Replies to This Discussion

DeveloperPermalink Reply by jasonshort on August 18, 2012 at 8:37pm

Hi, so you have a 4s battery and that will generate far more thrust than a 3s. This means the Rate_roll_P, Rate_pitch_P value needs to be lower than normal. That should do it. You can also slowly increase Rate_roll_D/Rate_pitch_d as well. The Flash Sim is the best way to understand the effect of the gains. www.jasonshort.com

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Permalink Reply by Martin Szymanski on August 18, 2012 at 10:15pm

I also dial in a custom build.

The weight, propeller diameter and pitch, motors, esc's,batteries used, all take in consideration.

I am gracefull that this controller can deal with my variances in atmosphere heat, Density altitude, and the abilty to

fly straight up an down.

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Permalink Reply by Victor Iliescu on August 19, 2012 at 6:45am

Thanks Jason, i'm going out now to try that out. I was under the impression that the higher the p in rate you could get without high speed shaking was best but i will see how lowering the p in rate affects stab. Thanks Martin, yeah everything affects this copter, it's mostly the user having the problem :)

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Permalink Reply by Victor Iliescu on August 19, 2012 at 9:02am

I'm getting some good results jason, I lowered the rate p to .160 raised stab p to 3.5, stab i to .015, imax back to 40 and d to i think .020.

It's working well, still not locked in. I tried axis mode for acro and it made it either very sluggish or if i turned up it became over responsive.

Another thing, anyone know why the camera gimbal settings seem to constantly reset or reverse? I can't get it working consistently. I set it up and then after power cycling a few times tilting forward actuates both pitch and roll.

Double you tea eff?

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Permalink Reply by Derek Ernewein on August 20, 2012 at 9:01pm

I have the same issue with the camera gimbal settings reseting or reversing. I rememeber a thread where a Developer said he'd take a look, but now I cannot find the thread.

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DeveloperPermalink Reply by Randy on August 21, 2012 at 8:14am

Derek,

     I could be that developer, or maybe it was Michael Oborne (MissionPlanner) or Amilcar (the one who wrote the majority of the camera code).

     There is/was a bug in the mission planner where everytime you went into the gimbal set-up screen it would mess up some of the camera settings.

     We are pushing out 2.7.2 in the next week and there's a number of people interested in making sure the camera works properly (especially all 3-axis it seems).

     So I'll be testing it a bit with some other but also feel free to drop your comments here and I'll pick them up.

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Permalink Reply by Carlos Martinez on August 19, 2012 at 9:43am

Hi, Guys.

I am in the same boat, 2 months and nothing!!

 

any advise?

X quad , Arducopter 2.7.1

Size  670 mm , Aeroxcraft UK frame , with Gimbal.

Tiger motors 2830  830 Kv

Props 11x5 Graupner.

Batt 3S 5000 Gens 60-120 C

3DR telemetry

OSD .

Video System Hero2 wifi, plus 1W  1,2 Ghz TX.

Sonar.XL20

 

Attachments:

• IMG_1417.jpg, 2.9 MB
• IMG_1356.jpg, 2.4 MB

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Permalink Reply by Victor Iliescu on August 19, 2012 at 9:58am

Same boat meaning which issues?

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Permalink Reply by Carlos Martinez on August 19, 2012 at 10:08am

the only possitive thing , I am increasing my patience!!

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Permalink Reply by Will Kruger on August 20, 2012 at 11:31am

Victor (and APM community),

I only bought the APM 2.0 last month, but I feel like I share the same frustration! I guess i'm off to an okay start, but I really need to get this thing dialed in so I can take my AP/video to the next level. I upgraded to the APM from a hobbyking control board (KK2.0), but unfortunately I don't feel like the APM is as "locked in" as the cheaper board was. The $30 KK2.0 board was rock solid in the air compared to this thing.

Symptoms: I'm getting a lot of drifting (I ran the auto-trim which seemed to help a bit), copter seems to be yaw-ing left irregurlarly, and in general I feel like I have to constantly "fly" the helicopter...which isn't a huge deal, but I want more confidence with the hardware/software in this higher quality board.

My setup:
APM 2.0 v2.7.1
F550 clone with integrated PDB
6x Turnigy Plush 30A ESC
6x NTM 2830 750kV motors
Turnigy 4s 5000 mAh
Gemfan 10x4.5 nylon/carbon props (balanced)
Dx7 Tx & AR7000
AeroXcraft landing gear/camera mount

Tuning: So far my tuning has been to decrease all the "P" settings on both stabilize and rate (quite a bit from default). I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but Rate (pitch/roll) "P" is somewhere around .110 and Stabilize (pitch/roll) "P" is down around 3ish. As for Yaw, I haven't touched the Rate setting (still at default), but I have brought the Stabilize "P" setting up to as high as 7.5 and as low as 3 with no real discernible difference.

I have really high expectations for this board and hope I can get it figured out soon. My plan is to upgrade to the extended arms and put 12" props on in the next two weeks so I'm sure I'll be going through this all over again, but I hope by then I can learn about the PID settings and how to adjust them to suit my needs. I will try to post a video tonight showing the characteristics...

It's almost like I feel as though the open source board is not for me :( I see incredibly stable helicopters flying with similar setups as mine, but it's soooo frustrating trying to get these settings right! I have faith in this product, but I really hope I can get this thing going soon...or else ;)

 

Thanks!
Will

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Permalink Reply by Victor Iliescu on August 20, 2012 at 5:19pm

Hey will,

I found that rate mode really doesn't work like a heading hold system unless you add the "I" term in there. Without that, my quad would drift and pitch around depending on wind or balance and often would overshoot. Adding that little bit of D for rate seemed to really diminish the bounce during hard manouvres. I think stabilize P is how fast it will roll to the desired angle when stabilized, so it's ok to have it at a slow number. Not sure what I does but it seems to help to have a bit like .015

From what I understand, focus on getting rate P as high as possible without high speed oscillations and then back down a bit, adding I at that point will increase its heading hold capability. If you find that there is a bounce when doing hard manouvres then that's what D will help with. Anyone who knows better can maybe add on...

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Permalink Reply by Simon on August 21, 2012 at 7:19am

Hi Will and Victor. As jasonshort mentioned at the top, the 4S will give your motors more grunt - so reducing the Rate Roll /Pitch P down is a good start.

I am in a similar boat to you guys and have only just started fooling around with the settings. One thing I have noticed is that wind conditions play a big part - at least they have for me so far. To illustrate, I have the larger jDrones setup with the 880kv motors and12" props - but with a 3S. So I went hard on cutting back the Rate Roll/Pitch P values down to 0.04! Now, the first night I tested this setting there was absolutely no wind and the quad was very sedate compared to the setting of 0.10. It was a real pleasure to fly around the back half of a tennis court as opposed to the nerve racking experience of trying to keep the thing from bouncing off the fences.

The next night I took the quad out to give it another test run around the tennis court - but the wind was up a bit more (not very strong but it was definitely there). This had a dramatic effect and the quad seemed to oscillate a lot more compared to the previous evening. So, obviously, the conditions will have a significant effect. Might need to consider multiple setups depending on wind conditions???

Anyway, onwards and upwards. Good luck.

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