Hi everyone,
I'm actually building a bixler 2 with an APM. I recognized a lot of noise from the servos in manual mode. I checked the input channel in Mission Planner and the noise seems to be comming from my transmitter sticks. The values change about plus/minus 5. All the channels that are mapped to switches are solid. The noise is probably comming from the ADC on the gimbal. This causes the the servos to click all the time.
Is it possible to remove the noise in arduplane?
Especially I would like to get rid of the noise when the sticks are centered. I already changed the dead zone parameter for the channels (RC1_DZ - RC8_DZ). But that did not change anything.
Does anybody know what the dead zone parameters do? I could not find any meaningful documentation about it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Best regards,
Timo
Replies
Do you have the latest firmware?
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It is much more common for servo clicking/chatter to be a result of RF noise from the proximity of your ESC and associated wiring, and antennae such as a video TX or telemetry radio. With the Bixler/EZStar tight cabin layout, its hard to avoid and troubleshoot.
Are you setting up the radio with any of the APM and radios attached?
Thank you for your response.
RF noise was also my first assumption. Like you said, the tight cabin layout, leads to a servo cable spaghetti. But disconnecting my 433 Mhz radio did not stop the chatter.
The servo jitter is also very small. I can hear the chatter but the control surfaces do not move.
I just recognized that the chattering stops if I change into stabilized mode. In MP the Jitter is still on the input channels but not on the output channels.
That makes perfect sense. The dead zone only applies to assisted modes like stabilized. In manual mode the dead zone feature seems to be deactivated. A possible reason could be safety or more direct steering.
I'm using a Turnigy 9X as transmitter. About one year ago when I was setting up a plane with APM, I did use a DX6i. I cannot remember to have any servo chattering in manual mode. The 9X gimbals seem to have lower quality.
But anyway this does not seem to be an issue. The small noise will not affect the flight characteristics in manual mode. And on the ground I can level the plane and switch to stabilized mode to stop the annoying chattering.