I know you are all going to hate me, but I made some tweaks to alt hold that I could use a few testers for.
This code was intended for 2.0.50 but Jani had a lot of trouble with it so I pulled it. I added a small filter and I'd like to put it back out there for folks to try.
One other small update is in-the-field ESC calibration. It requires no PC! How it works:
- take off the props!!!!!!
- put radio throttle high, plug in Lipo (only low PWM will be output)
- the LEDs will begin to cycle
- unplug and plug back in lipo to cycle the power
- listen for ESC's entering calibration mode. (High PWM is being output)
- lower throttle to neutral, you now have straight passthrough of throttle so give the motors a pulse to ensure calibration.
- Done! Just unplug the lipo to restore normal flight operation.
update: ESC calibration is working great for me. Especially on my 3DR frame in which it's hard to access the ESC signal lines. I'm going to rework the Alt hold a bit mote and post a hex. Thanks for the logs!
Replies
Hello Jason,
I'm looking at the z_dampener code, I think that maybe to let user adjust some factors, maybe fullDamp is too high or too low. Maybe let users tune this value a simpler way than compiling the code each time (maybe if everybody finds the same value you could restrict to that in future). I can try, but I'm having some trouble to add variables to eeprom and things like that. Keep you posted.
I finaly had an succesfull flight. Almost no spiking just a little bit like 20cm sometimes. I first took the heating from the 5v of the sonar. I have now made it so that the power for the heating comes from the reciever. And that seemed to do the trick for now. I guess the spiking is still from some esc noice to the sonar. I have also attached the log from my succesfull flight on 2.0.51 z dampening was off.
2011-11-24 03-47 4.log
I went from 2.0.49 directly to 2.0.51. Kept everything at the default, except turned on ACCEL_ALT_HOLD. It was hovering pretty normally indoors, although a little more twitchy then normal. Switched to alt hold mode, it started to surge slightly so I flew it to a flat area of the basement and hit alt hold again. The second time all four motors went to what appears to be 100% throttle. Needless to say, it smashed into the ceiling.
The frame seems fine, but all four motors are totaled.
Log attached.
2011-11-23 07-12 3.log
Hi Jason, here is another log with some more testing on alt hold. When in sonar range, all ok, when in baro range, it oscilates a lot. I have the default alt hold settings (0.4 and 0.02). I have oscilations and can't keep the altitude. Maybe there is something with the accel data calculation?
2011-11-23 04-11 6.log
Jason,
Just teste 2.0.51 again. Same issue. Plus I notice that throttle control on 2.0.51 is way more sensitive in stabalize mode then on 2.0.50. For example when i am a litte pas half throttle on 2.0.50 it will climb slowly. When i use the same amount off throttle on 2.0.51 it will climb at hight speed. Same goes for the spikes at alt-hold at 51 it wil climb much faster with a spike then on 50. On 2.0.49 i never had any problem with spikes and alt hold was a lot more trustworthy. I also atached the log of last flight I started to have more spikes in the end. For me it is back to 49 .
2011-11-23 12-09 7.log
Hi Jason, I'm trying it and works allright. Alt hold is really nice, although I have a small issue when I'm over the sonar limits. I found in my log that when I'm higher than 7 m the sonar send some bad data, a lot of spikes and APM can't get stable. Here is a little example:
As you can see, around 500 LN sonar and alt hold works really ok, but then at around 800 LN when I'm in baro rango sonar send a lot of shitty data. Is there a way to arrange this? I tried tweaking the filter going from 4 (i think) to 10 but it's what you see.
Here is the log also:
2011-11-22 01-22-14.tlog