DJI Wookong M on MK Hexa 2 Frame

The DJI Wookong M is a flight controller specifically designed for multirotor machines, quadcopters, hexacopters and octocopters in various configurations.

The name Wookong comes from the Monkey God who travelled to India with a priest to bring the teachings of the Buddha back to China. Some of you may remember a Japanese TV show with Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy and Tripitaka, dubbed into English - it was a big hit in the UK, Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s.

In the original tales, Wookong has various magical powers. His fighting staff can change in size from that of a needle, so he can keep it behind his ear, to something gigantaic so he can swat monsters from the sky. He could also travel vast distances at once by cloud hopping, and transform hairs from his body into copies of himself to help him in fights.

Anyway, that's the original Wookong. The DJI Wookong M has some pretty cool powers of its own. It has an altitude stabilization or height hold mode, which they call Atti mode (perhaps because they're mixing up the words Altitude and Attitude) and a GPS + Compass assisted position hold. Perhaps its most famous function, that you see people deomonstrating all the time, is its ability to return to base if the radio signal is lost, which you can test by switching your radio off.

However, the main 'magic' for me is that the DJI Wookong M is super stable. It performs on a very similar level to Mikrokopter, but does not require any soldering and electrical engineering knowledge. It also, unlike Mikrokopter, lets you use your own ESCs (electronic speed controllers) and power setup, which means there is a vast array of configurations and setups you can build then simply attach your Wookong M and off you go.

As long as you follow the instructions, which really aren't that vast, the DJI Wookong M really is a self-contained plug and play device with only a few options to fiddle with in the accompanying software. To be honest though, you will not need a lot of fiddling to get it to work how you want - you can fly very well with everything on default settings for your particular craft - i.e. quadcopter + or X, hexacopter + or X etc.

The video below is of my maiden flight with my hexacopter and DJI Wookong M. Everything in the software is set at default for Hexacopter in V (same as X) formation. The frame is a standard Mikrokopters Hexa2, the motors are Torxpower 2216 Pro Short Shaft from quadcopters.co.uk (Where you can also buy the DJI Wookong M) and the ESCs are 30amp Hobbywings from giantcod.co.uk. I also use either 3900 or 5000mah 4s Overlander batteries in this machine.

It was a bit of a gloomy day when we filmed this yesterday, plus I made a snafu with the onboard camera so it's a tiny bit out of focus, but it was really to film the maiden flight and show how stable she is. Once I get a good camera mount on there it will be an awesome aerial photography and video platform.

This is a newer video with better landing gear attached: