HC sue KDS - Flymentor is a counterfeit

[cmulder]

I don't know the rules in detail but its likley that any ruling in germany is valid for the whole eu.

[wwhhtt]

Originally Posted by Windbreaker

But no one has the right to grab someone else's hard work and market or release it without the creator's permission. Doesn't matter if it's a disc full of computer code, A CD full of music, or a crate full of LiPo batteries. That's theft. And that's wrong.

M8, I understand that and knows where are you coming from fully.

What I am saying is in reality, created something and produce it then trying to make money out of it forever is pure fantasy, doesn't matter how hard it was to create or produce it. The more popular the product is, the more sooner a replica or even a 100% clone will be released. The law might be able to offer some comfort but that's about it. Giant enterprises like Microsoft cannot even win this war, don't need to mention the small CAPTRON which not even a public listed company.

From what I can see the best result can come out of this dispute is CAPTRON sign a partnership agreement with KDS, make KDS it's major manufacture plant and R&D center, produce a new product named CommandMonter with new codes that cost half the Helicommand and twice the Flymentor, and works like charm.

[Windbreaker]

Originally Posted by wwhhtt

...in reality, created something and produce it then trying to make money out of it forever is pure fantasy, doesn't matter how hard it was to create or produce it.

Unfortunately for the hard-working creative types, and luckily for some who aren't nearly as innovative or ethical, this is civil law. And that means the injured party has to sue in order see justice served.

Lawsuits cost time and money, and the injured party might not have the resources or the legal reach to resolve an infraction. And that's what some people -- who really don't have much of a conscience -- depend upon when they openly break copyright laws.

Speaking of fantasy, Disney goes through great lengths to keep Mickey Mouse out of public domain. They've lobbied for the extension of the copyright law. And now it's in excess of 70 years. Several scholars on the subject see an irony in a corporation that quashes the issue of public domain, when many of the films they produced are based on the fair use of old classic tales.

[Pdbakos]

The best thing is now there available at Hobby City!!! And dirt cheap!!
http://www.hobbycity.com/hobbycity/s...dProduct=10092

Go free enterprise!! LOL

[Seebodener]

Originally Posted by cmulder

I don't know the rules in detail but its likley that any ruling in germany is valid for the whole eu.

it is not automatically valid for the whole eu, but making it valid for the eu is much easier with a positive ruling in germany.

BTW don´t be mistaken, Captron isn´t a small firm: take a look here:
http://www.captron.de/com/navigate/frms_01.htm

[Angelos]

Copyright is based on international treaties and applies to all countries that adopt copyright laws. You don't have to sue the manufacturer in every country that the illegal product is sold though you may have to individually apply to the customs of each region to confiscate the illegal stock.

-Angelos

[mtnbike101]

Originally Posted by Pdbakos

The best thing is now there available at Hobby City!!! And dirt cheap!!
http://www.hobbycity.com/hobbycity/s...dProduct=10092

Go free enterprise!! LOL

As Angelos pointed out previously...



Certified Buyer Rated 10/20/2009
borneobear |
After many tries, this product did not want to initialize. Could not get it to work, so its going back to HC. KDS will not deal directly with end users.

[Zew]

Originally Posted by mtnbike101

As Angelos pointed out previously...



Certified Buyer Rated 10/20/2009
borneobear |
After many tries, this product did not want to initialize. Could not get it to work, so its going back to HC. KDS will not deal directly with end users.

why you didn't quote it all
Certified Buyer Rated 10/5/2009
foster |
works great you have to turn it on twice for it to start up "plug it in unplug it then plug it in again"

you realy need a 7ch remote to use it properly, but you could get by with a 5ch
the flymentor unit dose all of your servo mixing for you so you need to be able to turn off the mixing on your transmitter.

