Building a Drone Flight Controller FROM SCRATCH! - Trying MultiWii in 2022

[@sunajfpv7733]

I built a MultiWii quad for my research project at university 2 years ago. It was fun searching through old forums trying to get as much information as possible. I also built my own frame out of aluminum...which was a mistake, cuz if I landed hard, an arm would bend and never bend back into the original position...so PID tuning became a hell of a thing to do each time. Still got a grade A in it lol.

[@uavtech]

13:50 - They figured out i-Term for yaw baby. It is king. 15:00 - KISS PID gains. "It's sooo good". 😀

[@1baggy0dodo4u]

Best part was the armadillo. The armadillo is now the new Rotor Riot mascot.

[@rickyohara1081]

ye

[@KnetiKFPV]

@@rickyohara1081 rickyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

[@mikecummings7899]

Armadillo is the state bird of Tx. 😜

[@MotownModels]

I would LOVE to see a video building an OG drone with the KK board (not KK2), generic airplane motors and ESC's, and an OG radio like the DX6i!

[@LetsFlyRC]

The Kaveman Kwad episode was close to that.

[@harshitsingh4375]

You don't get more OG than multiwii

[@FastSloW-qt8xf]

The old kk board with turn pots.. I have a tri still flying with one

[@FastSloW-qt8xf]

Have a few unused kk2 boards, and some cc3ds

[@crosswindjones]

KK, APM 2.5, Naze32 All in the "history" box.

[@michaelniemela6566]

Love the adhd outro

[@NelFerreiro]

Bubby Freaking out with old technology was the best part. Young people are very lucky of the technology that we have now.

[@md.m.8372]

I still have all my ancient early multiwii boards tucked away on one of my spare tool boxes properly prrserved in an anti static bag like they ancient relics 😅 It's wild thinking about the early days of Multiwii compared to now 😯 I feel spoiled as fuck now, roughly ~10 years later, rocking shit like 128khz 32 bit 4in1 esc's, ~470mhz H7 FC's, toothpick aio builds, micros, elrs, fucking digital video & the list goes on & on 🔥🙃 we went hard on this drone shit frfrfr

[@samsam18200]

fax. i was lucky to get into it on a 3s KISS 1.03 FC alien rr5. i thought that was the bees knees. still have that old. alien and i think i'm gonna put a fettec osd on it and fly it again. i know i wasnt really "ruffin it" but im proud of myself for getting into the hobby with relatively limited resources. fpv has come a long way over the last 5 years. let alone 10!

[@thespencerowen]

That was the best outro! Please finish all episodes with an armadillo

[@stylesuxx]

Paris v4 on a frame with aluminium arms, Plush 30A ESCs with an external configurator card... I don't miss those times.

[@riccardomerli9094]

One of the main reasons why yaw sucked was because we were using airplane motors and escs which they didn’t have any kind of break. Good memories tho thanks for the video

[@13FPV]

Them "good" ol days... I buried that hassle a long time ago, thanks for digging it up...

[@shalotfpv]

Love learning about the history of quadcopters and especially FPV just as much as love the energy and excited this quartet of characters always provides. Shaun's creations rule!! So fun watching y'all fly!

[@juanjo_fpv5097]

The outro was amazing lol, the best so far

[@abouchard2903]

I got in 2018 so this is something I can't relate with but looks really cool to see how much the community made it work to set the motion and make possible what we have today.

[@2_stixs-fpv680]

i stopped watching rotor riot for a while... but im back in now! this was fun to watch! thanxs

[@JustPlaneChris]

I still have a self-made MultiWii flight controller, I just ran across it the other day and chuckled to myself. It's in the same box with a KK board (which actually flew pretty well in comparison....)

[@airdevil21]

Awesome video! I started flying fpv in 2017 and i didnt know it was so hard to fly them back in the day..... respect to you guys who did fly that way!!!

[@willzaboski2361]

I just had a dillo come up the porch on me last night. Scared the crap out of me. 😂

[@wesleycrews4443]

They need to make a drone that is contrôles by a wii remote. Like in wii resort dogfights.

[@steev0373]

Cool stuff! I built the flight controller for a drone for my uni project last year using a PIC18F4321. I managed to get it to fly and level itself running the code at 50Hz haha. It was a little easier because I used a GY-25 chip which outputs angle rather than having to address the gyro and accelerometer directly, but even still it was a difficult feat to get that bird in the air! For comparison, my Microcontroller had a 32MHz clock, 512 Bytes of Flash memory and 256 Bytes of RAM whereas a modern F7 FC runs at 216MHz, with 512KB of Flash memory and 256KB of RAM!

