=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 142 ===
Title: Rs2K aka Butterflight Kalyn Doerr Helio
Recorded: 2018-05-17
Hosts: Andy, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash, Tony "TheTonstar1" Marchant
Guest(s): Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr, Timothy
Total audience: 2,783
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zfWtNRhUUw); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/448981773-letsdroneout-butterflight-kalyn-doerr-helio.m4a)
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Chatting to Kalyn Doerr the legend himself who realised butterflight with some of the old betaflight dev's definitely not raceflight.

[0.0] Jack: Hello and welcome to Let's Drone Out and you're listening to Let's Drone Out on iTunes.
[6.84] Jack: The show is live every Thursday at 8pm UK time and if you want to watch the stream come
[13.52] Jack: tune in and join us next week and interact. Come to youtube.com forward slash Let's Drone
[20.6] Jack: Out. Yeah what he said. Hello and welcome to Let's Drone Out. Tonight we are chatting
[37.6] Jack: to the devs of Butterfly. I can't believe it is Butterfly and we have the usual team
[48.24] Jack: of Well Let's Drone Out. There's very few of us. We've got Andy R.C. Hello. Is that
[54.76] AndyRC: like a worldwide thing? I can't believe it's not butter or only the UK. No I think that's
[59.8] Jack: really British. So that's not going to make any sense anyways. Yeah. Yeah. We've got
[67.88] Jack: just below the knee, your toe, above your knee. I can do this today. I can do this today. Well
[75.52] Tony: hello because he's not here. He's on a cruise ship. But I've done it in the chair. Man you
[81.28] Jack: could take that out of context. Right we have the troublemaker who's only half on camera because
[87.84] Jack: he's shy. Caitlin. Say hello. Hello. Hello. Oh no he's in full. That's weird. He's camera.
[98.48] Jack: It sounded like I said Caitlin. Caitlin. Caitlin. Caitlin. Yeah that's it. I did try and say
[105.44] Jack: your name right. We've also got Sean. Hey. And we've got Big D. That's up Big D.
[120.02] Tony: Look at Jack. Jack's trying to beat down with the Americans. Yeah. Big Show. If it weren't
[126.66] Jack: for brothers this show would be really white. I want to know why everyone's wearing
[136.74] Tony: green. Have you purposely worn green? They're trying to tell you how it cleans light.
[144.9] Timothy: It's like a boy band. I like I like I like Dom. Dom's cool. I like Dom. Yeah Dom's a cool guy.
[152.98] Timothy: Yeah he is. He stands in the hobby. Yeah and I like him because he's kind of a dick.
[158.42] Timothy: And at least you know where you stand when you're working with people who are dicks.
[162.18] Jack: It was a big dick off with him and Robocop. You know Timecop. That's it. That's his name.
[170.58] Jack: It's a big dick off. So are we allowed to mention the R word or not? This is slightly
[177.62] Jack: what I'm confused at. Raceway? Yeah. We can mention it. Yeah like so that's the thing.
[185.94] Jack: Bradder's was like don't mention it. And I was like okay like what the hell. But we have to.
[191.78] Jack: We have to mention it. Yeah like you know we've been after chatting to you for ages being like
[198.98] Jack: hey thank you because I'm a massive kiss fan and I'm not being funny. There was like this little
[204.26] Jack: wobble on race light on everyone's quad and I was like I don't get like if you want free blow jobs
[211.46] Jack: Tony fucking loved you man. Bradder's and Tony were like all up on race flight. And I was like
[219.14] Jack: I don't get it. Your internet is fine. Yeah Tim you sound like a robot. Switch to mobile
[233.89] Jack: communications. No. No. Bright audio only. I'm gonna rejoin. Okay now as soon as he said I'm
[249.33] Jack: gonna rejoin he sounded lovely. Anyone would like to commence what he was saying like you know
[255.73] Timothy: rather than 001 101. I think he was saying. I was trying to make a hookers and blow sort of joke
[274.21] Timothy: with Rudolf Kelman. Yeah that's fine. Carry on. You were a big D. Oh no no I'm good. It ruined it.
[286.37] Timothy: My internet was dumb. Damn it. Right so. I feel like there is a distinction that we need to make
[294.93] Timothy: really quick. We're not actually the guys behind butter flights. We're heliards. Like we we we
[302.77] Timothy: helped develop it but we're not actually part of the team. Like we're not we're not the owners of it.
[308.93] AndyRC: Yeah. So what is what is your guy's role in this then? Is it regarding the flight controller?
[316.77] Timothy: It's regarding the code that's on the F3. The uh uh I'm off. Oh right okay. Yeah so uh our
[328.62] Timothy: board is designed with a co-processor an F3 and an F4. The F3 is mostly mostly what we code on
[338.54] Timothy: and it's a filter that filters the gyro and then it passes that data to the F4
[345.1] Timothy: where you're going to have a flight code like butterfly on it. And it can work with
[352.38] Timothy: more than just butterfly but butterfly is what people are accustomed with on our board
[357.74] AndyRC: because it ships with butterfly. So um so I I tried butterfly for the last time.
[367.82] AndyRC: The last time I flew I tried butterfly and I did think it was better than
[372.06] AndyRC: butterfly and I said it on my on my video as well. Um and like it's a really sort of like
[379.26] AndyRC: a small difference. The biggest difference I noticed was the the reduction of prop wash
[384.54] AndyRC: oscillation. So um my question is like why why is that? What is different about butterfly than
[391.42] AndyRC: bea flight that that makes it better at that? Did you want to take that?
[396.94] Jack: No comment. Kylan. I need one of you because like the dead silence is amazing for these.
[403.58] AndyRC: I completely missed that and volume is chopping up there. I'm sorry. Sorry Kylan. I was I was asking
[409.82] AndyRC: um I flew bea flight um this week. Uh sorry butterfly. I'm getting the mix up. I threw
[416.78] AndyRC: butterfly this week and um the prop wash oscillations were much better than bea flight.
[423.18] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: I just wanted to know why that is. Oh well I honestly I think it's the filtering. That's the
[429.74] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: the majority of it there. I think there are some other small changes that help a lot like the PID.