I found it was very easy to use once it was all hooked up the hardest part was loading the driver file for vista onto my computer I had to deleat the old driver file before installing the new one. all in all though i had mine set up on 3dx450 in about a hour

performance so far has been awsome " i bought my first one last month before they were abalible at hobbyking I only have about 15 flights with it so far"
It realy makes it so anyone can fly. You let off the controls and it rights itself if you have the hover lock mode on it stays in one spot to when you let off the controls.

Im not useing the internal gyro for the tail there's a lot of reveiws that say its crap "if you use your own gyro hook it up directly to yor receiver other wise the flymentors gyro messes with it,

The wires fore the gain on the tail gyro and the head stabalizer are mislabled there the blue and green single wires off the flymentor unit to the receiver blue wire controls head stabalizer green controls tail they have it the other way around

Im useing mks digital sevos with it 3 ds 470s and one ds480 for the tail the flymentor is made for digital sevos so i don't how well it

15 people like this review.

Certified Buyer Rated 10/5/2009
|
he visto varios videos de esto y esta muy bien para estabilizar el helicoptero en una posicion y altura

9 people like this review.

Certified Buyer Rated 10/12/2009
Catastrophe |
Excellent, work as described. needs some messing aroud to get it work right, and the manual is poorly written or plain wrong.

The unit have a known problem with spectrum recievers with not powering on corretly every now and then, i have the problem to but only 1 out of 8 - 10 times. I think KDS is aware of the issues and im hoping there will be a fix to it later on.

I cannot complain and give it anything but 5 stars for this price.! Excellent!

4 people like this review.

Certified Buyer Rated 10/20/2009
borneobear |
After many tries, this product did not want to initialize. Could not get it to work, so its going back to HC. KDS will not deal directly with end users.

2 people like this review.

Certified Buyer Rated 10/20/2009
|
Good stuff fly on a Zoom400. balancing left right and front back is quite precise. The hover function is not so stable... But the Zoom400 is none stable machine at all. Next try on the HK450.
You have to know that this product isn't for beginers. You have to set up your chopper as well as possible without triming anything on the transmitter first. Then you'll make the fine setting and triming with the software delivered with the Flymentor. Hard job to find the right setting. The result is interresant for the price of the flymentor !

1 people like this review.

Certified Buyer Rated 10/19/2009
Malfamartin |
I cannot complain and give it 5 stars, and thanks to fellow customers written careful reviews. These reviews are really helpful

[rchelirookie]

I have flymentor on my CopterX450 and is working awesome save me a lot of $ for parts and rebuild done close to 200 flights I don’t have any of the problems like some of the other users is working 100% flymentor is much smaller (critical in RC hobbies) specially on smaller helis maybe that’s thread to HC

[treadmill]

I have just installed the unit in two helicopters (mine and a friends) and is having trouble with the final setups. The unit and controls seem to be working and balanced on the ground but when in flight, the helicopters seem to constantly require triming to keep stable in horizontal mode. We both have spectrum 6100 RXs so I have set the software to horizontal mode. We would trim it level then after some modest movement backward and forward or side to side, the helicopter would stay unlevel and I would have to trim it back level from the radio. I would find a stable level and go through some movement and then again it would go unlevel again. This is happening on both helicopters so I suspect that it is a program setup issue. Both helicopters are mechanical balanced before the install of the flymentor. Looking at the helicopters on the ground, it seems that flymentor resets itself to position the swashplate to perpendicular to the shaft after a few seconds. The helicopter could be tilted and if you hold the tilt the swashplate would move to again perpendicular to the shaft. My thoughts are that this reseting may be contributing to the helicopter in flight re-establishing a new horizontal which need to be trimed. Once trimmed it would reset and then you would have to go through retriming again after some modest movements. There does not seem to be a function in the program to turn this off if indeed this is the problem

Anybody run into this issue?

