Arducopter in the air with mikrokopter frame.

Hi,

 

First af all I want to thank every contributor to the Arducopter project for their hard work and commitment.

 

A few months ago I got hooked to this project and first of all did a lot of reading.

Last month I started ordering the different parts and yesterday was D-day for me because I did my first test flight after some minor problem with bad contacts the IMU headers .

 

First of all, my setup

APM

IMU

Mikrokopter frame

KDA 20-22L motors

ESC's 30A

APC 10 x 4,7

DIY power distribution

 

Here are some photos of my quad.

 

 

Note, the ESC's will eventually be covered ;-)

 

 

 

 

Now for my problem: PID tuning!!!!!!

I calibrated everything according to the manuals, uploaded the alpha 1 firmware and used the standard PID values. I did a test flight in stable and + mode.

My observations:

-Front motor and rear motors tend to turn very late.

-Before lift of nose tends to go in the gound.

-When in the air quad tends to drift and yaw to the left

-At a certain height (1,5m) quad starts to oscilate in the role axes

 

Stable PID values are:

Roll: P=4; I=0,15, D=1,2

Pitch: P=4; I=0,15, D=1,2

Yaw: P=3; I=0,15, D=2,4

 

I've allready tried some minor changes in the PID values but this cost me some leafs of a plant in the living room. ;-)

I would try to change Roll P to a lower value (3) to minimize the oscilation

 

Any suggestions? 

 

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Vincent Mees on October 30, 2010 at 5:11am
I also changed interchabged ESC's from back to right.
The problem is not the ESC's.
I'm back on the ground again, pfff.
This is getting anoying.
Already bought a new motor and two ESC's and without speaking abot the props ... Expensive testing.
Permalink Reply by Vincent Mees on October 30, 2010 at 9:11am
I noticed that I'm having trouble with the motors were the ESC's 5V is used to power the APM and the rest.
Strange. But when I use another ESC as 5V PSU the problem seems solved.
Would it be advisable to power APM directly with 3S battery on the external power input?
http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot-mega/wiki/Hardware
Permalink Reply by Vincent Mees on October 31, 2010 at 8:06am
Today there was no wind and I tested my quad again.
And yes it flies very stable and its controlable even with the two motors not starting at the same time. I have a feeling that this has to do with the magneto not installed. Like you can see in one of my video's the yaws seems to drift. And I think that the APM wants to compensate this by only driving to motors left and right. I also did some further PID tuning, reinstalled APM with gyrotape and recalibrated everything.I'm happy with that now.
But that is not the big problem.
The problem is that sometimes the motors get a couple nodges and then fall out resulting in a crach.
I tested the motors seperatly directly with the RX ch3 and everything seems fine. Then testes it with one motor on APM and also fine. When I connect 3 the problems starts and its not allways the same motor. I disconnected the 5V from ESC thats suppling power to the system and hooked up external 5V. Same problem. The resoldered the header on the APM. Same problem. What now??????
Change ESC's?
Change motors?
Permalink Reply by Vincent Mees on November 4, 2010 at 4:08pm
I finaly found the problemwith the motors sometimes turning of.
Don't use the bullet connectors that comewith the KDA motors.
Mine were to loose (the male connector can still turn when connected to the female connector) and was the reason that sometimes the motors would get a nodge or even turn off resulting in a crash.

Now I can continue with the finetuning ;-)
Permalink Reply by Antonio on November 6, 2010 at 5:59am
Glad you found out what the problem was. Is it now flying better?
Permalink Reply by Vincent Mees on November 6, 2010 at 9:31am
Yes indeed it flies quit well.
Some finetuning needed.
As soon as the weather gets better I'll try to make a video.
Permalink Reply by Aaron on November 8, 2010 at 7:38am
Where did you get your landing gear? What size?
Permalink Reply by Vincent Mees on November 8, 2010 at 10:25am
Permalink Reply by Aaron on November 8, 2010 at 10:27am
Permalink Reply by Vincent Mees on November 9, 2010 at 7:05am
They are certainly making strange noises. Is that from one motor or all?
In my case the motor would give a nodge with a strange sound and then restart or stay off. The solution was checking soldering and changing connectors.
Permalink Reply by Vincent Mees on November 15, 2010 at 7:06am
After a lot of issues,here's the result ;-)
Still some wobble when descending fast.


JDronesPermalink Reply by Jani Hirvinen on November 15, 2010 at 7:29am
You will always have wobble, theres nothing that you can do for it.. If you descend too fast your props will end up inside their own vortexes and they loose thrust force.

It's well known effect when descending directly down. Only way to avoid this is to rotate slowly, fly around/forward while descending or descend slow enough not to end up on those vortexes.

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