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Should you get into Raceflight?
#1
Here is a copy and paste of what FinalGlide had to say about Raceflight on his FB, thought some might find it interesting and doesn't have FB:

Quote:I have been waiting for the Revolt to come out as I've been wanting to try Raceflight for a while but with so many FC options I wanted to give it a chance on the hardware designed specifically for it. I know that plenty of people will call me biased no matter what I say but I tend to ignore them and put my thoughts forward for those who wish to hear it from me. Please note that I do not get any financial gain or perks for choosing one brand over the other. If you disagree with my findings then that is fine. Now, before we even look at the board there are few things to lay down. It may not be important for some but I know it's important for others and that is why I will include it here. It certainly got me thinking.

First there was 8bit Multiwii, then Baseflight was written from Multiwii for 32bit processors. Cleanflight then came along and aimed at cleaning up the Baseflight code. Betaflight then came along and started trying various new (beta) things that Cleanflight wasn't. All of these FW followed each other and borrowed or used code from one another. That is all perfectly fine as they are open source projects. No one is making money and the source code is open and free for everyone to use in an open source manner. The issue came to be when Raceflight (which was also derrived from places like Betaflight) went closed source and tried to start making money using open source code. Right now Raceflight one is being written which I am told is just for the Revolt so it will fly better but others also believe it is simply last ditch effort to stop them from getting in trouble for copying open source code for a closed source project since they got caught in the act. Now.... I'm not going to get into a battle about whether they did or did not steal code wrongly in the comments because there is plenty of conversations and much mud slinging already on the internet for people to read, including the Github thread that was deleted by the RF team but was saved by others before it was erased. Either way, there are some serious accusations at play here. The question is do you believe them and or do you even care. That is for the individual to decide. I have my own opinion on the matter but I'm trying to focus on how the FC actually flies.

The other issue a lot of people are having is with the sales pitching that is going on. Lot's of hype building is happening with key words like "SSG" (Super Secret Gyro), and "worlds best filtering", putting the gyro in the centre of the FC, 32KHz looptime and esc speed have been thrown around with no real scientific backup. Some love the hype thing, some hate it. Whether it actually works or not, choosing to hype things up instead of letting the product speak for itself can really guide who your target audience is.

I gave the FC to some friends who have experience in the electronics world and they said although there were some things they would do different there was nothing on the board that was really badly done. The Gyro type (SSG) was tracked down and was compared to an MPU 6050 and shown to be marginally better in cases but not as good in others. As I said before, the proof is in the flying. It was a little annoying installing the FC as I had to find an old Polulu 5v reg to power the FC as it has only 5v in. This apparently to keep noise down on the board but others have shown that an onboard reg can still provide noise free power. The other issue for me personally was lack of telemetry. I rely on my full KISS telemetry including mah consumption for the KISS24a esc's and this was not possible. There is not even the possibility for for Vbat telem without making voltage divider. This may not be an issue for others but it was for me personally.

Once installed I went about setting up the FC in the GUI. Things are not as easy to find like GUI FW and so forth but it's all early release so that is to be expected. The small issues like wrong UART selected for the FW pre installed on the FC and the motor order being wrong and different to the pinnout diagram are also something I will put down to early release issues. Everything has small issues when it first comes out so one cannot be too judgemental. The RF community was quick to help me out which was great and I was flying.
So... how does it fly? Before I answer that I will say that I have tried various flight modes and spent a few days on it trying to get my head around it. Like other FW out there, RF has it's own little way of doing things and taking the time to understand that is important, although if you are familiar to the Betaflight environment you will be reasonably at home. I am still playing with it and will continue too as well. I will also say that I intend to try other esc's with it to see if anything changes. So far the quad has fallen out of the sky 5 times so am not confident to go do anything serious with it. One could blame the esc's but most occasions it has had all 4 motors die in the air so I would not think that is esc issues. I also have at this point in time not tried the RF one FW (as I don't believe it is public as of yet) but I will do so when it comes out as the advertising suggests it flies much better than the current FW.

Anyway, can I get it to fly well? Yes I can. I can get it to fly quite smooth and locked. It flies quite well on stock PIDs as well but I did go back to the other FC FW's out there to compare and they fly well on stock PIDs also. This is the thing I wanted to look at. I have been told that the Revolt has industry leading filters yet I still have trouble with oscillations and hot motors like other FW in some situations. I can still get it to oscillate through prop wash (all be it at a higher freq. due to the faster looptime) and I can still have it misbehave. There is nothing that is blowing me out of the water to substantiate the claims being made and nothing showing me it is better than the other options out there. I'm sorry but there isn't. While I can get it to fly nicely I am left wondering where all the amazing claims are coming from about filtering, SSG's and super fast refresh rates. The one thing that really sells me on an FC is feel in the air. This is one reason why I have been using the KISS FC for so long and I have been struggling to find that same feeling in the revolt. No matter what I do I am left with a robotic feel. The closest I can get is to switch on Skitzo mode which is just basically higher stick resolution but I still feel like it's missing something. The feel of a quad is a personal thing so what feels good to me may not feel good to the next guy so if it suits you then great. I will keep trying to find what I am looking for and maybe that will come with more fiddling or RF one. Currently though, when I go to fly for fun it is not the RF quad that I go to pick up. The lack of telemetry on that quad and not knowing when to land does not help.
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