[Zew]

@ treadmill:
I setup FM3D successful but not use your way, my heli do maiden flight with FM3D this morning with both hands free at hovering it. Perhaps you should try my way (strictly follow manual)

1. You need not to set swash balance prior to install FM3D, set DX7 to 1 servo mode in swash type (to disable DX7 mixing function), FM3d will do this mixing instead on DX7

2. Install FM3d gyro on heli, make sure Gyro must on balance surface as much as possible.

3. Connect all the cyclic servo wires to control and control wires to rx then connect cable to PC. When PC successful link w/ controller, you will do servors reversing by setting on program and save it to controler to test its function. This process needs lot of "error and try" test until when you hold heli on your hand and tilt it the swash must responses correctly to every moves, ie: swash moves to opposite direction to try maintain parallel with ground. During this you should not care of the balance of swash but just its movement only.

4. Setup swash balance follows after success in swash movement set up. Because controller is starting to do mixing 3 cyclic servos then using Subtrim in DX7 may not works well, each time you adjust subtrim then controller do counter-adjust on other servos and you get in circle processs w/o ending, so I recommend you set all cyclic subtrims to zeros and get all servo arm at 90degrees before balancing the swash.
Also you don't want to use program to adjust the balance because it is quite inconvenience, needs lot ot set and save process between pc and controller.
I do balancing in mechanic way by adjust the length of swash link rods, you will adjust rods of Ail and Pit to get these two balance first then come to adjust Ele rod to keep up with Ail and Pit. After you get swash balanced, you can start with adjust blade pitch.
After this, you can hold yr heli again and try tilting it, now you can see swash response to your tilt and try good balance with ground.

5. After finish with swash, you will connect tail servo and test its reversing and HH rate, I use MKS DS480 as tail servo with rate of 60% in FM3d tail gyro function and it holds fine. I intend to save this rate to controller and no more use tail gyro control wire connect to Rx, so that I can use that channel to control between mod balance, off and position of FM3D

Remember to save your config on the program to a file in your PC. When you see controller have some weird behaviors, connect controler to PC, click button "Reset to factory setting" and save to controller, then load your saved config file and save it to controller, then it will work fine again. This config file saved me a lot of time during "try and error" process.

Hope this give some help

[rcjpth]

Originally Posted by Zew

@ treadmill:
I setup FM3D successful but not use your way, my heli do maiden flight with FM3D this morning with both hands free at hovering it. Perhaps you should try my way (strictly follow manual)

1. You need not to set swash balance prior to install FM3D, set DX7 to 1 servo mode in swash type (to disable DX7 mixing function), FM3d will do this mixing instead on DX7

2. Install FM3d gyro on heli, make sure Gyro must on balance surface as much as possible.

3. Connect all the cyclic servo wires to control and control wires to rx then connect cable to PC. When PC successful link w/ controller, you will do servors reversing by setting on program and save it to controler to test its function. This process needs lot of "error and try" test until when you hold heli on your hand and tilt it the swash must responses correctly to every moves, ie: swash moves to opposite direction to try maintain parallel with ground. During this you should not care of the balance of swash but just its movement only.

4. Setup swash balance follows after success in swash movement set up. Because controller is starting to do mixing 3 cyclic servos then using Subtrim in DX7 may not works well, each time you adjust subtrim then controller do counter-adjust on other servos and you get in circle processs w/o ending, so I recommend you set all cyclic subtrims to zeros and get all servo arm at 90degrees before balancing the swash.
Also you don't want to use program to adjust the balance because it is quite inconvenience, needs lot ot set and save process between pc and controller.
I do balancing in mechanic way by adjust the length of swash link rods, you will adjust rods of Ail and Pit to get these two balance first then come to adjust Ele rod to keep up with Ail and Pit. After you get swash balanced, you can start with adjust blade pitch.
After this, you can hold yr heli again and try tilting it, now you can see swash response to your tilt and try good balance with ground.