[435.98] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: Um inside the PID controller we have a different method of filtering d-term and I think that also
[442.78] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: helps quite a bit. Instead of filtering the gyro data coming into the d-term since we already do
[447.66] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: it we don't need to do it twice. Uh instead we filter d-term itself the delta for d which is
[454.22] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: um my opinion a much better way of handling it and it helps tremendously with prop wash.
[459.5] AndyRC: So it was my understanding that like this this um Karman filter had to be on an f4 board but
[467.26] AndyRC: we're talking about it working on f3 board. So how does that work?
[473.26] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: So the reason why we can do it on an f3 is we have total control of what's going on and we don't
[479.42] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: actually have a lot going on as far as a real time system is concerned. Uh something like uh
[485.5] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: beta flight butter flight you have so much going on you have the PID controller you have the mixer
[489.9] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: you have the um all your different features running your OSD your radio uh coming in um and
[497.74] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: on the f3 all we have to worry about is getting the data from the gyro modifying that data from
[503.9] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: the filter and then sending it back to the f4 and as far as real time is concerned we just have
[509.5] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: two major events to worry about and that that means we can end up using
[514.7] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: way more than just 50 or 60 percent of the processor and not have any issue we can run
[518.94] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: close to 100 percent and still be able to pull off real time system. Yeah because I remember
[525.5] AndyRC: Josh when he first talked about this Karman filter he said it has to be on an f4 and f3s are
[532.14] AndyRC: completely out and it has to run at 32 kilohertz so are you saying that's not the case you can
[537.5] AndyRC: run at lower PID loop frequencies and still get better results? So the I think um what
[545.5] Timothy: are you is probably saying is that uh the f4 code itself um or the f4 the flight code itself
[553.98] Timothy: and the filtering has to happen on the f4 uh because it's just not enough to to uh to do it
[561.26] Timothy: on an f3 with everything but because we've separated it because we've um we've said all
[566.3] Timothy: right we're going to take out the filtering and now there's no filtering happening in
[569.5] Timothy: butterfly uh because the stool core essentially now uh we run all the filtering on one core so
[575.34] Timothy: we could actually do that we run at 32 kilohertz regardless of what you choose your PID loop at
[580.06] Timothy: so it executes a 32k and then down samples to whatever you request it out.
[585.9] AndyRC: Awesome so is this a completely like new way of thinking compared to what race flight was doing?
[591.9] Timothy: Yeah it's a new way of thinking like it's like a computer science concept of trying to
[600.62] Timothy: encapsulate different parts and separate them out and using extra processing power that wasn't there
[609.26] Timothy: to do something that we weren't able to do before without overclocking and so uh
[615.18] Timothy: uh this this is an entirely like new concept to kind of an innovative and revolutionary idea.
[623.66] AndyRC: Yeah I'm seeing a lot of people switching to butterfly now and them finding similar to me
[629.42] AndyRC: and I think it's just that I guess it's kind of like the transition from clean flight to
[636.3] AndyRC: beta flight and um it's sort of going to have a bit of like tug of war kind of thing and uh yeah
[644.38] AndyRC: it's just it's interesting especially I mean I think whoever's going to be the most popular is
[649.74] AndyRC: the just the one that flies the best and and that was be a flight when it was be a flight and clean
[654.3] AndyRC: flight but I have to say at the moment between the two butterfly is uh it's doing it for me so
[660.06] Timothy: whatever you're doing it's working for me. You're gonna you're gonna love the next iteration then
[666.86] Timothy: because uh we it's something that we've been working on uh Odin on top of a new PID controller
[673.1] Timothy: which we just I'm actually working on right now just kind of refactoring it and cleaning it up a
[678.06] Timothy: little bit uh in butterfly that uh fixes some of the issues that we've noticed with certain uh
[685.98] Timothy: with certain types of quads like especially with six inch quads ones that have more frame resonance
[690.38] Timothy: uh the beta flight got around it by adding a whole bunch of filtering like you could
[696.22] Timothy: you can add notch filters all day long and you can uh you can just do all kinds of all kinds of
[703.18] Timothy: stuff because there's like seven different filters there but um that was a band-aid for the frame
[710.22] Timothy: resonance issue that was exacerbated by the PID controller and so we've actually just fixed that
[715.1] Timothy: and I was up to like 2am last night testing it with our pilot and it's freaking amazing
[720.54] Tony: it's really good. So would that be good on a um x-class? I believe so absolutely. I might might have
[730.78] Jack: to try try on my x-class then. So where does that leave people with only one gyro and say like
[739.58] Timothy: people running just an f3 board are we screwed? No what we're gonna do is we're gonna try to put
[749.18] Timothy: whatever we can into butterfly so that anyone can use it but it's just the the amount of stuff that
[755.9] Timothy: we are doing on the f3 by itself just that one board uh on helio like it it's not possible to
[762.94] Timothy: run on any other chip uh it's just even an f7 wouldn't be able to handle everything that we're
[768.94] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: doing. Okay so the main reasoning behind that is basically a part is not necessarily uh worth
[779.42] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: how do I phrase that um two smaller CPUs can outperform one larger CPU in a real-time system
[787.74] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: because you can have two real-time processes happening at the same time so that's why the
[792.86] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: megahertz don't add up to what an f7 can do because we can do two things at the same time
[798.94] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: that must happen at or near the same time that's how come we can actually get better performance
[803.82] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: out of an f4 plus an f3 than you can even out even out of the h7 which is a 400 megahertz processor
[809.74] Jack: you just do so much more at once. You were you're dividing the load from what I can gather.
[815.42] AndyRC: Kind of like what computers did isn't it back in the day they started adding more
[819.58] AndyRC: processors and cores and stuff like that I guess it's it's like multi-threading kind of
[825.98] AndyRC: stuff so um so yeah that's going to be really specific to hardware then isn't it because I
[832.38] AndyRC: one thing that I think is amazing about beat of flight, clean flight, butterfly, whatever is like
[837.58] AndyRC: there are so many boards that will just work with it and uh yeah so it's going to be interesting to
[843.98] AndyRC: see how how you guys implement that. Do you guys have any sort of um relationship with
[849.34] AndyRC: beat of flight back and forth or is it just completely separate because beat of flight's
[855.02] AndyRC: open source and or other sort of ideas that are likely to be shared between the two?
