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Permalink Reply by Paul Har on August 2, 2009 at 7:29am

I did my second attempt today when switched to wp the plane turned really nice but circled around a point. does anyone have an idea what the radius setting should be?
Also does the model have to be at the correct altitude to accept the wp as read and onto the next wp. I have not connected my throtle, as I am using the power setting on manual until I can hit the WPoints. does this have any influence on whats happening

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Cuervo on July 16, 2009 at 10:08am

Hopefully I'll do a test flight today also, if the weather holds. I'll be interested to see what direction mine flies in once I get the pitch issue figured out.

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Permalink Reply by Peter Meister on July 16, 2009 at 5:26pm

Best of luck, im heading out at 6pm to re-test. Hope it works, I set the waypoint slightly farther apart to make sure I have enough time to enter waypoint mode and give enough distance for each waypoint so the plane can correct with in the margins to make each one. Will post tonight...cheers..

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Cuervo on July 16, 2009 at 5:48pm

I flew again after work and it looks like I have the same Gremlin you do!!! Here's the story---
The first thing I did at the field was use the jumper per the manual instructions: wait until GPS lock light starts to flash then remove jumper. When I switched to RTL while still on the ground, my ailerons and elevator moved but the throttle didn’t kick in. That’s the first time the motor didn’t run. That turned out to be convenient for my walking test and, sure enough, my plane guided me east! After returning all the heading file values back their original values, I switched on RTL again and same results: no throttle and heading east. I had read where TCIII said you needed to keep the jumper in until the GPS actually locked so I tried it and that seemed to help. Now switching to RTL was activating the throttle (but still guiding me east).
Next, I got her up in the air and was able to get her flying briefly in RTL but, sure enough, she flew East. So I turned on the fake bearing for due west and that worked fine. The plane’s ailerons directed me west. These are the same findings you’ve described so I suspect there is an error in the navigation code.

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3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on July 16, 2009 at 5:53pm

Hmm. Both Jordi and I are travelling, so we can't check that out directly. I don't think he's changed the nav code recently, and it was certainly working fine before, but I can check with him.

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AdminPermalink Reply by Thomas J Coyle III on July 16, 2009 at 6:12pm

Bryan,

I believe that jumper is used to tell the Ardupilot to get a GPS lock, record the lat/lon for RTL, and calibrate the XY sensor using the Z sensor if installed. When the jumper is removed and the Ardupilot is reset, the GPS blue led lock light should go solid indicating a lock and the status led should be showing some activity. If you are in the manual mode both the MUX and Mode leds will be out. Then depending on how you have programmed the RTL/Waypoint variable, you should have one or the other when the MUX and Mode leds are both on. If you have not programmed in any Waypoints and the Ardupilot is going into the Waypoint mode instead of RTL, then who knows where it will go?

Also, have you manually flown far enough away from RTL for the Ardupilot to get a lat/lon that is sufficiently different from the RTL that it is outside of the "are we there yet?" variable which is used to determine when the AC is close enough to the requested waypoint to move on to the the next waypoint?

Just a thought.

Regards,
TCIII

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Permalink Reply by Peter Meister on July 17, 2009 at 9:24am

Well my 2nd flight was a disaster. Setup, binded, turned on the autopilot on the ground all seemed ok.

Took off, got high, close to waypoint start, turn on autopilot, aircraft dives towards the ground. No navigation, nothing. So I landed the plane, and guess whay. My new XBEE was not transmitting. Opened up the aircraft, and everything looked normal inside.

Went to the table, reset the autopilot - rebinded and the xbee would not transmit. Fried # 4 xbee...can't believe this. So I disconnect the autopilot, connect up my ftdi to try and download the waypoints, nope will not communicate. Then i figured, ok Ill use the arduino IDE and upload an new sketch of the code to it, nope would not upload. So I take the shield off, connect the FTDI to th ardupilot, I can read wayponts perfectly, as well as use arduino IDE and upload just fine. So all a long, it was my shield that was the problem.

Chris, Jordi. Is there any way I can run this ardupilot without the shield, for now. Using say 2.0. Im fine with not using it, I want to stop frying my xbees and get a solid flight in. Will 2.01 work for me in this respect. Before I invest in another shield, I need to get some progress here. Let me know.

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Permalink Reply by Sam Hopkins on August 6, 2009 at 6:29pm

Hi there, are you sure your Xbee is actually fried? I have an issue where if I have the Xbee plugged in to the Shield on power up it will dump out, and I have to reload it's firmware (sad red LED, no comms) but if I plug it in after power up it works fine - I've put a micro switch in line now so I don't have to keep unplugging!

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Permalink Reply by Peter Meister on July 17, 2009 at 9:01pm

Well today I got everything up and running. Did 3 consecutive flights of 15 minutes testing the waypoint mode. All flights took the plane EAST every single time, I will try adjusting the bearing as you did and see if mine does go west like you. I suspect there is a code issue for sure, as no matter what waypoints I put in, 3 different sets - 1 for each flight, she absolutely only wants to go EAST forever. I had my FPV video goggles on and video flew her hit autopilot and she goes east forever, if i didnt turn off she would fly it until she died :)

Jordi, Chris. Any idea here. No matter what I do it goes EAST. I changed the switch code, and no the fake bearing is not enabled in the code. Any help much appreciated.

-Peter

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Cuervo on July 16, 2009 at 6:52pm

You bring up some good issues TCIII. Maybe I'm switching into WP mode instead of RTL mode by mistake. Also, I didn't read to the configuration utility so I can't be positive that my previously entered waypoints are still stored. Then again, my first WP is due west and I haven't had to reenter WP's in earlier code versions, but you never know-----

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Cuervo on July 17, 2009 at 9:55am

Sorry about the bad day yesterday. I'm trying to avoid putting Xbees in the loop until I get the basic AP working. Don't give up. It's pretty cool to watch your plane adjusting roll, pitch and throttle all by herself!

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Permalink Reply by Peter Meister on July 17, 2009 at 9:05pm

Thanks, so on the bearing change. When you changed the bearing to west it went west correct ? Per your earlier response. That would indicate that fake bearing is enabled even when its disabled in the code correct? Or did you enable fake bearing and change to west direction in the code?

Today was a good overall day, although I still only go EAST. No matter what I do... :) Hopefully Jordi has an idea as to why - JORDI !!!!

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