5. After finish with swash, you will connect tail servo and test its reversing and HH rate, I use MKS DS480 as tail servo with rate of 60% in FM3d tail gyro function and it holds fine. I intend to save this rate to controller and no more use tail gyro control wire connect to Rx, so that I can use that channel to control between mod balance, off and position of FM3D

Remember to save your config on the program to a file in your PC. When you see controller have some weird behaviors, connect controler to PC, click button "Reset to factory setting" and save to controller, then load your saved config file and save it to controller, then it will work fine again. This config file saved me a lot of time during "try and error" process.

Hope this give some help

Can we opt-out the FM3D gyro use but my own gyro GP750? I trust my gyro rather than the FM3D?

I'm asking because I found the source carrying it shipped $175 (much cheaper than CPII for $235 shipped and FMADirect doesn't care to give a discount since it's their hot/hype product - who cares for small guy with his 450s...) so I'm thinking to get FM3D and suddenly found the source where I use to buy my spare copterx 450 parts that's having in stock for 6 units, shipping is only $7 from Hong Kong.

Thanks,
rcjpth

[Zew]

In their manual, it states that you need not to use their own tail gyro.

you can buy CPII shipped just around $200 if you are in California, they occasionally give our discount code from $20 to 20% of whole order and it is great save. If you do not flight indoor or in bad weather, CPII is very good choice, it responses much quicker than FM3d and Howard always give extreme good support.
If you buy CPII by today till this Friday, FMA is giving discount $30 over $199 order, code is Code SP102809

About FM3D, you can get it shipped to USA at as low as $120 only (109+11 for ship). All you need just reg a membership at hobbycity site and wait till next batch of FM3d arrived. 1st batch of over 300sets is all sold out in 2 days and I am one of lucky guy of that batch.

I have CPII but still graped this Fm3d because it is quite cheap to give a try and found out it really works, just beware do not use under cold weather, perhaps low temperature make the crystal inside the balance-gyro get freeze to move, so it stops work, just my guess.

[rcjpth]

Originally Posted by Zew

In their manual, it states that you need not to use their own tail gyro.

you can buy CPII shipped just around $200 if you are in California, they occasionally give our discount code from $20 to 20% of whole order and it is great save. If you do not flight indoor or in bad weather, CPII is very good choice, it responses much quicker than FM3d and Howard always give extreme good support.
If you buy CPII by today till this Friday, FMA is giving discount $30 over $199 order, code is Code SP102809

About FM3D, you can get it shipped to USA at as low as $120 only (109+11 for ship). All you need just reg a membership at hobbycity site and wait till next batch of FM3d arrived. 1st batch of over 300sets is all sold out in 2 days and I am one of lucky guy of that batch.

I have CPII but still graped this Fm3d because it is quite cheap to give a try and found out it really works, just beware do not use under cold weather, perhaps low temperature make the crystal inside the balance-gyro get freeze to move, so it stops work, just my guess.

Thanks for the Quote - FMADirect is lucky to have customer like you - I did PM to FMADirect Rep - no responses...well - I really like to support our US economy - but I've been waiting and waiting and not even letting me know if no discount available or not (It sounds like that's the price, take it or leave...you know LOL)

Anyway - Thanks for code - this I never know of

rcjpth

[treadmill]

Originally Posted by Zew

@ treadmill:
I setup FM3D successful but not use your way, my heli do maiden flight with FM3D this morning with both hands free at hovering it. Perhaps you should try my way (strictly follow manual)

1. You need not to set swash balance prior to install FM3D, set DX7 to 1 servo mode in swash type (to disable DX7 mixing function), FM3d will do this mixing instead on DX7

2. Install FM3d gyro on heli, make sure Gyro must on balance surface as much as possible.

3. Connect all the cyclic servo wires to control and control wires to rx then connect cable to PC. When PC successful link w/ controller, you will do servors reversing by setting on program and save it to controler to test its function. This process needs lot of "error and try" test until when you hold heli on your hand and tilt it the swash must responses correctly to every moves, ie: swash moves to opposite direction to try maintain parallel with ground. During this you should not care of the balance of swash but just its movement only.