[862.3] Timothy: Butterfly is a fork of beta flight and it's open source uh the only difference was that they're
[868.62] Timothy: they just had a different philosophy. Beta flight they
[874.54] Timothy: kind of didn't like the fact that we have a closed source portion which is the imuf code itself
[882.14] Timothy: and even though it's perfectly fine it's perfectly acceptable with the gpl they just decided that they
[890.14] Timothy: didn't want to support it so we were going to ship with a kind of like the what the radix does
[896.3] Timothy: it's got its own version of beta flight or there's a couple other flight controllers that
[901.74] Timothy: all have their own forks and we were going to do that as well but then butterfly came along
[907.98] Timothy: and what they were doing was in line with what we wanted to do anyways and so uh it and we like them
[916.46] Timothy: they're pretty cool guys Chris and Lucas are both both fantastic to work with so
[923.66] Timothy: um we just decided you know what this is perfect this is a perfect opportunity for marketing and
[930.14] Timothy: for helping out the community and moving the hobby forward and we kind of felt like beta flight is
[934.94] Timothy: becoming stale um like the last thing that they added was the dynamic notch and past that there
[941.74] Timothy: really hasn't been much in the way of uh innovation because wasn't wasn't the original idea to put
[947.02] AndyRC: this in in beta flight like the common filter and then they backtracked and they said no
[954.06] AndyRC: our filter our filter does essentially the same thing doesn't use uh as much processing what what
[960.54] AndyRC: your comments towards that or have i misunderstood what happened wrong yes you're talking about
[967.02] Timothy: biquod plus fur and so what they did is they said hey this thing converges after so many cycles
[975.26] Timothy: to to pretty much a low pass filter because we're using uh static variables and things like that
[982.7] Timothy: that don't change and so it converges to a point and their argument is is okay from like a math
[991.02] Timothy: perspective if you don't dig into it very far and so they were saying like hey this biquod plus
[996.7] Timothy: fur thing is really the same as the fast common filter but they took out the common gain equation
[1003.66] Timothy: and they're like oh okay well this runs faster now and they'd show graphs like and it converges
[1010.7] Timothy: anyways so uh these two things are the same and it runs faster but that common gain equation is just
[1018.38] Timothy: a one step predictor so like the convergence was kind of over emphasized like uh common gain at
[1029.18] Timothy: each step takes in a rating and it says okay uh like adjust the measurement and the prediction
[1037.34] Timothy: this much and they were saying well let's just use a static variable for that and
[1044.94] Timothy: we we'll just have this much prediction and this much of the actual measurement every time
[1051.02] Timothy: and so users kind of noticed that and i think that was really kind of the big push off for
[1057.5] Timothy: butterfly like butterfly came from a community of people that noticed that they didn't like biquod
[1065.82] Timothy: plus fur even though they couldn't describe it mathematically they they didn't like it as much
[1072.7] Timothy: and so they asked for the fast common filter to be used as a cli command in beta flights and when
[1081.02] Timothy: that was like heavily rejected they separated to make their own group so that they could have
[1086.86] AndyRC: a little bit more say of what goes into the code yeah and then that's what that's what butterfly
[1092.86] AndyRC: became i mean i first got interested in it when uh joshua bardwell did he did a video didn't he
[1098.78] AndyRC: where it was like butterfly versus butterfly and he basically said that he couldn't tell
[1103.58] AndyRC: much difference in the footage and when i watched it his footage i could tell quite a bit of
[1110.06] AndyRC: difference in in the way that it handled corners and uh i i guess um i don't know if you guys saw
[1116.14] AndyRC: that video but i'm gonna guess you agree with me that that the butterfly uh flight that he did
[1122.7] AndyRC: looks look smoother and better and less um oscillations that that's what i thought anyways
[1129.74] AndyRC: he basically did two flights and he said i can't tell the difference in some cases
[1135.18] AndyRC: bit of flight is better in some cases butterfly is better but and then you look at all the comments
[1140.46] AndyRC: and pretty much every single person was like no i can see that yeah butterfly is acting better and
[1146.06] AndyRC: that's the thing that got my attention especially when sort of but i know i know josh is very i
[1150.94] AndyRC: wouldn't say he's biased towards be a flight but he's heavily invested in it isn't he and uh you
[1157.1] AndyRC: know um he's got a flight controller running off isn't he yeah so that's what got me interested
[1164.86] AndyRC: in it but uh yeah i like it i like i like it as well because that's what i wanted to ask i like
[1171.5] AndyRC: it because the interface i haven't had to make any changes when it comes to like learning how
[1176.46] AndyRC: to use yeah like if i go into kiss i have to readjust myself or or race fly or whatever
[1183.58] Jack: but when your child has got to with running kiss
[1188.54] AndyRC: but but when i go into uh butterfly uh like it's all the same is that likely to change i mean i
[1194.94] AndyRC: know there's only a couple of options different at the moment but are we likely to see butterfly
[1199.58] AndyRC: look completely different to be a flight at some point i think that's a pretty strong possibility
[1205.9] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: but um you know like uh sean mentioned earlier that's not that's not completely up to us that's
[1211.34] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: up to the owners who's um lucas and chris but i would have met okay so you're not really involved
[1218.22] AndyRC: in that then kalen i thought you were more involved in it for some reason but the whole butterfly thing
[1224.62] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: well we're we're definitely involved it's just not our decision i mean where we worked very well
[1230.06] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: with each other when we're oh has he gone i think we've lost him frozen oh yeah
[1240.38] AndyRC: the internet's been sucky around here so it was like it was under my impression that kalen had
[1245.74] AndyRC: all this this goodness um that that he had from like race flight and for whatever reason
[1253.58] AndyRC: you know wanted to part ways and so i thought that was where butterfly came from but it seems not
[1260.7] Jack: the case that much if he comes back i do want to ask like what happened with that guys where do
[1266.78] Jack: you stand on like you're probably gonna hate me but like where do you guys stand on legacy stuff
