Great job on guessing what the sneak peak was guys! It is a new Tricopter flight controller. The design and software are made by a genius called “kapteinkuk”. By using the gyro sensors from three HK401 gyros, an Atmega processor and some capacitors and resistors, he made an incredibly versatile flight controller that can control a tri, quad, hex or hexY -copter. And it costs no more than 60 dollars to make!
Another great feature is that it takes care of all the mixing. You only need 4 channels to control your copter. It’s quite simple to build as well. You can read more about it on RCGroups.
But the best part is how it performs in the air. The tricopter feels like it’s on rails. The flight controller uses an update rate of 180Hz, compared to 50Hz of a standard gyro. Another great thing is that I no longer need to do the “boot up trick” to get the HK401 to arm the ESC’s. Simply plug in the power and fly.
The new tricopter will get a lot of air time in France and hopefully capture some of the magic of the country from the air. When I get back I promise to make a build log of the new improved tricopter.