MultiWii board for many other functions – including wireless telemetry with the APM mission planner ground station.
The MultiWii Pro v2 is available from Whitespyquad for around $50 (w/o GPS).
For those wanting all of the advantages of the DIY Drones APM2.5 board, a clone is available from RCTimer for about $80 (w/o GPS). Just don’t expect to ask 3DRobotics for support. If you want that – buy the real thing. Personally I think it’s worth it.
There are several alternative sources for the 3DR wireless telemetry modem. WhiteSpyQuad (readytoflyquads.com), RCTimer, and HobbyKing all carry it. HK currently has the best price, but RCTimer sells air and ground modules separately.
There are other flight controller/autopilot hardware choices as well. This market is changing and evolving quickly.
Really nice article! Please join http://www.multicopterforum.com the forum that is dedicated to multi rotor enthusiasts, hope to see you soon!
Matt
Thanks for posting this. It’s surprisingly difficult to find an objective comparison between the various flight controllers. I’ve been doing a lot of flying on ArduCopter (on Pixhawk, Iris), and it’s pretty stinking stable. I have a DJI Phantom like I’m sure a million other people have. I keep looking at OpenPilot and wondering how it compares, and this answers it.