[1272.7] Jack: because like it seems like what you're doing is like releasing something open source but
[1278.94] Jack: it's not really open source because you've got proprietary you know you've got like proprietary
[1285.58] Jack: code for like a board that in in order to like get the full package of butterfly you've got to
[1294.62] Timothy: have your hardware yeah it's just it's just that it's um there's not enough hardware on legacy
[1301.1] Timothy: stuff in order to be able to execute what we are doing in the helio board um it's just like any
[1308.38] Timothy: other any other thing that has come out you know you think about computers you bought a an old
[1313.58] Timothy: computer and then you know six months later something twice as fast came out and it's like
[1319.5] Timothy: that's kind of what happened but but the difference here is that we're doing everything we can
[1325.34] Timothy: to try to support that as long as possible right like we're we're actually looking through the
[1330.62] Timothy: code and seeing what can we add to the code from imuf implement yeah whatever whatever we can
[1342.78] Timothy: implement into the code uh within beta or butterfly from imuf that will run will do it
[1349.34] Timothy: but the capabilities of imuf are far superior to just running uh a single f4 it we're able to
[1357.58] Timothy: perform a really unique analysis across all three axes that you can't do on uh on just a typical
[1365.98] Timothy: f4 board so this you get some of the benefit we can still do some of the things that we're doing
[1372.22] Timothy: right like the the initial thing was the fast kalman we open source that then we release helio
[1377.58] Timothy: we didn't we didn't just like make make this thing and then say uh yeah and then at the same time
[1384.3] Timothy: we're also um we also want to license it up to other OEMs and we actually have a few
[1390.38] Timothy: that we're working with right now as far as getting a product a few different products
[1394.46] Timothy: launched which will be licensing the imuf technology for for new flight controllers
[1401.65] AndyRC: yeah a question i wanted to ask is like there's a lot of like um cloning and copying and stuff
[1407.65] AndyRC: like that that goes on with these flight controllers is it possible i mean it might
[1412.85] AndyRC: seem like a a tough question to you but it's it's it's like one that i think a lot of people
[1418.05] AndyRC: are probably wondering is like is is that something that can be copied easily and like
[1423.81] AndyRC: we'll see start to see potentially copies of of this like that they've just taken a board
[1429.97] AndyRC: copied it and it'll just work with butterfly or is the is there going to be like a license there
[1435.33] AndyRC: that that stops that from being able to occur sort of thing yeah so so we have implemented
[1441.17] Timothy: some drm into our chip uh you won't see clones anytime soon uh they can't actually um they can
[1452.05] Timothy: actually access the code that's on the chip it's all updates uh and uh it's just like any other
[1459.17] Timothy: imu right like uh any other any other gyro basically um but uh the the point is because
[1472.34] Timothy: there's some drm involved in that uh we can license it out similar to the way that uh bill
[1477.06] Timothy: helley 32 licenses it out to other uh licenses or firmware out to other um yeah so so they they
[1486.24] AndyRC: could basically buy the chip then technically and and like build their own are you like that's
[1492.08] AndyRC: light controller but you get um money off the back of that sort of thing is the lockout with
[1499.92] AndyRC: serial numbers or just jacks jacks in the back now he's got someone trying to copy it as we're
[1506.08] Timothy: speaking looking for clues yeah so it's locked to the chip it's locked to the chip uh it's gonna
[1515.6] Timothy: take them a long time to figure out how it works uh it's very obfuscated and encrypted uh if you
[1525.12] Timothy: have worked with uh drm or or things before this is this is pretty pretty unique to uh
[1533.92] Timothy: to what we what we're doing they'd have to know a lot about prime numbers to get in there
[1542.24] Jack: uh kalyn so what like what what happened with you like what broke down with race fight you know
[1549.6] Jack: other than from what i can clearly gather this is how i imagine it you're in some sort of like
[1554.48] Jack: cage and he would like poke you with a stick and like feed you now again and then code would come
[1560.96] Jack: out and like you were rewriting everything and then one day you kind of gnawed your way out
[1567.68] Jack: and then you like released the code on the internet and then like poo went flinging everywhere
[1576.8] Jack: and kind of got in a few people's mouths and eyes and stuff and then you've been running around on
[1582.64] Jack: fire ever since and then butterfly got hold of you this sounds very similar to my situation with
[1589.2] Jack: you jack yeah shut up and do sorry sorry you'll get the stick again well i i don't want to talk
[1596.72] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: too much about it since there's an ongoing legal battle um i gather that the gist of it is uh i
[1603.68] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: sold race light to honoree development which is the company that currently owns it and the um
[1609.28] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: the owners of honoree development are uh tim shawn and myself and uh so can you sell things to
[1616.24] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: yourself yeah well i've sold it to the company yes you can't well licensed it so i i don't know
[1622.96] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: the exact terminology but you know we have a lawyer for us to make sure it was done correctly
[1628.72] Jack: and um can i sell andy i'll see to you
[1632.24] AndyRC: i'll give you tony if you want i think don't you think that's such a shame that uh like it like
[1639.52] AndyRC: it's a it's a hobby isn't it and it's meant to be fun and like sometimes when it gets serious i
[1645.04] AndyRC: think it's such a shame but i understand why but you know it's um yeah no thanks for sharing
[1651.84] AndyRC: that information because i think everybody wants to know but it's a sensitive subject you know
[1656.16] AndyRC: because like it this is people's art isn't it you know so it's that's what it is to me and it's like
[1662.96] AndyRC: you know trying to um make sure that everyone gets the right credit and stuff getting stolen
[1670.72] AndyRC: why is that happening and something that's meant to be fun it's uh yeah it's beyond me well it's
[1676.8] Timothy: because there's a ton of money in this hobby and people people think like oh it's just fun and
[1681.68] Timothy: there's a lot of uh you know open source stuff and and yes but you look at the actual numbers
[1687.28] Timothy: the money that is in this industry it's a real industry it's billions of dollars in this industry
