So I can't seem to get autotune to actually work. I have CH 7 setup to intiate and mission planner says its in autotune when I hit the switch but does not actually do any of the autotune sequence. I did another radio cal, did an save trim, cal'd the accelerometers, cal'd the mag, and made sure many times I was centered on my trims. At this point I am out of ideas of what it could be. I do use a minimosd and teensy to Frsky module both connected to the telemetry 2 port but I can't see those as doing this. Anybody have any ideas. I'll post the logs
I am doing this all on my 3dr iris
I was originally on 3.1 and then tried to flash to 3.1.3rc1 with no sucess
I see no one else replied, and I just had success with autotune, so let me toss out a couple of issues I worked through.
I had to connect a wire from the radio AUX2 output pin to the CH7 input on the APM2.5. That gets the signal from CH7 (AUX2) on the DX8 into the APM.
Once that wire was in place I could use radio calibration in mission planner to see the pwm value change when I flipped the switch. I noted on the DX8 AUX2 switch that position '2' was off and position '0' was on in regards to enabling auto tune. Those aren't mentioned in Randy's vid.
The HUD in MP will show Auto Tune when you have all the setup correct and flip that CH7 switch. And as in the vid and comments, it displayed "complete" when it finished.
The rest of the setup is in the vid which was quite helpful.
I also noted that using a 5000mAh battery on my 3DR quad with an ActionPro camera it took every bit of 10 minutes and getting close to battery fail safe to complete the auto tune. I had nearly zero wind. When I had tried it with up to 5MPH wind I could not complete it because of the time it took to keep bringing the quad back to the start point. I'd estimate it would take about twice as long because I spent as much time keeping it from blowing away as it spent in auto tune mode.
I've been following Autotune discussion earlier but am not fully on the map how things has evolved.
What is the stage and reliability of the autotune today for larger copter? Copter which I have considered to autotune is equipped with SimonK ESC:s and 630KV motors with APC1655.
You should be good with this setup to do the auto tune. Just make sure that you take off the gimble before you do it, otherwise it could spell bad things to come.
I'll give a try after legs are connected with less flexible connection to copter. I assume moving free masses are not help for tuning.
Now in general it flies really nice when weather is calm. Full weight made it way much more stable but its still not as good as DJI S800 I saw. Thats my goal.
yes, any free moving mass will have great impact on how AT will work. It's a good idea to lock down those legs as much as you can, and remove the gimble all together.
After reviewing your video, I really don't think that you are going to gain much from AT. To me it looks like it's flying really well! Please keep in mind that ANY wind is going to have an effect on our birds... this is just part of the game, however if it becomes unstable in a gust or moderate winds the AT may be able to help you out.
If you do go through with the AT please make sure that you turn down the pitch and roll gains a bit until you get a feel for it. Right now the process has been reported to make them a little high.
Tom,
Thanks for your words! Once I saw how DJI S800 behaved on moderate wind and have now perspective where limit is. Perhaps DJI kind of stability isn't possible with straight down pointing motors but it is still good reference where to aim for.
I'll let you know for sure how AT went if I do it. Today seemed to be windy day for testing wind behaviour but 13m/s in gusset was too much.
By the way, is somewhere a screenshot of log or log file how well tuned copter graphs looks like?
I'm not sure if anybody has the time to help - I have unexplained crashes lately after apparently tuning the drone right - when I fly it in manual mode (stabilize) there are no problems. However, in loiter or auto or RTL it seems to crash randomly. I'm using firmware 3.1 - I thought it's supposed to be stable. The error seems to be from the navigation module - for some reason at some point it reduces the servo throttle by a lot - not sure why. By following the mavlink messages to the ground station it looks like servo output from 1600-1700 to 1200 and crashes the drone in whatever position - once it fell exactly vertically, today it flipped. It's a hex drone - not sure if the error is frame dependent.
What I noticed weird is that there is a parameter called ThrOut in CTUN which maxes out at 1000 (as well DCRate goes way down) right before the crash. Does anybody have any idea what is ThrOut and DCRate in CTUN log messages?
If you have any ideas or have the time to look through the logs (both dataflash and tlog attached), thank you. If you do look the datalog crash is around 2190 and for the tlog is exactly at 94% of the tlog play.
Replies
Hi Egert,
Sorry but I can't download your logs for some reason.
What I suspect is happening is your default tune is too high and the copter is not recovering well from the autotune test.
I would suggest you drop your roll and pitch rate P I terms by 50% and try again.
Let us know how you go.
Also, make sure you are using the latest release as it has an important bug fix.
I'l try to upload without compressing it, hope it works now.