4. Setup swash balance follows after success in swash movement set up. Because controller is starting to do mixing 3 cyclic servos then using Subtrim in DX7 may not works well, each time you adjust subtrim then controller do counter-adjust on other servos and you get in circle processs w/o ending, so I recommend you set all cyclic subtrims to zeros and get all servo arm at 90degrees before balancing the swash.
Also you don't want to use program to adjust the balance because it is quite inconvenience, needs lot ot set and save process between pc and controller.
I do balancing in mechanic way by adjust the length of swash link rods, you will adjust rods of Ail and Pit to get these two balance first then come to adjust Ele rod to keep up with Ail and Pit. After you get swash balanced, you can start with adjust blade pitch.
After this, you can hold yr heli again and try tilting it, now you can see swash response to your tilt and try good balance with ground.

5. After finish with swash, you will connect tail servo and test its reversing and HH rate, I use MKS DS480 as tail servo with rate of 60% in FM3d tail gyro function and it holds fine. I intend to save this rate to controller and no more use tail gyro control wire connect to Rx, so that I can use that channel to control between mod balance, off and position of FM3D

Remember to save your config on the program to a file in your PC. When you see controller have some weird behaviors, connect controler to PC, click button "Reset to factory setting" and save to controller, then load your saved config file and save it to controller, then it will work fine again. This config file saved me a lot of time during "try and error" process.

Hope this give some help

Zew,

Thank you for your help. I had setup exactly what you had outlined in 1, 2, 3 above. In step 4 of your instructions, I had set my main trims to 0 on the TX and made sure the servos were at 90 deg at 50% throttle output after going through the tedious time consuming adjustments (to make servo arms 90 deg for all three) through the programs servo neutral settings and got it very close. Before the first flight the swash was pretty level to the ground when tilting. I have external gyros for the rudder so I did not need to set this up with Flymentor. I then adjusted the balance gain in the program to 80 in the horizontal side. I have a 6 channel reciever (spectrum 6100) and wanted to have horizontal hold active all the time. I did not connect the CCD since I could not switch to position mode. I found the the helicopter initially seemed to be somewhat balanced in a hover then would tilt away. That is when I started using the trims to bring the helicopter back to balance which worked until I moved the helicopter away from hovering.

I will try another setup where i will machanically adjust the linkages to find a balance. The thing that I found odd was that (with the motor disconnected) the swashplate will adjust perpendicular to the shaft after a few second with the helicopter held fixed in a tilt that is not horizontal. Is this normal? I have to check but my subtrims are probably not all at 0 during my setup since I had copied over the settings of the helicopter prior to installing flymentor.


I understand what you are saying (your quote: Because controller is starting to do mixing 3 cyclic servos then using Subtrim in DX7 may not works well, each time you adjust subtrim then controller do counter-adjust on other servos and you get in circle processs w/o ending) but if i do trim on the TX to find a balanced hover (stays balanced up until I move) then why does it not recover back to a balance hover when I fly the helicopter away from hover.

Treadmill

[rcjpth]

Well - after reading all of this - CPII is winning for its simple setup/installation and 100% guarantee of effectiveness with weather agreement in term of use . FM3D is troublesome and not fun to play with. Nightflr spent 7hr to setup and ended up defective unit after 1 or 2 week.

For FM3D, it's worth if Hobbycity restocks them and sells at 108 + $6 shipping (other store sells at crazy/hype price - $178 or $218 shipped..LOL). I will get one when HobbyCity has in stock.

