Doc, OpenTX is complicated? Powerful yes, but I don't think it's complicated.
Now I'm a guy that has no programing experience and when it comes to code I hate moving bits and bites.
Coming from the Ace MicroPro 8000 I loved it. Not because the programing was elegant but because it came with a clear flow chart that I could follow and find all the features that the program offered. Then I "moved up" to Futaba's Super Seven (FP-T7UGF) and got so lost by the constraints of the menu, often having to change my servo geometry to match the pre canned assumptions Futaba had imposed on the end user, that I bought my first Don Edberg manual for the Super Seven.
Months later I learned of the Multiplex mixer based programing, this is what we needed! Take all the inputs define what you want and then output the results to the RX, just brilliant! When I started my new $1200 Multiplex Profi 4000mc and nothing moved I just about had a heart attack! I had to define the mixer and what they were to do, even if they were just to pass through the inputs, for a simple 3 channel model. There were few if any assumptions made be Multiplex as to what I wanted to do!
What I'm getting at is that if a guy just wants to turn on the radio and fly OpenTX and basically any computer radio will be more complicated than it needs to be. After all most of us flew EK logic control or Kraft radios just fine without the aid of "programing". Remember when radios were so simple we didn't even have servo reversing (we had to change the motor and pot wires inside the servo, really was that simple)!
But if we want flexibility in what we are asking of the the TX output. The less constraints imposed by the program it is actually much easier to get the results we want. It can confuses many as this results in more than one way to get the job done. Not that any one way is the best for all situations. This is why programer often say it was very difficult to get the program to appear to be so easy.
OpenTX's & Multiplex's mixer based architecture has shown it is far better than the master/slave concept for all but the most simple models. This is particularly true if one wants to grow the model's program. With the menu programs it is almost impossible to build on as a lot of inhibit check boxes were checked. Unchecking these often opens up interaction, not in direct control of one's programing, that one didn't want for the next level of programing.
As mastery of a TX program I don't think many of us can say we are fully fluent in any. This is more so as the programs offer more and more options. This is why proper documentation such as the MicroPro 8000's flow chart is such a needed tool for any TX program. Because a program can do something I'm not aware of does not make the program complicated. This unknown to me functionality is something to learn and incorporate in my programing. Now with proper documentation I should be able to find what this new powerful functionality is. And allow me to incorporate it into my programing logic at the onset of my programing a new model.
As we all come from different back grounds, the idea of intuitive programing is a false and fundamentally flawed. If you are use to menu driven master/slave then the next new menu driven master/slave program will be much more comfortable than an object based based program built around the mixer concept.
There is no reason to have to use the full capacity of the program to get what one wants the plane to do. Heck, one doesn't need to know all the nuances of a program to get the model to do what one wants. But the program itself should not limit one to do what one wants. Unfortunately for the menu driven master/slave mixer this often is the case.
I admit I don't have mastery of OpenTX or even the great Multiplex Profi 4000mc. But these advanced programs still allow me to reach levels of programing elegance I could never hope to achieve with the menu driven programs of old.
If Ethos allows me the freedom of the object based mixer architecture (like that of OpenTX) and offers me options via the drop down menu I might think this is an advancement. I think that having a flow chart with all the options graphed out would be more powerful.
I hope to give Ethos a try with an open mind. I really hope it is OpenTX (NOT OPENTX CODE) with a menu cheat sheet to help guide not constrain my programing efforts.
All the best,
Konrad
Hi Konrad,
well, first of all I don't think you are qualified to comment here, as it simply does not matter what you get into; its going to be to the most finite depths, and to the furthest, outermost dendritic edges of whatever it is that catches your interest, and then its going to be thoroughly explored.
In that case you never qualify as being an amateur for more than a very short length of time as you are more than prepared to put the work into it to become at lest well-versed. A doctrine to which unfortunately I don't subscribe.
But actually I think you are right, and that I am wrong in expecting something that
I did not design to do something in exactly the way that
I want it to do. Selfish.
I'm sure it comes because I design the models. To do that job honestly I have to know as much as I possibly can about what I'm doing, so I do try my best to thoroughly understand the subject and make it all work in the best possible way for the flyer - probably to the same extent as the radio programming designers. Consequently I can tell you what I have done on any of my models, and why I did it, in the same way perhaps as the radio boffins.
As to programming, I know what I want to do, but the problem is I'm too lazy to get into mixer-based setups.
For my own things, as an example I can take any of my models - do a quick thumb test of the CG, and then I can tell you exactly how to set up all of the the control and even all the crow functions so that you can fly the plane to the outside of its capability then park the model over the slope and have a sandwich before landing slowly but with great control. I really can do that, every time, because I know exactly what I am doing and what t expect, and thats because I designed the plane.
Maybe its a control thing.
But, like you I'm going to give Ethos a go and lets see what transpires.
Great thing is that - I hope just like both of us - people are making the effort to improve our modelling world.
Doc.