[@psybertron2650]

Hey man! I'm a software developer and i want to learn how to build drones from scratch can u please guide me or provide me with links of resources from where i can learn

[@revvilo]

I've just started with the high powered gear we have now. I have a whole new level of appreciation of the progress made

[@sandrucristian1983]

respect for the work done, the hours of late nights in which you search for information and program and adjust the parameters to make some pieces of metal and plastic and some magnets fly where you want.

[@bunbunson27]

its crazy how fast flight controllers evolved. while I havent flew a wii FC, I did start out with the kk2.1 back in 2012-2013 on my 250 hobby king frame. I was more into microdrones though so I was using a lot of hubsan and walkera FC with brushed motors. The very first configurable FC I did build with was the AlienWii with dsm2 satelite RX. They were $50 for a fully configurable FC in MultiWii. I didnt get into 200+ size drones until I built a NAZE32 drone.

[@Adamlhodge]

Up down up down left right left right b a start hilarious

[@nemocheerio]

This was freaking awesome!!! I was waiting for you guys to tell Bubby that our quads used to be made out of wood! He wouldn't have believed any of you. Shawn, this was seriously cool, nice job. Are you going to make the code available anywhere? This is a project I would like to try. And thanks to everyone for the great time at Kwad Camp this past weekend. It was amazing!

[@cinemoriahFPV]

Multiwii is open source.

[@RyanStonedonCanadianGaming]

I'd like to see a gyro attached to a momentary switch so when you push your bumper or what ever switch you place it on it'll turn off stability mode. Basically a momentary acro mode with stability after releasing the momentary switch or vice versa. + the Armidillo just walking up to you guys like that is awesome, think he wants to be part of the crew. 😅

[@3nertia]

I think you mean Tactical Assault Possum* xD

[@johncarold]

Back in the day I started flying with a push button remote. Beat that you kids ! LOL. That was cool, when I finally got into quads, we where using clean flight, I was lucky enough to start late in the Hobby of drones. Thanks for the video.

[@TiredFlyerFPV]

Man, this is what I have always wanted to do. Definitely brings things back to the days of Kaptain Kook and the multiwii stuff. Love the stress test. Great to see how far we have come.

[@Propstrikefpv]

Interesting episode guys. I enjoyed the look into the past, it was pretty sketchy. Certainly glad I got into FPV after all that; grateful for all those advances.

[@carrboro_chapelhillfpv2442]

Yep, I started with a multiwi and then went CC3d in 2014. It is amazing how far flight controllers have come. We use to have a separate osd as well the first ones however there was no way to know your voltage except by feel and time. I remember flying new packs one after another timing them and inching up the timer till I got the flight time close. We all used to use the tape to mount everything and Velcro straps for batteries that always ejected in a crash.

[@ARI3S]

Bubbys reaction to zero throttle had me laughing hard 😆 Pfft he started on Radix on BF 3.5.7 (butter fw btw, still use it) most of us have been around way before that - born in the darkness 😉

[@sunajfpv7733]

Fact that there is a min throttle setting in the code that you can keep the motors spinning at low throttle.

[@RCOverKill]

Armadillos are blind af, but they can hear well. I've never seen an armadillo not run like hell as soon as it heard anything close. I see them almost daily in Texas. Good episode!

[@13FPV]

All he heard was a bunch of good guys, so he didn't took off...

[@RCOverKill]

@@13FPV lol, What does that make me?

[@13FPV]

@@RCOverKill A scary sounding good guy... 😉

[@tango_sierra8608]

Alright Shawn’s a genius

[@AlexanderSemion]

Oh, yes. My first drone aside plane was tricopter on MultiWii. It had aluminium arms like 300mm with 9inch props. It flew like a cow but was capable to take off with cam and capture some video. Thank you for reminding me this old days.

[@billmcdonald4335]

That looked fun. I've been at FPV drones since 2018. They were pretty well sussed out by the time I got to 'em. I was into r/c in the late 70s, building 1/12th-scale Tamiya kits, and using a 2-channel radio, before taking a three-and-a-half decade break. I never dreamed of the kit we have today back then. Even 2018 gear is literally Buck Rogers stuff compared to what was on offer in the late 1970s. And much, much cheaper, relatively speaking.

[@OA_RA_FBA_FBM]

Oh man poor Bubby was too young to get the contra code joke I loved it though. 😂

[@ninjamonkeyfpv8855]

Going back to the roots of quadcopter technology..

[@bigeyefpv]

Sweet video I love this stuff it's so cool where we are now! U guys should build one with a cc3d board

[@vit4min4s]

I started with the multiwii, nice to remember ancient times

[@originafreerangechicken]

Best content, from anyone, than I’ve seen in a long while!