[1693.52] Timothy: there's uh yeah going to joina we haven't yeah yeah i don't see much of it yeah i know i don't
[1701.28] Timothy: either yeah but that's the thing is in order to get that money and even the retailers have a hard
[1707.36] Timothy: time we i know they have a hard time because uh you know uh internet sales and brick and mortar
[1712.08] Timothy: stores and all that stuff but the oh yeah things i mean this stuff comes out and i'm like everything
[1718.4] Jack: goes out oh god damn it big d you're in an enemy taking a poo again ever since that dust storm the
[1727.76] AndyRC: internet's been acting up around phoenix oh wow it's a telling that andrew's not here we haven't
[1733.84] AndyRC: done any shout outs we haven't done any questions from the chat i've i've listed them we can quick
[1740.0] Jack: fire them off all right tony do a shout out he loves doing it he's like i literally went there
[1747.28] Jack: and i saw him at mini air show four and he was just like he was rubbing his nipples in his tent
[1753.44] Jack: and he was like everyone here has come to see me and i was like is vaseline really necessary
[1765.76] Jack: and he was like maybe if you open my car door at five am again and set off the alarm these guys
[1773.28] Jack: have no idea what they've wandered into here no no i'm really i'm really proud of uh kayla thank
[1779.44] Jack: you so much for coming on like let's run out because i heard a rumor like this is the podcast
[1785.6] Jack: you want it to be on and and for the record like no one wanted to kill you because of race fight
[1790.8] Jack: uh we just really wanted to know what was going on and um like the the the roasting and japing is
[1798.56] Tony: is all in good fun and um i loved race flight i loved race flight for weirdly for free jobs boys
[1807.92] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: for freestyle not for racing race flight had one major drawback and that was it had one
[1818.88] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: question was running it the biggest the biggest problem that i'm going to talk about at least
[1825.12] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: is that um it was just me doing the programming and there was little to get back in that cage
[1832.4] AndyRC: so i think i think jack's gonna need a lawyer after this
[1844.64] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: again yeah the big difference now with helio is you know it's a team of three it's shawn
[1849.76] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: tim myself we all have strengths and we all have weaknesses and we all end up working extremely
[1855.44] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: well with each other we have code reviews we all understand what's going on in the project we talk
[1860.48] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: about it constantly and that's why things progressing so quickly if race fight had that
[1866.16] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: it would have been a whole different story than one of this now but uh you know now we have helio
[1872.24] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: so um good be on the lookout for really good things yeah yeah you guys kind of know like
[1881.28] Timothy: calen's pedigree because he's been in the community for a long time but tim is also
[1886.64] Timothy: a very well-established software engineer in other communities he's got more than a decade of
[1892.56] Timothy: experience in fact uh at general motors he's a principal developer there wow it was until i just
[1901.84] Jack: recently left you know you know you're on camera right you know the whole flossing teeth or like
[1910.48] Jack: it's like you just like oh man oh this isn't a podcast yeah yeah man it's like
[1917.68] Jack: on the internet oh you're not you're not video okay oh okay i'm saying like
[1926.83] Timothy: you know you've got you've got i didn't realize i didn't realize this is gonna be on camera i
[1929.95] Jack: thought i thought this was a little symbol that says live right there i thought he would give it away
[1938.11] Timothy: gosh it is live yeah i saw these i saw these little things pop up i saw these little things
[1943.95] Timothy: pop up they're like little questions or something oh yeah there's a question from the youtube so
[1948.11] AndyRC: we've got i think about 60 people watching on on youtube at the moment so okay well i'll
[1953.87] Jack: keep flossing them that's fine no one's actually complained in the so let me let me fill you in
[1961.79] AndyRC: right hang on uh no zed it's it's in very low definition so don't worry about it look i thought
[1968.99] AndyRC: you were trying to eat your headphone cable away which makes a lot more sense
[1979.71] Jack: right so guys that link there is the chat so there's people in the chat and you can write
[1985.63] Jack: things and people can ask questions like for instance uh when i screamed kaitlyn get back in
[1993.07] Jack: the cage frostbite said jack please shut up and let them talk good on you frostbite even though
[2000.43] Jack: like we asked a question earlier on and then you guys just sat there for a while but that's left
[2005.31] Jack: thrown out uh apparently tony's tony's like obsessed lately with ruining my good name he says i lie
[2013.07] Jack: i says i repair things and then don't get back to him um he did lie a lot well he's british so
[2019.95] Jack: right yeah the evil bad guy um yeah the station sony do you want to run from either do you want
[2029.79] Jack: to run and we take the questions and then we paste it into the little chat thing so that we don't
[2033.79] Tony: miss any basically someone asked in the chat about the the butterfly motors can any of you guys
[2040.35] Timothy: comment on that you had any input in any of that no i we we didn't uh they actually uh like we
[2049.71] Timothy: mentioned before butterfly is separate from uh helio and actually we're gonna end up releasing
[2055.55] Timothy: our own motors here in a limited run uh they're very special uh very special motors but we we
[2062.43] Timothy: don't really plan on making a like making a ton of other products other than flight controller
[2068.59] Timothy: flight controller software because as soon as you expand into those things then it becomes
[2071.95] Timothy: a nightmare to manage and it and it becomes uh becomes more difficult and we're software
[2076.99] Timothy: engineers uh we're we like doing this stuff we don't like building other ancillary products
[2083.95] Timothy: we're gonna partner with others in order to do some of those things but we're not going to be like
[2088.19] Timothy: hey uh if you get the helio thing like we do it better than x person who just made it for us like
[2096.03] AndyRC: that doesn't make sense okay so um where like because we're in the uk so um is there anywhere
[2103.71] AndyRC: that we're going to be able to to buy the helio from uh like do you know anything about like
