Replies to This Discussion

3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on July 8, 2012 at 7:39am

Terry, sorry to hear about your problems, but wanted to drill down on the alt-hold one. That has not been my experience and I don't think it's the way it's designed. Had you tried alt-hold by itself? If so, did that do the same thing?

Did you erase your eeprom and start with the default settings? They should be pretty much fine for standard sized multicopters, and there shouldn't be much tuning required.

Permalink Reply by Terry Brooks on July 9, 2012 at 7:31am

It definitely requires the throttle to be set centre for alt hold and loiter, anything above centre and the APM will go up below and it will go down

Much preferred the old way where you just got it into a hover at the required alt and flicked the switch

After testing today I've found it's too involved for me to mess around tweaking the PID's again, I can't seem to get it how it was before so I'm giving up on it

Permalink Reply by Shahin Mo on July 8, 2012 at 7:46am

Hi Terry, I am in the UK and plan to buy an APM2 in next week or so. Will message you when decided it's the right time to grab one.

Cheers

Permalink Reply by Dr Mike Black on July 8, 2012 at 7:47am

HI Terry, 

          by all means tell me to bugger off, but im in the Uk, and working on the APM2, happy to help you through it.

I am also having serious GPS problems, but....i think i am getting to the bottom of the problem.

If not perhaps we can strike a deal.

also the alt hold (from my limited understanding so far of the APM2) is a combination of factors, and i now have mine behaving in a normal fashion, Alt wise..

Let me know if you fancy having one more go before handing in the towel.

Kind regards,

Mike.

Permalink Reply by Terry Brooks on July 8, 2012 at 8:51am

Well before I upgraded the firmware to 2.6 I had it working OK(ish) it would loiter in a breeze of up to 6mph and return home was fine too

Now I have upgraded all the settings I had made have gone and when I switch to loiter it will not hold altitude unless I set the throttle stick to centre, also it's position hold in loiter has turned to crap, it wanders off in the direction of any light breeze

It's far too much hassle to go through all the settings one by one again, by the time I've done that they'll release another firmware version

Seems the tweakers just love to tweak eh ?, personally I just want to fly the damned thing

Not sure what a "standard sized multicopter" is but mine is a 650 with 35xx 750kv motors running on 3s with 12x3.8 APC props

I suppose in a nutshell it's more trouble than it's worth for me to get a multi set up and flying right for A/P A/V as I will hardly use it in reality

3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on July 8, 2012 at 9:21am

Terry: those are very big props on relatively small motors, so that's why the standard settings aren't right for you (they're designed for 850 motors on 8x4.5 props, which is the usual setup). 

Did you try alt-hold by itself? I assume you're not using sonar (not needed with APM 2)

Permalink Reply by Terry Brooks on July 8, 2012 at 10:57am

Hi Chris

Well they are the standard size props that are fitted to the motors, they've never had a problem before

The quad is designed to fly with a compact camera of around 280g plus a 500mah 3s battery and 2 axis camera gimbal, a 450 quad spinning 8 inch props just isn't going to do that

No I haven't tried alt hold on it's own and no I don't have sonar fitted as I heard they're not much good unless over solid ground (not grass)

I had read somewhere on these forums about the new ALT hold and having to set the throttle to hover and I only remembered it when my quad sank after switching to loiter

Permalink Reply by Terry Brooks on July 8, 2012 at 11:07am

PS

I forgot to ask...

How can I reset the board back to factory default settings for 2.6 ?

3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on July 8, 2012 at 11:13am

In the CLI, select setup/reset. Also, for good measure, setup/erase. Then do your MP setup again.

Permalink Reply by Terry Brooks on July 8, 2012 at 1:11pm

Thanks Chris

I've managed to reset everything and I'll try to do some test flights tomorrow but to be honest it's still too much hassle as it means landing and plugging in every time I want to change which parameter I'm adjusting, also the params list items in the drop down don't bear the same name as the same param in the config section which gets really confusing and can end up with me adjusting a wrong item and wondering why nothing appears to be happening

Oh for the good ole days of 3 little pots on the board itself eh ?

ModeratorPermalink Reply by Dean Wynton on July 8, 2012 at 12:34pm

I think Chris has a point the larger props will not respond to error as quickly especially on those motors with 3s

Terry you could try 10x4.5 props, you may find they work better as they can respond quicker. In all my videos of loiter and auto e.t.c I have 10x4.5 props on 700kv motors and thats on 4s.

DistributorPermalink Reply by Martint BuildYourOwnDrone.co.uk on July 8, 2012 at 1:02pm

Hello Terry,

 

I also agree with the props, I have always found that all copters fly better with smaller props, there is always a point that you will need to step up in prop size when lifting more weight, I always start off at 10" and then work up or down from there, most small quads I have flown (about 1.2Kg with battery) have been fitted with the 10" props and fly very well, moving to 12" props normally needs PID adjustments away from the stock settings.

 

Regards

 

Martin

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