Hexacopter - OK, it's mostly a kit

OK, there are so many reasons for me not submitting this as "a robot", let's do them first:

* It's 95% a kit

* I am only showing a video- no good info, no pictures

* It's flying

* This is just a re-post of one of the TLIHR videos we do together with Make Magazine

But the reasons for posting this are:

* I'd like to be able to talk with my friends on LMR about this - not just on YouTube :)

* I think a flying robot is as good as any driving - and personally I'd love to see more flying robots here on LMR, so I figured I'd kick some in that direction by posting this.

The Hexa shown is from a Hexa XL kit from Mikrokopter.

Gareth showed me a video of it here on LMR, and I just had to get one.

How is it then, IRL? To put it short; I do really not like the way it is sold / supported by them. I have never seen a product this expensive, with such a completely unbelievable crap documentation.

It looks as it is nicely documented - but once you start reading in, you soon realize that it is one huge, massive mess of wrong information, broken links, outdated stuff, texts pointing to other texts that are related to older versions of everything. Loads of info you do not need (older models, other parts), and it is really, really hard to find the simple, important stuff.

And most of it is in really poor English, hard to understand, and with German texts and Google translations mixed in - right where you needed to find the info.It took me a full week to assemble - it would have taken me 2 days.. if I had the info I needed.

The price of the product really, really, really do not match the feeling you get. And it is really, really irritating, because I want to play around with it - learn and read, have fun, repair, upgrade.. but when ever I have to find any info, I get angry and irritated, and have a fight for hours, days.. and that just brings the whole experience down to something I'd wish I had not invested in.

HOWEVER - the general concept of multicopters is really worth digging into - so just avoid Mikrokopters line of products, and check out some of the cool stuff out there - Especially I am interested in the Tricopters.. and you can build them yourself, just like you can build a driving, walking, sailing robot.

I hope to see some homemade stuff - I know some of you are working on it, and if I find the time, I will as well :) It really is fantastic to build something that flies - specially when it does so because of a microcontroller calculating stuff :)