Rarely a semi-scale platform is chosen for hobby use as UAV since before the tuning phase is finished, the platform is usually ugly after several damages. But not this time. No flying machines were hurt during making this movie.
Rarely a semi-scale platform is chosen for hobby use as UAV since before the tuning phase is finished, the platform is usually ugly after several damages. But not this time. No flying machines were hurt during making this movie.
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@Ken
I sound a little annoying today but frankly, I am because of overwork.
I know Gary knew my autopilot was 1. developed shortly before DIYDrones and 2. closed source
then there is no point of askin if it is different from later published opensource, but how, and the answer is that 'nobody cares and nobody ever would'.
"He is asking if it CAN measure vertical motion AT ALL"
"That is why yes/no should be an easy question:"
I bet he is not. EVERY attopilot can measure vertical motion, if only by accelerometer or barometer or gps and who know what else. Is it useful for anything?
Ok let's get into possible options:
yes my autopilot internally has maybe 20 variables in Z axis among them estimators of magentic field, energy, lift, climbrates in various spaces from various sources (among them maybe 10 are altitudes and their derivatives from various sources what relate to lift, potential/kinetic/total energy, climbrate and even airspeed in some cases). Now what? Say yes 20 times? For ardupilot the answer is also positive, maybe 15 times.
I guess Gary read something about specific formulation of DCM when one of many variables got Z component that did the trick. Was this component same/similar/easily calculable form my outputs? I don't know.
Measuring Z component of motion is obvious feature of anything that holds altitude.
"something only True American would say"
In Europe we say what we see, and what we see are remotely dispatched shameless corporacy guys. Everything can be done and then little works, it's proverbial. Those are the ambassadors of illusion. Western European marketing is much more toned, US simply stands out. When I worked briefly for Nokia, the same story, the guys in Texas were so invicible in fixing bugs we have identified as unfixable by frozen architecture, one could doubt if they ever go to WC. 'Can do attitude' at its finest, terminal phase. Sure, modest and brilliant US engineers are hiding somewhere overseas, but this is not what stands out 'on the field' and not what makes a cliche'.
To get an example from UAV field, there is a guy that did 100+MIPS autopilot just to discover for IMU he has to add another chip with similar firepower. This ended at some 20 times processing power of APM or FLEXIPILOT. Of course he made MIPS a marketing sign, careless that less MIPS means less power consumption and less error rate, later or sooner and announced since the earliest days it can serve everything that has wings and flies - yet 90% of implementations were flying wings. Not to say his solution is not working, because it is very well. Now guess his nationality.
BTW I am fully aware of Polish Jokes and believe they are hard-earned and legitimate as well, except mostly outdated. Those are just stickers that are modern version of a witch to scare kids.
Woah woah woah... guys...
@Krzys,
You seem to be missing a subtlety of the English language. And, to be fair, Gary should have added a comma. He is NOT asking which is BETTER. He is asking if it CAN measure vertical motion AT ALL. Does it output Z coordinate information? That is handy for soaring, we can determine if we are in a thermal. That is why yes/no should be an easy question:
Does it output Z? -- "yes it outputs Z" / "no it does not output Z, only X and Y information."
English kinda sucks sometimes, but there is a difference between
** vertical component as well, like Bill's [does]? <-- "LIKE" = can it do it?
** vertical component as well as Bill's? <-- "AS" = how do they compare?
And I don't understand why you feel the need to insult Native Americans when you say, "something only True American would say"
@Gary - seems a little intellectual curiosity is a dangerous thing!
By the way I am now based in Cape Town - you seem to be fully back in UK these days?
Mike
I put my foot in it again, I was just interested.... Not having to use a pitot is a major feature in my mind however it is achieved.
A longer-phrased response: I don't care abotu gathering the remaining 20% of knowledge about what to do just to compare both systems and the publishing the results, while I am fully aware that Bill is even further from the answer since he sees no code of my autopilot. Therefore nobody knows fully, my guesses cannot be revealed and the whole question is a little pointless, because even if the answer is yes the solutions are even borrowed/stolen/identical it doesn't implies anybody will be ready to tune a platform to use this feature reliably. The last phrase is not because forum engineers are worse, but because they followed classic autopilot development path for the past two years.
@Krzys - sounds like you are pleading the 5th Amendment to me!
As regards understanding - that is not a function of length of the response and I never said I didn't understand.
However, looking at your response again I should have realised that "Impossible to tell..." means you don't know rather than don't care?
Anyway good work and always interested to see what you are up to.
Mike
@Mike
the simple answer is, for the reasons mentioned, I don't care.
Does this sounds polite towards Bill and Gary to answer like this?
Is it short enough for you to understand?
"Does yours measure the vertical component as well like Bills?" - I would have thought a simple "yes" or "no" would have been sufficient rather than a War & Peace length marketing pitch...but each to his own I suppose...I am still none the wiser!
@Gary "Does yours measure the vertical component as well like Bills?"
Impossible to tell as if you develop your autopilot from scratch with the idea backed by scientific analysis and not belief, on one hand you know what are most important factors in comparing (and you cannot tell that because it's your hard learned klnowledge) and there are even more factors that are solution specific and eluded you (so you cannot tell how to compare since you don't know what to compare more).
Nominally FLEXIPILOT has all parameters well below most autopilots, including realistic installation weight, heigh, MIPS, raw ADC precision. So it is impossible to tell without comparison campaign, that being hard and annoying job, will never be done for any free autopilots.
@brakar
The little devil withotu undercarriage is neutral in roll, but the neutral point in all axes is also varying wildly with throttle. Effectiveness of some control surfaces is strongly varying with throttle (which has specific rpm vs airspeed vs throttle vs amp battery output dependency) in short it is impossible to identify without numerical analysis of the logs and serious knowledge about aviation.If you ignore it you get different turn radiuses and oscialltions all the way depending on speeds and throttle. It will fly nicely on some conditions, but get nasty all around those conditions.
Lancair has the major thing to avoid for amateur UAV hobbyist:
-large prop and power2weight ratio
-large span of airspeeds that are gained quickly
-smal size that makes identification by eye difficult
-easy to destroy airframe
-nasty stall characteristics
You cannot leave it for magic 'self-learning machine' because you got some 12 seriously 3D nonlinear variables with wide span and counter-acting side effects on most flight phases and acting together in some flight phases (in another platform some signs can reverse). If you don't know how to supply database even using automatic learning techniques you cannot guarantee the safety limits and would end with like 1000h testing time in real life.
This is why 'buy our autopilot it can fly everything' is something only True American would say, implicitly adding 'good luck dying trying unless you are aviation engineer of some sort'. In fact tuning anything except 'mainline' is a subject for PhD and not just anybody. Because the hobby is so full of over-ambitions guys, if you leave it for the public, you are sure you get the result like 'look it flew' boosted by a movie and spin-doctors not reflecting the fact it is less practical than SR-71 and requires like 20h of pure tuning time (this one did).
@gary
I have tried automatic soarign as Andrus Kangro did once, it worked somedays but I gave up the subject. The real point is everything can be done but then the autopilot design 'serves everything, but the pilot is always wondering why it did it'.
@brakar Pteryx was designed like it was mostly for easiest possible flying in manual mode at edge of visual sight (max backup range if everything fails) also for safety as it never falls down in parabolic line even if any control surface fails. Besides strong stability, Pteryx has strong aerodynamic damping what makes it fly... completely differently than small plane with ailerons, and more difficult to tune in this regard (navigation lag to remove). You have to hold the rudder deflected in the air to keep it turning, otherwise slowly but inevitably it return to straight in 2s.
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