For CPII, I live in California, there's park in front of my house (it was re-zoned again so the middle school taking most of the space of the park where it doesn't have the HV wire - the rest of the park has HV poles running through at height about 30 feet) but it does have some area big enough for sport flying at low altitude around 20 ft I guess it's ok.. so I'm getting CPII - it's a must to get then! (while FMDirect offers $30 off the total of combo3)

tks,
rcjpth

[Zew]

Originally Posted by treadmill

Zew,

Thank you for your help. I had setup exactly what you had outlined in 1, 2, 3 above. In step 4 of your instructions, I had set my main trims to 0 on the TX and made sure the servos were at 90 deg at 50% throttle output after going through the tedious time consuming adjustments (to make servo arms 90 deg for all three) through the programs servo neutral settings and got it very close. Before the first flight the swash was pretty level to the ground when tilting. I have external gyros for the rudder so I did not need to set this up with Flymentor. I then adjusted the balance gain in the program to 80 in the horizontal side. I have a 6 channel reciever (spectrum 6100) and wanted to have horizontal hold active all the time. I did not connect the CCD since I could not switch to position mode. I found the the helicopter initially seemed to be somewhat balanced in a hover then would tilt away. That is when I started using the trims to bring the helicopter back to balance which worked until I moved the helicopter away from hovering.
Treadmill

I am also using 6100E w/ DX7 while testing this . I think if we do not using tail gyro gain from TX then we can assign FM3d switching mode to Flight switch 0,1,2 as Balancing,Off, Positioning respectively. The trick is set TX GEAR output as AUX and move Pitch wire (orange) to GEAR on Rx , then set TX AUX output as Flight and connect FM3d sens wire (blue) to AUX on RX, then we can set Flight sw at -100,0,+100 of sensitively of balancer. Before we do all this, we have to set fixed gain rate to gyro. I am trying with this and will let you know if this success.

Originally Posted by treadmill

Zew,
...

I understand what you are saying (your quote: Because controller is starting to do mixing 3 cyclic servos then using Subtrim in DX7 may not works well, each time you adjust subtrim then controller do counter-adjust on other servos and you get in circle processs w/o ending) but if i do trim on the TX to find a balanced hover (stays balanced up until I move) then why does it not recover back to a balance hover when I fly the helicopter away from hover.

Treadmill

I am thinking about this tilting on your case, do you mean heli drifting here or total off balance? Because your heli are all time is balancing mode and when you move heli after trimmed hover, the hover again, the tilting/drifting come back that emphasize my suspection that any subtrim/trim input will result a counter-input from balancer, because it think that input is make system off-balance. It is justing the system based on its own balance-gyro system, without accept any offset adjustment from outside. So our job is to make sure the surface of balancer gyro must in balance with the swashplate surface. Because and input from Tx will affect to mixing function of balancer so I think we should try to offset any discrepancy of these two surfaces by the software set and save, or by mechanic way. I need sometime to test the behavior that you encountered and test my method to see if this works.

By the way, this FM3d is a clone of HC3d so a good source of reference is from all HC3d thread around the world, here is one I grapped from a HC guide acticle, hope this give some hint and explain the way FM3d behaves.
Which types of gyro installed, Do they feature drift and temperature compensation?
The model versions are fitted with three piezo gyros. (SMS gyros are installed in the Profi version, but three gyros of this type would increase the cost of the cheaper model versions by too much.) Thermal drift is a basic characteristic of piezo gyros, but the integral compensation circuits of the HeliCommand largely eliminate this; each unit is factory-calibrated, and features an integral temperature sensor.

Slight residual drift may occasionally occur with the tail rotor; as is the case with every piezo gyro, this manifests itself by the helicopter slowly drifting around its vertical axis when the temperature fluctuates widely, or after the unit has been switched on for a long period; however, this can easily be correctly manually using the trims. It is also usual to switch off and then on again before the next flight, as this action refreshes the neutral point; this is standard practice with piezo gyros. Incidentally, the neutral point trim is fixed at 1.52 ms, i.e. it is not affected by the automatic trim nor by the SET button. (Auto-Trim defines the servo centres, including that of the tail rotor servo; SET “learns” the elevator and aileron centres, and collective pitch minimum.) It is easy to establish the correct neutral point of the tail rotor control before take-off; at this point the tail rotor servo will remain steady at the defined position without any tendency to drift slowly.