2014-04-19 14-52-52.log
So I can't seem to get autotune to actually work. I have CH 7 setup to intiate and mission planner says its in autotune when I hit the switch but does not actually do any of the autotune sequence. I did another radio cal, did an save trim, cal'd the accelerometers, cal'd the mag, and made sure many times I was centered on my trims. At this point I am out of ideas of what it could be. I do use a minimosd and teensy to Frsky module both connected to the telemetry 2 port but I can't see those as doing this. Anybody have any ideas. I'll post the logs
I am doing this all on my 3dr iris
Autotune logs.7z
I see no one else replied, and I just had success with autotune, so let me toss out a couple of issues I worked through.
I had to connect a wire from the radio AUX2 output pin to the CH7 input on the APM2.5. That gets the signal from CH7 (AUX2) on the DX8 into the APM.
Once that wire was in place I could use radio calibration in mission planner to see the pwm value change when I flipped the switch. I noted on the DX8 AUX2 switch that position '2' was off and position '0' was on in regards to enabling auto tune. Those aren't mentioned in Randy's vid.
The HUD in MP will show Auto Tune when you have all the setup correct and flip that CH7 switch. And as in the vid and comments, it displayed "complete" when it finished.
The rest of the setup is in the vid which was quite helpful.
I also noted that using a 5000mAh battery on my 3DR quad with an ActionPro camera it took every bit of 10 minutes and getting close to battery fail safe to complete the auto tune. I had nearly zero wind. When I had tried it with up to 5MPH wind I could not complete it because of the time it took to keep bringing the quad back to the start point. I'd estimate it would take about twice as long because I spent as much time keeping it from blowing away as it spent in auto tune mode.
Hi guys,
I've been following Autotune discussion earlier but am not fully on the map how things has evolved.
What is the stage and reliability of the autotune today for larger copter? Copter which I have considered to autotune is equipped with SimonK ESC:s and 630KV motors with APC1655.
Copter is large X8, here is a short video: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=104B800DAAC19679!2118&aut...
You should be good with this setup to do the auto tune. Just make sure that you take off the gimble before you do it, otherwise it could spell bad things to come.
Good Luck!
Thanks Tom!
I'll give a try after legs are connected with less flexible connection to copter. I assume moving free masses are not help for tuning.
Now in general it flies really nice when weather is calm. Full weight made it way much more stable but its still not as good as DJI S800 I saw. Thats my goal.
Here it flies as 10.5kg full weight with 24Ah batteries, 1.2kg sand bags imitating a camera and 6m^2 parachute eject tube taped aboard: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8H8A-9COlquQjFidVZVUXBkc3M/edit?u...
Henri,
yes, any free moving mass will have great impact on how AT will work. It's a good idea to lock down those legs as much as you can, and remove the gimble all together.
After reviewing your video, I really don't think that you are going to gain much from AT. To me it looks like it's flying really well! Please keep in mind that ANY wind is going to have an effect on our birds... this is just part of the game, however if it becomes unstable in a gust or moderate winds the AT may be able to help you out.
If you do go through with the AT please make sure that you turn down the pitch and roll gains a bit until you get a feel for it. Right now the process has been reported to make them a little high.
Good luck! report back with your findings!
Thanks for your words! Once I saw how DJI S800 behaved on moderate wind and have now perspective where limit is. Perhaps DJI kind of stability isn't possible with straight down pointing motors but it is still good reference where to aim for.
I'll let you know for sure how AT went if I do it. Today seemed to be windy day for testing wind behaviour but 13m/s in gusset was too much.
By the way, is somewhere a screenshot of log or log file how well tuned copter graphs looks like?
Hi there,
I'm not sure if anybody has the time to help - I have unexplained crashes lately after apparently tuning the drone right - when I fly it in manual mode (stabilize) there are no problems. However, in loiter or auto or RTL it seems to crash randomly. I'm using firmware 3.1 - I thought it's supposed to be stable. The error seems to be from the navigation module - for some reason at some point it reduces the servo throttle by a lot - not sure why. By following the mavlink messages to the ground station it looks like servo output from 1600-1700 to 1200 and crashes the drone in whatever position - once it fell exactly vertically, today it flipped. It's a hex drone - not sure if the error is frame dependent.
What I noticed weird is that there is a parameter called ThrOut in CTUN which maxes out at 1000 (as well DCRate goes way down) right before the crash. Does anybody have any idea what is ThrOut and DCRate in CTUN log messages?
If you have any ideas or have the time to look through the logs (both dataflash and tlog attached), thank you. If you do look the datalog crash is around 2190 and for the tlog is exactly at 94% of the tlog play.
Mihai
loiterCrash.log
loiterCrash.tlog