Crius Aiop 2.0 vs Hobbyking kk 2.1.5

As i mentioned earlier, my first experience with building quads was short lived, I got carried away with the endless possibilities of the more advanced flight controllers like the Crius AIOP, with its many features, like bluetooth connectivity, gps and waypoint navigation, telemetry, OSD. So i went ahead and purchased a Cruis AIOP with the above mentioned equipment. This was very short lived, the first board I had purchased I smoked because of a misunderstanding in the manual. I toasted the board by applying 5 volts to the wrong section of the board. I purchased a replacement board from RCtimer and while waiting for it to arrive I actually managed to solder the missing copper strand on the circuit of the board using a 28 gauge wire.(Thats why i never throw out, what i assume is busted). I had previously upgraded the firmware to version 2.9r1.  I tested the board and it worked fine, so I was actually now left with two working Crius boards. It took me a while to wire my quad as I didn't want to repeat my mistake.

After setting up the board, flying and setting up the board was a hassle, the quad was unstable, flipped at times, had a whole lot of oscillation and was generally very unstable. I tried adjusting the PID and this only added to my growing frustrations. I searched the internet for help on PID tuning but after a few months i decided to give up on my Crius board and purchased the KK2 board. After installing the KK2 board i practically loved it. It was no nonsense, simple and after upgrading the firmware to version 1.6, I flew from dag 1 using the autolevel feature. The board is cheap, easy to adjust using the on screen display and as it does not present the same upgrades/features like the Crius I had to settle with just learning to fly, which in part was an excellent thing. I flew with the KK2 a couple of months and gradually learnt the basics of flying. The last couple of months have been almost crash free. 

Just the other day i found my Crius board again and mounted it on my Talon together with the GPS, bluetooth, telemetry and OSD.  I had to spend hours upon end wiring it together, the GPS and the telemetry share the same serial port and to be sure that i got everything right si I took my time. 

My initial test didn' t work well as one of the ESC was not working so I had to wait 14 days for a cheap ebay replacement from China. When i finally mounted the new ESC, I adjusted the PID values to a value I saw on RCjoses Youtube channel just to see if that could get me started in stabilize mode. If I could get it to fly, then i could use the autotune feature of the Arducopter 3.1.5 R2 firmware.

I eventually tested the PID values manually and came up with the following on my setup

I was surprised to see that the quad took off and was rock solid. It did drift quite a bit, but that I found was quite easy to fix by using the Autotrim feature of the Crius board (well i think it is). This feature is present on the Arducopter and is mentioned on different forums, so i did the same procedure on the Crius and it worked pretty well. When arming the Crius you can use the same feature as described in the video below.

When arming the board (left stick - bottom right) and the board initiates and begins the arming process, i kept the stick in the arming position. The board finished arming the red LED becomes constant/solid, meaning that the board is armed. After 5 or so seconds with the arming stick still in the arming position, the board initiates again and this time into the autotrim sequence, the LED's begin a blinking sequence yellow and red. I took off and held the quad in stabil hoover for about 25 seconds, the autotrim will stop automatically and the board writes these new trim values to the board. This to my amazement gave me a well trimmed and very stabil quad. I have now tested some of the features like loiter, altitude hold and this board rocks. But like i previously stated, if  you new to quad building go with  the easy choice first, the KK2 will get you up and running in no time. It will give you immediate success, but will limit your possibilities in regards to waypoint navigation, osd, telemetry and so on. Once you have learnt the basics, then the Crius board will offer you the ekstra fun. This board is far superior and its features are fun to explorer and use. It requires a lot of patience in the building process, the wiring can be a bit confusing, but hopefully if you start simple, then with the basic knowledge you gain, wiring the Crius is more simplified.