Discussions

I put the quadcopter through its paces outdoors today. It was fairly windy -- about 15mph to 20mph.

STABILIZE: I had soldered the three low-pass jumpers on the board. Also, I had increased the PID values to .65 (Roll/Pitch) and .5 (Yaw). It flew great. Very responsive. Even after about 10 minutes of zipping around I didn't notice any drift.

One strange thing though: Couple of times just on powerup after connecting a fresh battery, it seemed like the accel wasn't calibrated. I had to hold the the stick way off center to keep it level. The fix was to land it and hit the reset button on top. After that it would take off level and no more drift was seen.

SIMPLE (heading hold). Also works fine. However, I find it harder to fly in this mode. I think that is because I try to keep my thumb off the left stick to convince myself that it is indeed holding a heading. But then I have to grab it frequently to adjust throttle to keep altitude. So overall it feels more jumpy.

ALT_HOLD: I now have a sonar sensor (tested via CLI and enabled). This mode is not working for me. If I switch into this mode, it stays there for a bit then starts to drift up or down. e.g. enabled ALT_HOLD at 20ft. It slowly drifted down till it almost touched the ground. Other times it drifted upwards. 

Also, the response to stick input is reversed. Pushing throttle up makes it go down and vice versa.

It would be nice if sensor view showed sonar/baro/gps altitude and also indicated which sensor was being used.

On a related note, it would be nice if Mission Planner showed which mode is  enabled. I kept thinking -- is it really in alt_hold?

It seemed like it wasn't using the sonar sensor at all.

LOITER: Maybe it was too windy (or I was too chicken), but the quad would start drifting off and I'd switch back to STABILIZE. I noticed that it started to yaw every time I enabled LOITER. Why is that? Shouldn't LOITER be heading-hold, altitude hold and position hold? I need to wait for calm conditions to try this out again.

Crash: Pilot error really. After installing a new battery, I throttled up with some gusto. The craft zoomed up and back really quick. I throttled down and it crashed straight down from about 25 feet. Luckily it hit grass. Then I looked down at the transmitter and realized to my dismay that it was in LOITER mode!

I remember reading that it won't arm if it is in one of the GPS modes. Is that not the case?

Broke three props, a couple of booms and one motor. Some damage to the APM as well. Hopefully I should be back in the air in a couple of days.