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Update 1.3 - 1 March 2018

Sadly, although my focus is with still shots that was pretty much the only way it would have fit my operations as well, but only with the E-50. Had that been built to deliver 20Mpxl images I might have gone for it. Changing lenses on a CGO-3 provides the same stills rendering as an E-50 for a lot less money.
 
Pixhawk is a flight controller based on PX4 hardware. I'm pretty sure the H520's flight controller is a Mini Pixhawk, a modification since that electronics is open source.

Then, different "Operating Systems" or firmwares work on this hardware. The most important are Ardupilot and PX4 Autopilot(software). Ardupilot and its version for multi-rotors (Arducopter) is in my opinion the most complete and advanced version available. PX4 Autopilot is another version. Last year a consortium was created to promote development and it is on this basis that the H520 is based. It is less than 1 year old (the new project is called Dronecode).

Ardupilot has its partners and Drodecode has its partners, as I have already mentioned on other occasions. These are two different projects where Ardupilot has been standing out for a few years now and Dronecode is beginning its journey.

Betting on a new project, where in principle it will be proprietary code, unlike Ardupilot which is Open Source, where the big partners are large manufacturers of drones worldwide, can only respond to economic interests. Yuneec is a partner of Dronecode.

The hardware base has a long and proven track record. Now the firmware has to be developed and given the necessary functionalities so that the drones have power and features that match and outperform the competition. The Yuneec hardware for this, the H520 (for now) is based on PX4 (mini-pixhawk or whatever you want to call it) and the software depends on the development of Dronecode which is currently the bottleneck that is slowing down all the development and major updates of the H520. Everything indicates that H PLUS will have the same problem since the base is the same hardware and therefore the same software base.

Looking at Dronecode's main partners (3DR, Intel, Qualcomm and Yuneec itself), the trajectory of this project is promising, unless the problems are so serious that the project fails.

As you can see, things are not so simple. This does not justify the distortion problems and probably also the problems with the gymbal vibrations, of the latter I am not so sure.

Those of us who already have the H520 can only hope that the problems we have will be solved as much as possible and I fear that the new buyers have no choice but to wait for them to be solved before buying. It is a backlog of delays that we hope will soon disappear and we have a platform that can finally be called PROFESSIONAL.
 
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I just updated the gimbal and I'm experiencing the same vibration problem. It was very noticeable when I conducted the compass and accelerometer calibration. The vibration/buzzing is very bad if the camera is pointing forward, straight on the horizon (when I move the vehicle around). Its not as bad if I point the camera at a 45 degree angle. I'm flying tomorrow, so I wonder how much this will show up in the video.
I just got back from flying and sure enough the stuttering gimbal ruined many of my otherwise good shots. I guess I better contact support and let them know what has happened. In the meantime I might need to load older firmware so I don't have the issue, if I can find an older version.
 
@claudius62 Yes, you're right that the PX4 platform didn't support curves. However, there is active development in this area (Commits to the code base in the last month), so it's quite possible we will see it in a future firmware update. One of the reasons Yuneec went for a PX4 controller was that they could benefit from a larger development community who're adding a range of features that they should be able to integrate relatively easily. The codebase for the Typhoon H was reputedly a rats-nest and very difficult to develop without breaking things. Yuneec don't have a huge software team, so complex code can be badly delayed if it needs changes - as we've discovered.

From what I've been told the H+ uses a completely different code base, developed by a different team. It's not PX4 based, but a custom flight control. So it doesn't do complex missions including actions at waypoints, it doesn't have programmable RTH thresholds and so on. It will do curved cable cam, but you won't be able to control exactly where photos are taken. It should be much, much simpler than the PX4 Flight controller + DataPilot, but it will be able to do 'consumer' things well. We'll see how that works out when the H+ arrives.
 
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I just got back from flying and sure enough the stuttering gimbal ruined many of my otherwise good shots. I guess I better contact support and let them know what has happened. In the meantime I might need to load older firmware so I don't have the issue, if I can find an older version.
It is available on the German Yuneec website in the downloads section
 
I took these soon after updating to the latest update. At first I did not notice the distortion, because this subdivision doent have a strait line in it lol.. Note: the parking lot actually is curvedYUN_0005.JPG YUN_0006.JPG YUN_0007.JPG YUN_0003.JPG YUN_0005.JPG YUN_0005.JPG YUN_0006.JPG YUN_0007.JPG YUN_0003.JPG YUN_0005.JPG YUN_0006.JPG YUN_0007.JPG YUN_0003.JPG YUN_0005.JPG YUN_0006.JPG YUN_0007.JPG YUN_0003.JPG YUN_0005.JPG
 
@claudius62 Yes, you're right that the PX4 platform didn't support curves. However, there is active development in this area (Commits to the code base in the last month), so it's quite possible we will see it in a future firmware update. One of the reasons Yuneec went for a PX4 controller was that they could benefit from a larger development community who're adding a range of features that they should be able to integrate relatively easily. The codebase for the Typhoon H was reputedly a rats-nest and very difficult to develop without breaking things. Yuneec don't have a huge software team, so complex code can be badly delayed if it needs changes - as we've discovered.

From what I've been told the H+ uses a completely different code base, developed by a different team. It's not PX4 based, but a custom flight control. So it doesn't do complex missions including actions at waypoints, it doesn't have programmable RTH thresholds and so on. It will do curved cable cam, but you won't be able to control exactly where photos are taken. It should be much, much simpler than the PX4 Flight controller + DataPilot, but it will be able to do 'consumer' things well. We'll see how that works out when the H+ arrives.