[@propcircles4082]

that armadillo was too calm did yous check for a collar?

[@jbizzbuildsmanstuff9932]

I'm so glad you made this video! Been trying to explain to people how awsome our gear is now! 7 year fpv pilot here and Noone believes me! Lol

[@curlyexcile]

Trippy spin was so off tap you guys started seeing armadillos haha

[@oddeman3489]

I'm so impressed, you rock Shawn,

[@explorelearnshare8222]

Shawn, can we try this with an ESP32 and a faster gyro? I'm down to help port the code over! I'd love to see you guys fly something like that. I'd give it a go, but I don't fly (yet...but I've been learning a ton from y'all!)

[@cowardly_wizard]

I was thinking a Feather, just to give it some extra flying juju since the firmware seems to just do what it feels like lol

[@ThomasShue]

There is no way Drew is this exciting when he flys off camera.

[@Shauny_D]

There was a lot of very interesting builds on that picnic table. I'm excited to see those videos

[@7gg765]

i just got into fpv this year properly and didnt know this about wii gyros.. i have several wii's and wii u's! bit of a collector.

[@hydrojedi]

Awesome episode! There had to be a lot of input from the legendary Kapper Clan!

[@Gosuminer]

You guys are dealing so well with the awful latency that I suggest a long range experiment with a mobile phone on cellular network as an FPV cam (and maybe ELRS for control).

[@LetsFlyRC]

Try flying a drone located in Italy when you are physically in Detroit. I did that with Skypersonic and it was soooo much fun. Tons of latency. Almost had to fly in angle mode to keep from crashing. I did manage to fly manual mode, but, it was very difficult.

[@vedasticks]

this was really interesting, im 40 but never experienced the beginnnings of this. only started fpv quads in last year

[@ledmagik4920]

Oh so the Armadillo was still the best bit but that was awesome to watch

[@Jronesfpv]

i started with cc3d crazy how far its come

[@baggszilla]

Wow Shawn is amazing 👏 bravo brother your smarts and personality are an integral part for Rotor Roit!

[@Brian-S]

I've been fiddling with kicad designing a f7 FC for fun. It's definitely a pretty interesting idea. I just think it would be cool as hell to have a quad I built with my own electronics I also built.

[@Dr_Mario2007]

It's amazing to see so much technology advancement, from the ancient and somewhat sketchy 8-bit flight computers to now, very nice superscalar in-order Cortex M7 microcontroller if you are thirsty for CPU performance, even port our favorite flight software on to Texas Instruments VLIW DSP if you are mad enough to design a powerful flight computer on a $15 - 20 VLIW DSP. What an exciting time we live in.

[@Tymopta]

my first drone used the Paris v4 multiwii board. I bought it pre-soldered because I didn't have a soldering iron at the time. My second board was an Eagle something and it had dip switches to select number of motors and layout plus a normal and acro mode. then the kk board and about six kk2 boards I still have the Paris and a couple kk2 boards.

[@fly-fpv]

So good started years ago with Multiwii. My first drone with Multiwii still works great😅

[@r3beatty]

lol. I junked a whole box of that crap a few weeks ago. The amount of time we spent getting that stuff working. Wow.

[@fly-fpv]

@@r3beatty yea just crazy 😅 but it was fun too and the feeling when everything works was awesome 😁

[@hateeternalmaver]

Nothing beats good old nostalgia, right!^^ cheers, friends

[@alexoliver9201]

Amazing outro 🤣

[@RCinginSC]

They're called Texas speed bumps.

[@MANTA_FPV]

From time to time i asked myself why it was so cool those days to just roll or flip, well now i remember, because it was just a thing those days ya 😂👍🏻 I remember when a friend came up with a copter that has airmode on it, it was soo mindblowing that the props kept spinning 😂 ohh man those days

[@tinyking4114]

now this, is AWESOME!!

[@sarasu5614]

This was the best video from rotorroit

[@alex97349]

Impressive engineering skills Shawn!

[@CrawlersCampRc]

Shawn you are awesome bro!! Props!!🤜🤜💯

[@FastSloW-qt8xf]

I started with the kk board. Which was nice because you didn't need a configurator. Then thr kk2 came out and we had a screen on the board to do our pids

[@Lucianrider]

I loved this episode!! Man Shawn is a mad scientist genius!!

[@3chulle]

An idea from me. Attach a whistle under each arm. 😁 It could get very loud and fun.🤪

[@tintman1000]

My man gave him the Contra code 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@TheMadmacs]

great fun....... i remember working up the courage to try get minim osd going, 5 boards later i gave up,

[@LetsFlyRC]

I also had lots of problems with minimosd boards.