If the tail drifts, this is usually due either to serious vibration or a trimming error (see the earlier question: “How does one trim the tail rotor?”). An error in the mechanical setting can generate significant trim discrepancies when you switch between heading-hold and normal mode, although the automatic trim compensates completely for this effect (see operating instructions).

Drift affecting elevator (pitch-axis) and aileron (roll-axis) is fundamentally different. In this case there is no cumulative drift, i.e. the horizontal attitude is always restored and maintained. (Of course, it would be fatal if the auto-pilot were able to turn the helicopter on its head all by itself after a while…) If temperature drift should occur, the result can be no more than a slight horizontal deviation, which the system automatically neutralises in any case. In position mode the pilot would virtually never notice such a deviation, because positional drift is always picked up and corrected by the regulatory system; when the HeliCommand is set to horizontal mode, or if the sensor “sees” nothing, the helicopter remains only “virtually” horizontal, i.e. when hovering, minute deviations will always cause it to drift slowly away horizontally; if you wish to stay exactly “on the spot”, you will need to give simple and minimal control commands to correct the drift, as described in the operating instructions.

In horizontal model the pilot will always need to correct slight drifting even if the helicopter is stabilised in the horizontal attitude with mathematical precision; every helicopter has two basic characteristics which make this inevitable: it has no geographical reference point, and it has no inherent means of slowing horizontal movement once that movement has commenced

Please keep update your find outs and test result, just remember when thing become out of hand then reset and load config again. Good luck

[treadmill]

I would be very interested in your findings with assigning the unused outputs to switch between horizontal, none and position hold. My first steps is to get the helicopter to respond correctly of course.

I am going to start over this weekend and set my sub-trims and trims to 0 and use the software to achieve a close 90 deg servo arm position. Then I will follow your steps and mechanically balance the helicopter. I will advise on how it went.

Originally Posted by Zew

I am thinking about this tilting on your case, do you mean heli drifting here or total off balance? Because your heli are all time is balancing mode and when you move heli after trimmed hover, the hover again, the tilting/drifting come back that emphasize my suspection that any subtrim/trim input will result a counter-input from balancer, because it think that input is make system off-balance. It is justing the system based on its own balance-gyro system, without accept any offset adjustment from outside. So our job is to make sure the surface of balancer gyro must in balance with the swashplate surface. Because and input from Tx will affect to mixing function of balancer so I think we should try to offset any discrepancy of these two surfaces by the software set and save, or by mechanic way. I need sometime to test the behavior that you encountered and test my method to see if this works.

I don't think it is as much of the helicopter being total off balance but more of a modest to severe drift when trying to re-establishing a hover. The severity of the drift is random when re-establishing the hover but will be constant in the degree and direction (so drift is not caused by external source - flying has been inside a warehouse). The helicopter would be tilted in the direction consistantly until trimmed back to find hover. It would hold a stable hover until I move it off hover and the whole cycle would begin again.

I think what you are saying is that the mixer is counter-inputting the balancer but at the time of re-establishing a hover after trimming the original hover the first round. The odd thing that I found was that the very first hover after ground setup seemed fairly stable/balanced and the second hover after flying around had the issues I am having now and then I trimmed it back. Could it be counter-imputting the balancer on the second hover because of the subtrimming being off zero from the previous settings (copied settings to empty helicopter group, change to servo - normal and rebinded to reciever with FM3D)?

Question: Does your helicopter self balance to perpendicular to the shaft after a second when you hold to a fixed tilt away being parallel to the ground? I think that all the the trimming would offset the swashplate in it's standard position when it goes into this re-establishing balance mode.

Your comments are very helpfull piecing this problem together. I will reset the setup based on your suggestion and hopefully this resolves the issues.

