Crius all-in-one pro - any good?

[s.dunnim]

Hey, I';ve been looking at flight controllers as I';m hoping to build my (first!) own drone on a budget. The Crius pro really stood out for its low price and seems to be able to do pretty much anything controllers that are hundreds more expensive are capable of.

I was wondering if it really is as good as it seems or are there any major drawbacks?

A bit of programming or prototyping doesn';t really bother me if that';s what it needs...

I was hoping my drone could do things like waypoint navigation, hold position (I realise you have to buy a separate GPS for these - as a side question what GPS would you recommend?), possibly even follow me, circle me or return to home. Is this all possible with the Crius Pro?

I also saw impressive controllers like the Multiwii Pro 2.0, how good is that?

Finally, any other better suggestions ?


Thanks in advance !

P.S. I have looked through this forum but there';s so much other random stuff I had a hard time finding any definite answer

[atomiclama]

They are old outdated but worked well.
No idea if they are still actively maintained.

I have one in my draw you can have for a few quid if you decide you want to go down this route.

[teslahed]

I';d buy a cheap clone APM over a crius AIOP. You';ll get better results running proper arducopter firmware if you want all the features like GPS and automation than you would running a hacked version of the arducopter firmware (megapirate) on the crius AIOP.

And if you can stretch you budget at all, get a cheap clone Pixhawk instead of a cheap clone APM. Software and functionality is mostly the same but the hardware and flight performance is much better because the pixhawk uses more modern 32bit hardware.

http://www.banggood.com/Pixhawk-PX4-2_4_8-Flight-Controller-32-Bit-ARM-PX4FMU-PX4IO-Combo-for-Multicopters-p-1040416.html

The CRIUS AIOP may have all the features on paper but you';d spend an awful lot of time getting most of them almost working before you';d give up and buy something better, most likely. If you get a cheap clone pixhawk you can follow the wizards and online tutorials and it will still take quite a lot of setting up but you';d find it a lot easier to get good results.

[red zeppelin]

I would second the APM suggestion.  I tried for a while to get a AIOP to operate on my f450 with mixed results.  I would say that it was me, except that after I bought a pixhawk, it was flying without much effort, and it was done pretty quick. 

Much easier to set up, and you can utilize the full functionality of mission planner.  Just my 2 cents.