APM and Vibration

Tested some auto missions this weekend. The ST Models Discovery turned out to be a GREAT platform for uav flight. It is a 1.4m Foamie with LOADS of space in the "cargo bay".

 

Missions went smoothly and everything worked 100%.

 

Then we took out the APM and put it into a 50CC Gasser Trainer with a wingspan of 3,5metres.

 

For some weird reason nothing wanted to go right. the plane would fly erratically, and did not fly the mission at all. Back at home base, we thought that vibration may be the problem, so we made a new mount for the APM, and used anti-vibration gel under the boards. The Engine was mounted using rubber anti-vibration mounts from the start. Compared to most other 50cc class aircraft I own, this plane seemed really smooth.

 

Next test flight did not go any better. A bit better, but basically the same problems.

 

We went back to home base again, and this time decided to check , using the raw sensor data screen, how vibration may be influencing the APM. We connected using a USB cable via MavLink, read the data, then started the engine.

 

the APM simply died. all the sensor lines flatlined, and the APM A-B lights went off completely.

 

Looks like the board cannot handle vibration at all, or I need to come up with a really really good solution to vibbration-proof my setup!

 

any ideas?

Wessie

 

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  • Developer

    There are certainly vibration issues, but the results you describe are atypical at best.  I have never heard of an APM malfunctioning due to vibration.  Most likely you have a poor solder joint that is not standing up to the vibration.

     

    The typical vibration issue is that vibration affects the accelerometers and gyros such that the IMU's idea of "which way is up" drifts away from reality.  A typical bad result from vibration is seeing the plane holding a bank when it should be level and having APM report to the GCS that it is level when in fact it is not.

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