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100KM

Slow servo movement on non-manual modes [Solved]

Posted by Hein du Plessis on February 12, 2012 at 8:25am

Hi all

After 8 very successful flights these last weeks, this morning for some reason, while in stabilise, my plane's surface areas are very slow to respond to movement of the airframe. Normally, using the standard skywalker parameters, the ailerons and elevator move rapidly to counter any movement in the

I've done the following to try to diagnose:

1. I've checked my PID's I've re-loaded the published skywalker parameters

2. Running in tuning mode on the APM planner, the APM seems to detect roll and pitch fine

3. Using my transmitter, surface areas respond immediately and full movement.

4. Increasing RLL2SRV_P does not appear to make a difference

I've recorded a small video to try to illustrate the problem:

http://youtu.be/c2Q5opP9wSo

The servo's are quite noisy while moving, it's as if it's being resisted.

I'm quite stumped! Any ideas welcome...

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Replies

  • 100KM
    Hein du Plessis March 8, 2012 at 9:32pm

    A friend of mine who is an electrical engineer had a look at the problem. His theory is, if I connect the volt meter before powering the APM, the APM tries to power itself from the power received through the volt meter.

    First powering up the APM through the receiver and *then* connecting the voltage meter solves the problem!

    Anybody else do it this way?

  • 100KM
    Hein du Plessis February 17, 2012 at 5:00am

    Update, I found that unplugging the Volt sensor from the battery balance lead makes the problem go away consistently.

    Now the question is why, it's been working fine for many hours. I've tried different batteries too.

    Some pictures: http://cde.co.za/shared/mark/ Yea it's a bit dirty :)

  • 100KM
    Hein du Plessis February 15, 2012 at 3:00pm

    I'm still having this problem, even with an external power supply, no matter what sequence I power up. It appears to be random, I have to restart the APM until the problem goes away.

    I'm very worried that I'm risking my plane now.

    Should I get rid of my APM & buy a new one?

  • 100KM
    Hein du Plessis February 13, 2012 at 10:23pm

    I've installed a UBEC to supply power to my RX and thereby my APM, but the problem still persists every now and then. Hope this doesnt happen in the air..

  • Moderator
    Graham Dyer February 12, 2012 at 10:04am

    Forgive me if I'm totally off the mark, but I had something similar. It was solved by plugging in APM first and then the R/C receiver rather than the other way around.

This reply was deleted.

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