All, hope someone can point me in the right direction here. Just build a TBS Discovery Pro and I have spent many hours ensuring that everything is as close to perfect as possible before maiden flight. I have many (30+) years R/C experience, and fly Helicopters, Jets, Turbines, etc so definitely not a noob to the hobby.  So after the TBS build and all required calibrations of the APM (Proper Radio Calibration, Compas Cal, Accelerometer Cal, Mode SW setup and Failsafe setup), I decided to just hold the quad by the bottom plate with a very good grip and run it up to test the PID's and see if there was any over-dampening... So I'm doing this in the living room (yes I get a GPS Lock inside the house), Armed and running up in Stabilize Mode, and the quad is neutral in the air, I could just let go and it would fly out of my hand, but I keep a grip of respect on it. All flight controls are verified correct and all seems perfect. I check the gains in pitch, roll and yaw by blipping the tx sticks. (Still at default PID gains) Yaw is good, pitch is good, but roll is over dampened and will oscillate after an aggressive snap of the cyclic. I spend maybe 3 minutes this first time testing and all is well. I connect back to mission planner and take the Rate P for Roll down to 1.2 from the default 1.5   I connect my battery again and repeat the indoor procedure. This time as I'm running at about half throttle and it's supporting its own weight (but I still have a good grip on it) I'm checking the roll gains and they are much better, almost just right, then all of the sudden it just goes to FULL THROTTLE all by itself and Stays There! I have no control at all... I tried to Disarm---- Nothing... So I used my other hand to disconnect the Battery. After averted total destruction of my living room and disco pro, I re-check everything and go through the whole system. Note that the Video TX is not even installed yet. This is a basic setup in its first stage of testing with only EZUHF Rx, APM2.6 and ULOX Neo-6m.

Thinking it was a fluke, I tried again. This time all was well for about 1 1/2 minutes. then the throttle started dropping all by itself, then again Instantly to Full Throttle and stayed there again. No Control. It's as if the APM just looses its mind... Note the entire time it has always been in Stabilize Mode. I have never switched out of that mode...

Any ideas would be appreciated. This is my first APM and Arducopter.

No way I would trust this thing at this point...

Here is a list of parts:

Disco Pro

APM2.6

UBLOX Neo-6m

AC 3.1

EZUHZ -w- diversity receiver (using Muxed PPM from RX to APM)

TBS Opto Isolated Bulletproof Esc's

1.3ghz Vtx @400mv (Not yet connected and not part of the above test)

IB-Crazy 1.3 Mad Mushroom Tx Ant.

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  • Robert,

    I have been looking through posts to see if any one had my problem ( similar but not the same as yours). In my case I would fly the quad for about one to two minutes and then the controls (pitch and roll) would do weird things. By letting the copter stabilize by not giving it any pitch or roll changes and then use the throttle to land.  I have tried several things without success.

    I am not familiar with your type of transmitter or receiver but I think that you should check the ground system to make sure that all your components have the same ground. Noise on the system can cause erratic operation.

    Just a thought from an old engineer.. :-)

    John

  • Help ? Anyone?

    I'm afraid to fly this thing unless I keep all of the flight modes set to Stabilize...

  • Chris,

    In looking through the 21-50.log, I see that Throttle Failsafe kicked in at lines 463 and 1838.

    At line 1837 it went into LAND

    I did another run-up last night with Failsafe Deactivated and it seemed fine.

    I'm using an EZUHF system in PPM Mux mode with a single lead from rx to apm.

    What could be causing the pulse width to be jumping out of range?

    I read that some people needed to re-flash the PPM chipset in the APM...

    How can I tell if that chipset is running the correct firmware?

    Thanks,

    Robert

  • Log files attached if anyone might be able to have a look...

    Thanks,

    Robert

    2014-01-15 21-50.log

    2014-01-15 22-21 14.log

  • Chris,

    Do I need to enable any sort of special options for the data logging, or will it already be capturing everything by default?

    I looked at the logs and all they seem to have is the configuration settings, followed by flight data with gps info. I did not see any error codes...

    Robert

  • I have not seen anything weird in the logs.

    I will post the last three logs tonight when I get home...

    Thanks,

    Robert

  • 3D Robotics

    Please post your logs or look at them yourself in the MP. That will show exactly what's going on. Sounds like one of your failsafe modes is kicking in due to a setup error, but the logs will explain all.

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