I'm new to the APM quad world. I got my Quad set up and working great this week and I wanted to test the Autopilot function of the APM2.5. I planned a simple box with 6 way points, a take off, 4 corners, and a land point. I loaded the mission up to the APM, went and armed the motors, went to the actions tab and told it to run the mission(the UBlox GPS had been on for 3-4 mins before so it should have been warmed up). It didn't take off on its own. so I gave it a little bit of throttle and it lifted a couple feet then the APM took over. but instead of heading to the first way point it went the opposite direction then started a long arc around and up. It flew itself over a road and straight towards some buildings no where near the plan I had made. The Max alt for the plan was 15ft, it went well over 200ft. I started to try to bring it back when it was over the road, I had a little ability to direct it with my controller, After i had it over the field again I quickly told it on my computer to tell it to return to launch. it started to descend (fall really) in a direction away from the launch point and then dove into the ground breaking my rig. I loaded the log and reviewed what the unit recorded and the log shows kinda where it actually went but is still off (recorded that it never went over the road, but my gopro recorded a shot looking straight down the road) and stopped recording before it hit the ground. I'm trying to figure out why it didn't function properly. I'm pretty upset it did such a horrible job and ended up wrecking my quad.
Anyone have any idea what I did wrong or what could have malfunctioned? i ordered new parts already and i want to get the autopilot function working. Any help would be greatly appreciated
I tried searching the forum.
Here's a link to the video that my gopro recorded. its missing the last bit, I think the impact erased it. The video is from lift off until the video cut out.
Thanks.
Replies
Just going through your log quickly, a few things stand out - your flight battery voltage starts at around 11.2V and during the 'haywire' event went to 8.6V - seems your battery was not charged.
The Vcc or APM board voltage is not recorded for some reason except for one spike to 3.8V and two to 1.2V - not sure why, should be ~5V.
The default altitude in the Flight Planner tab was set at 100m, RTL @ Default Alt is checked and it was in RTL when it crashed hence the attempt to go to 100m (300ft), set that alt to 10m (30ft or just higher than the nearest tree).
The RTL event appeared before the flight battery voltage went so low, did you switch it? Otherwise it may have been a low battery failsafe.
If the copter isn't Loitering well, any attempt at RTL may end up doing a bad toilet-bowl on it's way home and crash.
Next time definitely check the Loiter first (and try fly straight forward and straight backwards in Loiter) then if that is fine try a RTL from 30ft away. Always be ready to take over control if you see anything odd, Alt Hold is a good mode to "emergency" switch to - that is...switch to Alt Hold... and leave the sticks alone to let the copter sort itself out. Practise the switching so you can do it easily in a panic.
Good luck!
Did you test Loiter (and flying in Loiter) and RTL before trying the mission?
Post your logs so we can have a look, there are many things that could've gone wrong.
For a first Auto mission, use a simple non-distant 1 or 2 waypoint mission and be ready at any time to switch to Manual / Alt Hold to take over.