[@Janevjura]

​@@LetsFlyRC Rotor riot = pure fun ! Greetings from Ukraine!:)

[@garamfpv]

Awesome bro💥💥🥂

[@ReeseFlights]

Loved the episode! Fun stuff!

[@bendalton5551]

Had a sick idea for a episode I would love to see. Make a few identical builds and try to bind them all to the same model and try to get them to fly in formation 😂 would be fun to see if it could work

[@FrohStudios]

It's so much fun to build something like this even today. It all comes down to saving few μs in a loop just to finish in 4 ms for ESCs or else things start falling :D Now, I'm so excited to write FC for Raspberry Pi Pico

[@JimOHalloran]

I wasn't early enough for Multiwii, the first quad I had ran CleanFlight. It was the last version before Air Mode came in, so 1.7 I think? Anyway, yeah, quads back in the day were a handful. I remember that it was a good idea to plug in with the quad level on the ground, otherwise the gyro wouldn't have a good level. So that might have explained the inconsistency the guys had between flights in the video. Probably needed to give the guys Gemfam 5030 bi-blade props on a 3S pack for the rfull experience though! Or maybe slightly older school and build an Elextrohub. I think at a certain point the Electrohub was everyone's first quad!

[@realgoose]

What a cool video. Have y’all ever tried flying with Axial Flux motors? Would love to see how they impact quads

[@HVACSUPERTECH]

omg! guys I was just at Bill Frederick Park flying with friends for my bday. hoping to see you guys and vanover. Did meet some UCF students with their hexacopter trying to make it deliver food.

[@mr-squid-fpv9156]

Pound for every-time you said back in the day !!!!!

[@imothy]

bubby is missing out on all the de-sync shenanigans that you had to deal with back in the day!

[@jdd1777]

Kiss still uses mostly the Multiwii configurator, my first build was Microscisky which was a brushed Multiwii and on the first flight it burnt a fet and I almost cried.

[@spookydonkey2195]

Great video. Drew flies that fc better than I fly modern. Total legend. Dillo don’t care

[@StacemanFPV]

Flies about as well as my DJI Naza flight controller that was controlling my first acrobatic quad with SimonK firmware

[@orbitz7560]

we love drones

[@off-grideverything533]

Knowing devs, there probably is a Konami code secret hidden somewhere in the fw lol 😆

[@brightontilifly]

you can literty still buy multiwii's from readytoflyquads

[@LetsFlyRC]

Funny. I looked that up, also. 😂

[@subsonikfreq]

This is pretty interesting and intuitive. I’d like to see this done with like, a ps4/ps5 motion controller. Whatever is in there lol.

[@greg0063]

I have a few Tricopters on Multiwii, they fly nice. If you just cruise around and fly smooth they are fine both Los and fpv. I recently converted a tri to Betaflight and am still tuning the yaw. It's ok but Multiwii is closer to being very good on the stock PID's.

[@joshmellon390]

Man, I love this lol. I just started flying drones exactly a week ago, but I've hacked together microcontrollers and shit for years. I followed this trend a long ass time ago, and I really wish I would have gotten more into the drones. Really cool to see this again, and I think I'm going yo put some stuff together today lol.

[@PixlRainbow]

afaik, which might be outdated as heck: multiwii depends on other sensors to improve calibration and filtering on the gyro, even if you aren't actually using them directly for stabilisation.

[@tallguyfpv]

The flying up hills both ways got me laughing 😂

[@crckdns]

I remember the days of MultiWii :) BUT... the controllers nowadays again cost about 100€ ...so yeah, times of cheap controllers are over XD

[@719FPV]

This was such a fun video! I love seeing how far the hobby has come

[@okeverett8498]

best outro yet

[@jamesperedo5699]

Awesome work guys 😊😊😊

[@arturpekosz]

It's interesting why you had problems with yaw. I am working on an "old-school" Miltiwii tricopter now (using Miltiwii 2.4) and the tricopter needs a very large stick deflection right to yaw right, while yawing left is easy. Maybe there is a bug in the code?

[@dubber889]

Baby : Buy already assembled Flight Controller Board and using pre-flashed board on pre-made software Giga Chad Drone Pilot and Maker : Building their own FC using Microcontroller and code their own PID tuning and interface.

[@built4wheelin275]

It's the strangest thing to here people say back in the day and then realize I was there or I was there even before what they say. Makes me feel old LOL 😆

[@westwingaero]

and here I am waiting for the next generation of fpv with collision avoidance, hovering , return to home and programmable flight paths 🤣😂🤣

[@ecoaventurasdelistmo]

WHAT THE PURPOSE OF THAT HUGE GOPRO PRINT?? AND WHERE TO GET IT, THANK YOU