[2109.39] AndyRC: distribution and stuff and what retailers are gonna stock it and stuff like that i think hogwarts
[2116.67] AndyRC: might stock it i want to buy one i want to buy one and check it out on the channel you see
[2126.75] AndyRC: hobby hobby rc um yeah good yeah they're good yeah i know they should be they should have them
[2134.27] Timothy: or if they don't have them they should be getting them soon um drone fpv racer uh the the guys in
[2141.55] Timothy: germany like they they wanted us first uh like we kind of felt we kind of we kind of felt like uh
[2148.99] Timothy: you know these hot german chicks just kind of wanted to get all over you know shawn there shawn
[2155.55] AndyRC: and calen oh gosh
[2160.35] Timothy: yeah flying machines day was one of our first customers and uh there was another another
[2169.63] Timothy: german company that that was another very early customer uh the europe has been really good for
[2177.95] Timothy: flight controller sales and we've done really well in europe yeah yeah i think that's probably
[2183.47] AndyRC: because like in europe like we we are using beaterfly like anyone i speak to is beaterfly
[2190.99] AndyRC: when we when we had preston on the show and like we asked everyone who was here who was using
[2197.31] AndyRC: race flight and i think it was just tony we it didn't reach over here that much um like but i've
[2204.59] AndyRC: you know i've already tried butterfly and uh i think i think because a lot of people in europe
[2211.07] AndyRC: are using beaterfly anyways um and if it's better they will just switch to which is the best so i'm
[2217.55] AndyRC: not surprised by that it's beaterfly is like the main thing over here and then and then probably
[2223.15] Tony: kiss after that i would say okay richard warrick asked in the chat will there be a 20 by 20 fc board
[2230.83] Jack: for micros said we've considered it do you want to run through the um questions in uh in the chat
[2244.11] Jack: question to the boys how many developers are working on butterfly and what are the chances
[2250.43] Timothy: of them getting bored and moving on i can tell you we are heavily invested in it uh as well as
[2256.83] Timothy: apoc and lucas uh lease transistor um there's a couple of other guys uh who are also
[2264.43] Timothy: heavily invested in it so you're looking about i'd probably say including the community
[2269.71] Timothy: probably about 10 like 10 core solid developers that are constantly helping and looking for
[2274.91] Timothy: issues and uh adding improvements and things like that um you can look at the commit history
[2282.11] Timothy: and the the prs i think there's 12 open prs right now i actually just opened one for the new
[2286.35] Timothy: pin controller um last night and there's uh i don't think it's going to go anywhere that's
[2292.51] Timothy: gonna it's not going to go anywhere and it's and once you know another uh flight controller software
[2299.95] Timothy: just like just sort of fades into the obscurity that is beaterfly i mean i didn't say that but
[2307.71] Timothy: when it fades into obscurity then uh you're going to see more and more butterfly i think
[2312.75] Timothy: it's new ideas and new features and new things thrown in there and uh you know what can we make
[2318.43] Timothy: this thing do but then it's sort of devolved into a bunch of a bunch of uh mental masturbation for
[2326.35] Jack: certain people so you come to the right podcast um okay next question why did they tm the brand
[2336.59] Timothy: which brand because apoc and lucas trademarked uh butterfly and we've trademarked gileo yeah
[2345.87] Jack: there's a lot of people using beaterfly brand unlicensed uh there was another question how
[2352.35] Jack: much did you sell it for i think that's race flight oh how much uh i'm gonna keep that between
[2361.39] Jack: the three of us okay nice good answer uh what will be the difference between
[2368.27] Jack: beaterfly and butterfly and helio what what will be the difference in price between beaterfly
[2373.55] Timothy: butterfly and the helio well butterfly and beaterfly are pretty yeah i think they mean
[2381.39] AndyRC: that i think they mean the actual price of the boards yeah between race and helio so um
[2390.51] Timothy: um when it comes to the the actual architecture that's on helio uh we've tried to try to keep it
[2397.23] Timothy: as competitive as possible um we realized that uh that it's a tough market to compete in when you
[2408.83] Timothy: don't have something special to offer so that's why it's so easy to clone boards right because
[2414.91] Timothy: there's nothing that's preventing that you can just go make something cheaper what's the same
[2420.03] Timothy: fly's almost identical may break after four or five flights but you know it was 12 cents so
[2427.71] Timothy: um there's uh there's a little bit of a little bit of difference in there with uh with helio um
[2434.83] Timothy: and but the thing is you're also going to end up with other oems uh making their own boards
[2440.99] Timothy: so then it's just going to wildly vary you'll be able to support whoever you want and still be
[2446.59] Timothy: able to get all the benefits that we provide with our firmware because that's essentially what we
[2450.43] Timothy: did is we created a new gyro it's it is a gyro plus mcu but it can go on anything
[2459.95] Timothy: yeah on that note uh the f7 boards like i think some of them are kind of wildly overpriced
[2467.39] Timothy: and we're we do have more value than just an f4 and so f4 boards were probably a little bit more
[2475.55] Timothy: expensive than that but we're not wildly overpriced like 60 or 70 dollars for an f7 board
[2488.24] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: so i think i mean you just can't beat it in my opinion
[2492.48] AndyRC: yeah i think it's interesting the f7's like been around for a while and it hasn't really
[2497.2] AndyRC: it's not taken off like the f4 as it must be maybe maybe the price i think it was the
[2503.28] Jack: development uh like pin out boards and stuff they were quite hard to get hold of for a while
[2508.96] Jack: i'm not too sure i forget now there was like some sort of development problem with them
[2516.05] Timothy: yeah i think you're right uh it was hard to get chips to like manufacture in large bunches
[2523.17] Timothy: and they had to to change like beta flight they had to go in beta flight and optimize the code
[2529.65] Timothy: to work on an f7 yeah and so like they've started that work now optimizing the code to work on an f7
[2537.49] Timothy: but i'm i'm not even sure if you go in and do their nightly release build if it's better to
[2545.33] Timothy: run it on an f4 or f7 it's kind of a gray area right now yeah even though the f7 has more compute
[2553.33] Jack: yeah and there was wasn't there like architecture problems as well or something
[2557.41] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: so something that's something that's kind of interesting i think is uh people don't realize