[Zew]

@treadmill

I don't think we can avoid drifting in balance mode, that is why the maker have to make another mode call position- short term of balance and maintain at one place with assist from photo processing device. That means when we stay w/ balance mode, drifting will happen but heli don't fall off-balance. I checked this issue in HeliCommand pages and learned this also happened with HC3d too, so dont hope this clone FM3d can do better, HC also recommened to use built-in tail gyro because it supports the cyclic gyro working more correct, so I use FM3d built-in gyro too although FM manual does not refer to this.
I also use trim on tx to correct drifting but didn't notice the issue you mentioned,while testing under position mode,

I am trying position mode w/ high sensitively gain >80% and everytime drifted out, heli reacts very sharp way almost bring itseft off-balance, so this is quite unsafe if hover it near ground, look like position mode need more fine tune, while in HC this posiyion mode can works upto 5m but FM3d only works from 0.3 to 3m high only

About your question of how SW reacts when titling heli for long time, yes, I see same thing of what you described: after swash tilts to oposite direction at first, it later slowly falls back to perperdicular to main shaft , I can't figure out how this means.

Anyway, I feel satisfy with how it balances the heli (under position mode) but still can not get it keep heli stay at one spot. Will need more testing.

[dlhlabs]

As an Engineer I though I would toss in my two cents worth on this "Counterfeit" business. I respect HeliCommand in that they obviously produce an excellent product after reading many forums.

However I have some serious questions over their action against KDS and justification of their actions.

First, to say to be a "counterfeit" the KDS product would have to be an exact copy of the HeliCommand in shape, color, packaging, and have the "Helicommand" logo placed on the product. It would have to also be sold as a genuine Helicommand flight system. The KDS is obviously not.

Second, to prove that Helicommand's firmware/software has been stolen by KDS, it would require extracting the software image from KDS's product then doing a byte-wise compare to prove that the image matches the currently shipping Helicommand product. I don't see that. If Helicommand is doing their job right, then when they program their microcontrollers, they set the protection bits so that the code can't be read out of the non-volatile program storage memory. And if the microcontrollers are different in the two products - then there's absolutely no way that Helicommand's software would even work, provided that you could even get it out of Helicommand's product.

Third, reverse-engineering is legal - however it must be done in a "clean-room" manner. A group takes the competition's product apart, analyzes it, and writes a document which describes the function of the product in detail. That document is then passed on to a second group of engineers which use that document to design a new, equivalent product. At no time are the second group allowed to have any contact with the first. A good example, which has been proven legal through the courts, was AMD's cloning of Intel's 8086 microprocessor. As long as the protocol is followed, then the process is legal.

Fourth, the electrical design might be cloned, and that could be a patent or copyright affair to take through the courts. But having one of the KDS units and looking at the Helicommand, there's so much difference in the implementation that I doubt there's any copying of the design.

Last, the only other issue I can think of is patent infringement. I haven't researched Helicommand's patent portfolio yet, but there might be some kind of issue there that could give them grounds. However an autopilot for a helicopter would not pass the obviousness test, so the patent would be weak, at best. There is far too much prior art.

So, in summary, after struggling through the broken English of Helicommand's letter to the public on their website, I can only see a broad appeal for sympathy from the public to support their actions. They make an accusation of software theft, but without any real meat of how they came to that determination. Calibration parameters don't make software, and most algorithms are mathematical constructs and cannot be patented. A patent must provide a method and implementation. So, really, I'm not impressed.

I have one of the KDS units and it performs about as well as I would expect of a $100 - $200 system. The CCD has a fixed-focus cheap plastic lens without any coatings, the control unit is average plastic like most receivers, and the gyro is a boxed unit without any local tail gyro trim controls. I am sure that if I purchased the Helicommand I would receive a much superior product. But that does come at a cost.

As a casual flyer with a clone Trex 450, I don't have the need of something that could unerringly hold a camera platform 100 feet up in the air. The KDS just helps to avoid stupid mistakes as I continue to learn.

My contention with the whole affair is that I dislike anyone using the courts to try to exclude competition. The whole "I thought of it first" doesn't count unless you have some strong, enforceable patents in your arsenal. But here, it just doesn't pass the sniff test.
-dh