Replies to This Discussion

3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on March 7, 2011 at 6:55pm

Yes, it sounds like an odd TX setting. Carlos, please post all your CLI radio setup data.

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Permalink Reply by Carlos on March 8, 2011 at 2:01pm

Chris

 

I don't really know what to say......have just run the Radio test in order to copy the data to show you, and it is now showing normal data! I have sat here trying to think what has changed and I can't get my head round it, as I have not made any changes since my last post. Now when I move the throttle up I see the data changing from 0 to 99 normally. I have also tested to see if it still cuts out when switching to Auto and it works perfectly fine. So issue some how resolved!

I want to say first of all thank you very much for all of your support, Chris and others. I don't believe things just fix themselves so when I work out what happened to make it work ill update on this thread, so at least others can benefit should they have the same issue.

 

 

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Permalink Reply by palo sestak on March 21, 2011 at 5:36am

Yesterday i made first flight with APM. Stabilization mode went quite well except problems with rudder - i'll describe it in extra topic.

But when i switched to RTL throttle goes to zero ;o(. Therefore i hope somebody resolve this problem and hope describe it here.

I used APM 1.02.

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Permalink Reply by Erik Hatch on March 21, 2011 at 7:02am

Palo

Same thing for me. Can you look in your logs and see what altitude your gps is reporting? My gps logs show altitude of 1992 meters which is 1600 meters too high. this is why i think throttle cuts so airplane can decend to defaul altitude. what is your default altitude set to?

i think the solution may be to flash my firmware in my gps, but i broke my gps when removing it. i ordered a new gps and will try again.

 

Erik

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Permalink Reply by palo sestak on March 21, 2011 at 7:29am

I'll do at the end of week since i'm out of my home now. But i guess there is another problem - i have Mediatek with fw of version 1.6. When i tested position lock on the ground, was OK. However i'll see it in logs.

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Permalink Reply by Erik Hatch on March 21, 2011 at 7:31am

im using same gps with 1.6 firmware as well.

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3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on March 21, 2011 at 8:56pm

Please reset your APM's memory via the CLI. Often this is due to old (bad) data in EEPROM.

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Permalink Reply by Erik Hatch on March 23, 2011 at 2:32pm

chris

i installed a new gps. reset the memory with cli. altitude reads 1741meters. so i turned off power to the APM, started and received new gps lock. ran test/gps in cli and altitude now reads 2241m. any ideas? im at 650' asl.

 

thanks

erik

Permalink Reply by Erik Hatch on March 24, 2011 at 7:12pm

do you think flashing the new gps will work?

Permalink Reply by Rupert Kent on March 26, 2011 at 9:23am

I have had this same problem numerous times. The only thing I can pin it down to it sometimes the mission planner screws things up. Generally, no amount of resetting / factory config will sort it. Re-programming the firmware to the device via Arduino usually solves it for me.

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3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on March 26, 2011 at 9:28am

Rupert: thanks for the diagnostics. I haven't been able to replicate this myself, but I'd love to get to the bottom of it. Can you tell me more about your setup and experience?

--Which GPS?
--Latest versions of all code?
--Any optional sensors or unusual configurations?
--Any sense of what sequence of events can lead to this bug?
--Any datalog on missions where this happened?

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Permalink Reply by Rupert Kent on March 26, 2011 at 10:15am

Hi Chris,

I really need to sit down and methodically record the steps that I make. I am a software tester by profession, as such this sort of thing comes naturally, but I just don't have the time to spend on the APM that I would like. Maybe a few hours a month, that's it. As a result I have to make multiple steps which doesn't make things easy to trace. Anyway, enough of the excuses.

Regarding versions - I have had this "no throttle" problem ever since I started working with APM - This was back in October last year, so I guess v1.0. It was still in beta for sure. Every so often, you'll make a few tweaks to config.h, write it to the APM (Almost universally, I stick to Arduino for this) and pabaa...! Switch to any mode other than manual, and your throttle stick does nothing. Even modes where some semblance of airspeed needs to be maintained (RTL, Auto etc) there is no motor.

I am running a MTK GPS. The firmware - good question. It's as it was delivered from the DIY drones store last October. The only other off-board sensor is the DIY drones supplied airspeed sensor. Arduino was v21 when I started out now 22 IIRC. For reference I upgraded to APM 2.0 and had the same problem creep up.

My radio is perhaps a slightly left-field choice - I use Sanwa Airtronics radios (in the case of my APM equipped Skyfun it's an RDS8000 2.4 unit with matching 8ch Sanwa Airtronics Rx. I guess most people use Futabas or cheapo Hobbyking kit.

One thing I have noticed though is that the Mission Planner does some bizarre stuff. Keeps telling me my port is potentially in use / cannot read or write to the board sometimes. When it does read from APM, some of the field continue to display "Loading". I've given up on the mission planner until I'm happy it's not screwing my APM software or config. I justify this in that I made a read from APM of four waypoints, modified them slightly then wrote them back to APM. After this and this alone, my elevator was reversed in any mode other than manual. Utterly bizarre. I did a factory reset and re-config'd the radio to no avail. Only a re-write of the software via Arduino could fix it.

Similarly, I had it fly a mission last weekend. Worked great. I landed, performed a reset of the APM, launched and when I switched to Auto, the APM simply tried to fly the thing into the deck...! It tried to follow the waypoints, but at what altitude I don't now - sure as heck wasn't the 100m agl I had programmed and successfully run 5 minutes previously.

Anyway, I digress. I promise to be more methodical in my approcha from now on (yes, it means I cannot advance as quick) but if it helps find this bug it's well worth it...!

Please let me know what othe rinfo I can supply. More than happy to help, even if my time is somewhat limited.

Thanks for the continued support.

Rup

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