[2563.25] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: how long the f4 has actually been out for uh the first f4 that i'm aware of in a flight controller
[2569.81] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: in um at least one that was fairly popular was the uh open pilot revo or the revolution yeah
[2576.85] AndyRC: that's right yeah yeah that actually rebo board oh have we lost cailin no who's the picture of
[2588.48] AndyRC: the dog is that cailin as well that's cailin that's that's cruiser yeah it's funny i received
[2596.0] AndyRC: one of those boards and yeah i was surprised to see it was an f4 uh i received like a prototype
[2602.8] AndyRC: alien we board that was an f4 years ago so yeah it's been been around for a while and uh yeah i
[2610.88] AndyRC: i mean i just i still fly f3 for the most part because um i find that the the the f4 boards you
[2617.28] AndyRC: know they're a bit tricky with the um you know the they don't have the inversion and and it can
[2622.96] AndyRC: be an absolute pain sometimes if you're not aware of all the right the the parts that you've bought
[2628.56] AndyRC: and what inversion you should have and if your telemetry is inverted and which so go on i'm
[2635.44] Tony: putting a i'm putting a butterfly on a ring board at the moment so here here's the thing that holds
[2643.6] Timothy: them back uh is really just uh flash size the f3s um the amount of flash that's on them
[2650.72] Timothy: because the f3 and the f4 are not really that much different in terms of speed you can still
[2655.84] Timothy: run f3 is 192 168 which is stock for an f4 um and they have the same processor
[2665.6] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: they actually have the same processor the f3 and the f4 is the same processor it's just the
[2670.0] Timothy: package it's different yeah and the dmas there's less dmas on the f3 than around the f4 so um
[2677.2] Timothy: so when it when it comes to like being capability wise right the f3 is not a chunk the f3 is
[2685.28] Timothy: actually very capable but the problem is the code that's out there in beta flight and in butterfly
[2692.48] Timothy: and this is something that that dominic has uh mentioned quite a bit as far as like uh he more
[2698.56] Timothy: or less focuses on the cleanliness of the code but i'm kind of a performance curmudgeon and so
[2704.0] Timothy: i can i've refactored a couple things within butterfly and just one small refactor uh which
[2710.72] Timothy: didn't change anything other than to change the way the code operated saved one and a half k of
[2715.68] Timothy: flash storage and on f3 that's huge because it only has 32k so you can add more features you can add
[2722.8] Timothy: more things to it um but but uh i would say there's kind of a opinion floating around within
[2731.52] Timothy: the beta flight uh groups that their code doesn't have problems but in essence it does i would like
[2739.6] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: to give an example of the code something that i really can't stand i have a problem with is just
[2744.8] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: flipping a pin um in our code we're for example in the f3 we flip the bit we directly access the
[2752.48] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: register on the processor to flip the bit which flips the pin status from high to low and um that
[2759.28] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: takes probably around two or three clock cycles to actually do which um whereas beta flight uses
[2767.6] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: a hardware extraction layer that makes it easier um to develop but it's ridiculously slow at some
[2776.56] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: things for example i did a calculation it takes around 100 between 100 and 200 clock cycles to
[2782.56] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: flip a pin on beta flight as opposed to our two to three clock cycles on the f3 that it's a pretty
[2788.56] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: major difference in in some circumstances right got you um so a lot of questions about
[2797.92] AndyRC: butterflies i don't know whether you're going to know the answer but so someone's asked how many
[2802.56] AndyRC: developers are working on for flights like i always get this impression because there's
[2807.44] AndyRC: so many updates on beta flight like you you log into it and there's a new one you always get the
[2812.8] AndyRC: impression that they've got so many developers it um i don't know if you know if that's true or
[2817.92] Timothy: and how many are working on for flights so in my opinion the the reason uh a lot of open source
[2827.2] Timothy: projects get updates really frequently is because a lot of uh software engineers like and this is
[2834.48] Timothy: true for any open source uh project that's big um it's either backed by a company which means
[2842.32] Timothy: that they're going to pay their developers to do something or they're out of work developers
[2849.44] AndyRC: right so they're just sort of stewing there and and just like tinkering with stuff and changing
[2855.44] Tony: stuff yeah is there going to be any more filters coming out like the fast common filter is there
[2861.44] Timothy: going to be even faster one uh we haven't done anything more so so once we finish odin and once
[2869.36] Timothy: we finished optimizing some of the things that we're doing we have some plans uh to release
[2876.88] Timothy: some kind of like minute minimize older versions of what we've developed that should work on uh
[2885.28] Timothy: every f4 help yeah so our helio board this month is releasing a new version of
[2896.45] Timothy: of r filtering and it's pretty exciting uh the the amount of they have tons of processor time on it
[2908.21] Timothy: and it's like an exponential like uh like it would have been seven times greater or
[2915.57] Timothy: 60 times greater at different window sizes in our filter uh then we're using now in
[2923.17] Timothy: the new filter that we're going to release next in this month so how does it how does it work in
[2929.09] AndyRC: in conjunction with um like the the new butterfly releases so let's say like a new version of
[2934.85] AndyRC: butterfly comes out but if you're updating your flight controller all the time does that mean
[2941.17] AndyRC: that um you have to release it on the current release of butterfly or do you have your own
[2946.69] AndyRC: sort of version running for it that runs uh separate to butterfly it's uh the way that
[2954.64] Timothy: it's set up is we can actually run uh releases any way we want uh anytime we want uh we updated
[2963.2] Timothy: the ui to be able to pull from our repository so anytime we release a new version of our software
[2968.64] Timothy: it's mostly going to be whatever the latest stuff is that's in beta flight or butterfly
[2973.36] Timothy: wrong i keep getting it mixed up because it's similar yeah uh any of the new stuff that's in