Sorry Tuna your wrong! Just taken from the Yuneec Website. the H+ has a PX4 controller!

Smart Hexacopter

A top image quality combined with the reliability and automatic flight modes every photo and videographer desires. The Typhoon H Plus hexacopter is equipped with a 1" camera with 4K video resolution, a PX4-based flight controller and flight modes from Follow Me and Point of Interest to Curve Cable Cam. Relevant core areas of the Typhoon H Plus are now even more shielded against electrical influences and ensure a maximum reliability together with the PX4 controller and the 6-rotor design.

Also have a read here, Yuneec are very much involved in developing the PX4 platform.

Yuneec Research – Advanced Technology Labs AG
 
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Sorry Tuna your wrong! Just taken from the Yuneec Website. the H+ has a PX4 controller!

Smart Hexacopter

A top image quality combined with the reliability and automatic flight modes every photo and videographer desires. The Typhoon H Plus hexacopter is equipped with a 1" camera with 4K video resolution, a PX4-based flight controller and flight modes from Follow Me and Point of Interest to Curve Cable Cam. Relevant core areas of the Typhoon H Plus are now even more shielded against electrical influences and ensure a maximum reliability together with the PX4 controller and the 6-rotor design.

Also have a read here, Yuneec are very much involved in developing the PX4 platform.

Yuneec Research – Advanced Technology Labs AG

My understanding, from the combination of Tuna's and Arruntus' posts, is that Tuna may be referring to the PX4 Autopilot(software). The H+ has the PX4 controller but it will be custom code on the controller instead of PX4 Autopilot. Is this correct?
 
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PX4 is the autopilot and C2 interface. Different types of controllers can be used to send commands but I don’t believe there is specific a PX4 transmitter controller.
 
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Sorry Tuna your wrong! Just taken from the Yuneec Website. the H+ has a PX4 controller!

Smart Hexacopter

A top image quality combined with the reliability and automatic flight modes every photo and videographer desires. The Typhoon H Plus hexacopter is equipped with a 1" camera with 4K video resolution, a PX4-based flight controller and flight modes from Follow Me and Point of Interest to Curve Cable Cam. Relevant core areas of the Typhoon H Plus are now even more shielded against electrical influences and ensure a maximum reliability together with the PX4 controller and the 6-rotor design.

Also have a read here, Yuneec are very much involved in developing the PX4 platform.

Yuneec Research – Advanced Technology Labs AG

Perhaps I should have explained better. The hardware controller is a mildly custom PX4 block, and that will be shared across the hex drones they produce - H520, H+ and so on. The software flight controller running on it is apparently different - PX4 stack for the H520 and their own custom firmware for the H+. They don't want people to be able to install DataPilot on the ST-16 and make their H+ do everything the H520 can. I've been told very specifically that the PX4 SDK will not work with the H+.

So, yes the H+ has PX4 hardware, but it's not running PX4 software. That's what their head of software development has been telling me, and what I understand from talking to their dev team in Zurich. I'm very well aware of what they're doing with DroneCore, which I why I was saying that continuous flight paths are likely to be supported eventually, but it won't be 'Curved Cable Cam'.

Of course, this is all subject to change - there has been a bit of a shift in the last couple of weeks, and the H+ software is being developed in China by a team that is pretty secretive, so it's much less clear what they're up to compared with H520 development.
 
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Oh, it will move faster so if they entrusted the development of the Software to the development equation of Dji, There is already a big part hard work fact realised. moqueur dji.gif
 
Perhaps relevant here is that Yuneec’s participation in the Dronecode community implies they knew exactly what they could or could not do with the 520 when they started advertising the model, and the customer perceived FC deficiencies would have not been a surprise. For me that raises a question; did the beta version 520’s have a different FC in them that permitted them to do more?
 
On this YT video from CES 2017 h520 has Real Sense, bottom sensor and h480 style camera. Maybe the guts were different on beta samples.

 
My understanding is that it has always been PX4. The impression was that as a commercial drone the brief for the H520 was very tight - inspection and surveying. It was not designed or intended to be a drone for videography, though the hardware platform is planned to support all 'high end' drones Yuneec produces in the next few years. For the H520 all of the focus in testing was for being able to do complex waypoint missions for the market leading survey tools, something that the Typhoon H CCC missions are really not suited to.
 
It's a bit confusing to always talk about PX4 without indicating whether it's hardware or software. We can call the software by its name, which is PX4 Autopilot ( or the name, I don't know, that Dronecode, DataPilot could have given it?).

It may not seem like it, but that different groups of people are developing the software for the two aircraft separately is great news. It denotes commitment to the development of DataPilot with future prospects. The fact that they are currently looking for more staff also indicates this.

Some time ago we had already contemplated the idea, on the other hand totally logical, that something would be done so that the H PLUS would not have the functionalities of the H520. There would be no way to justify the price difference. Now it will depend on the development of DataPilot to know what features the H520 will have. On the other hand, we will be able to see the functionalities that the H PLUS will have and it will be inevitable to compare them.

The news that something has moved in Yuneec USA, which seems to was the biggest problem in the development of the H520 software, that another approach has been given to the software development roadmap and that we will talking, about next week or the following, another update does not make me anything but smile. And I think we were all in need of it :D
 

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