[2979.92] Timothy: butterfly uh will be on helio plus you'll probably get some other stuff that may not even be merged
[2985.92] Timothy: into master or in the latest release yet anyway because we want to make sure that it's uh the
[2991.84] Timothy: experience is optimized for anyone buying our award we we we take a lot of uh a lot of time
[2998.88] Timothy: and effort into testing and making sure that stuff is stable before we release it widespread
[3006.0] Timothy: unlike some other uh entities who decide to just release a hundred new versions within a month so
[3014.56] Timothy: we're not we're not those people we want it to be stable and you know what if there's an rc out
[3019.28] Timothy: there and it flies better than what you got great if it doesn't don't upgrade like oh this rc i put
[3025.84] Timothy: it on my board and the previous version worked great awesome let us know then downgrade stay on
[3030.64] Timothy: the version that works for you you don't have just because something is upgraded new doesn't
[3035.76] Timothy: mean that it like has to uh be upgraded when it's not before release yet yeah so i take it does it
[3043.76] AndyRC: have its own github and is that where you get the latest like hex i guess you would say is that how
[3049.6] AndyRC: it works yeah and and that's it so yeah if you get like so i take on the page this may ask like
[3056.64] AndyRC: may sound like a stupid question i take it there's not going to be a target in beta flight for it
[3063.12] AndyRC: that just like runs like a you know a standard flight controller um it's just purely
[3070.4] AndyRC: butterfly that you can run on this flight controller yeah we do have a beta flight version
[3077.58] Timothy: that we were going to ship with uh but we just haven't updated it yet um we've been working on
[3083.34] Timothy: inav uh because the it's on the site you can actually download it it's uh version 3.3
[3089.98] Timothy: but uh um we've been working on inav and a couple of other things first
[3097.98] Timothy: so it kind of went down the hatches because i mean if you if you know beta flight you know
[3103.5] Timothy: butterfly it's not that big of a difference um and then with inav that's a whole other uh whole
[3112.7] Timothy: of the target audience you know there's people with fixed wings and and things that uh and even
[3118.14] Timothy: quadcopters right but that's what um that's what we wanted to do is kind of open up that that other
[3125.5] Timothy: that other side of the market and give more people access to what they're used to using
[3130.86] AndyRC: yeah cool awesome test stuff right behind me there they like to you've got what was that test stuff
[3138.06] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: did you say yeah i've got a hex just behind me and the mini sky hunter and i also have a
[3142.22] Kalyn "rs2k" Doerr: couple other airplanes in my kitchen right now you can't see that uh are getting ready for some
[3147.18] AndyRC: inav plus some helio love so i'm really forward to that i really need to uh i i have not not even
[3155.42] AndyRC: checked out inav but we have a a reviewer over here painless 360 does a lot of stuff
[3162.46] AndyRC: um in inav so yeah i need to need to get on to that but i think uh we're coming up to the
[3168.94] AndyRC: hour are we jack are we ready to uh to wrap up with these guys everyone's laughing in chat
[3174.3] Jack: because i've put tony in timeout for 30 seconds because he claimed that i wanted to see rich's
[3182.46] Jack: bum i wouldn't put it past you uh no i'm all right um yeah guys thank you for coming on i
[3191.26] Jack: thought you'd be more butterfly but i'm glad you're helping um constantine on uh on the old uh
[3199.02] Jack: on the old inav low because i'm a big supporter of inav i really like the stuff um and uh my
[3206.7] Jack: everyone's favorite i've got one last question mf boom any chance we'll see uh a i o f c we've
[3213.1] Timothy: built in escs uh we're not working on that right now we are releasing a uh pdb version of our board
[3224.16] Timothy: but we're we're not planning on working on anything with escs integrated into the board
[3230.8] Jack: okay um also uh wane yeah falling with style yep uh me and andy rc will be doing some
[3242.72] Jack: big gay farming on twitch will we yeah are you up for are you i can i can probably do an hour
[3251.36] Jack: yeah we're gonna so the link there is that the hang on let me just present to everyone
[3255.92] Timothy: what you showing us what's that present quick i am quick this is my terrible soldering skills
[3266.08] Timothy: uh clone it there you go well it's we got we posted pictures of it online but there's
[3275.04] Tony: have we got any any clue when it's coming to hobby rc the helio board any dates
[3282.56] Timothy: yeah i don't know how time works in middle earth so i'm not sure what to say it could already be
[3289.92] Tony: there turning we'll have to take it we've just had a look and it's not there at the moment uh
[3294.96] Tony: and remember everything runs off gmt yeah that's not g and g and t as in you know the drink we're
[3304.8] AndyRC: on bst right now phoney well my postman throws everything in the river so probably puts it in
[3314.72] Tony: a safe place for me and signs that i'm there i love my postman that's even worse that's illegal
[3321.6] Andy: turning i'm not gonna mention his name but he's brilliant tony is not only the size of a hobbit
[3330.32] Jack: he also has hairy feet um right uh you've been listening to let's drone out if you want to
[3338.0] Jack: continue with us for an extra hour whilst we do some big gay farming my link in the twitch is there
[3344.72] Jack: i'm not anything to do with big gay farming you are because i've named my cat after you in
[3352.72] Jack: his name's tony i kick him every night only wrong earth by the way the earth is round
[3358.8] Jack: um and and apparently china is watching uh you've been listening to let's go now you've been joined
[3367.28] Jack: by andy rc hello thanks for listening i'm watching goodbye kalyn uh as a dog that's constantly muted
[3376.4] Jack: uh we've got ira kalyn hello we put in a new dog yep we've got shawn
[3383.2] AndyRC: hey technically it's the other way around yeah it's the other way around everybody sees it
[3391.28] Jack: differently yeah yeah um yeah we've got uh flossing big d yeah gotta keep my teeth clean
[3400.08] Jack: hyper light flossing yeah that's it and we've got the middle earth munchkin tony
[3407.44] Jack: bonjour and you've also got bright until i fly or jack or tony's big pain in the ass
[3416.0] Jack: uh so see you living cream for that yep see you over in twitch in a bit guys thank you for tuning
[3423.28] Jack: in go over to twitch ask us questions follow like subscribe thank all our patreons thank
[3430.4] Jack: our patreons yeah not a problem you're welcome anytime anyone who messes with race flight is
[3438.96] Jack: all right with me good night have a good night good night good night telemetry lost