Should I expect a crash at some point?
Nervously I took the Spy 750 Y6 up for the first time in over 3 weeks (had a warm spell of 25F today).
In stab it flies great, then switching to poshold it seemed fine, but did the twitchy thing again for a few seconds here and there, then seemed to smooth out (subjective). I brought it down and hovered nearby where it stayed rock steady for a minute or so and landed.
So, what does it mean when INAVerr goes to 255 and stays there? From what I understand it is the FC not receiving data from the GPS properly. Apparently this copter has done it from day one since transplanting the PIxhawk and running on AC3.2 and 3.2.1, with the 3DR GPS and the current CSGShop Neo-M8N. These errors did not exist on the Y6B with 3.1.5 and the 3DR GPS.
Any help is appreciated.
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Saturday the lowest Nsat count was 17. The highest hdop was 1.5.
If you look at the picture, notice there is a pattern of missing data. The Time in GPS is linear, no interruptions, which indicates to me there is no loss of data due to bad wiring but I'll redo the wiring/connectors for good measure. The unit is a CSGShop large size (don't have the model no. handy).
I went over the parameters in UCenter to make sure they were set per instructions at RCG for this GPS. However, according to a newly released GPS M8N at RCTimer here
So now I don't know what to think, but put in a request to CSGShop for help.
I recently had a problem where a quad would not complete all waypoints. It would start drifting off, and seemed to drop altitude. It would always do it on the same turn.
It reminds me of your twitchy description.
I cured it. I switched from the internal compass in the hawk, to the external compass on the M8N. I think I was getting motor current coupling into the onboard compass. Oh yea, my alt hold was also dropping out, I raised my throt velocity P and I, and the the alt hold P term.
That quad has a camera and is prob a little heavier. The default PIDs on alt hold seemed to work, but turned out to be a bit low. I raised them quite a bit, 50% or more.
For what it is worth.
Oh, also, when I install a M8N GPS, I just changed the baud to 38.4, as I have been told the software will configure the gps, and that seems to work. So I doubt it is setup, thought the strobing loss of data is odd. There is not a gps update rate parameter in the ardupilot config is there? Could be too fast or too slow if so.
The Pixhawk is set for external compass. All settings in the M8N have been reset and changed to the suggested settings, but according to the link above, the M8N automatically changes the settings based on Pixhawk's firmware.
It doesn't lose altitude, just gets an occasional twitch. When it happened 3 weeks ago I thought I was going to lose control of the copter, but was able to land. Someone mentioned the K solar index was high that day, which I usually check before flying but didn't so can't say that contributed.
It holds altitude fine, at least did yesterday. So good in fact I let it hover for a good minute < 5 ft off the ground. The problem is consistency. I wonder if EKF is preventing it from doing really crazy things. I'd just like to get at the root problem causing the hundreds of lines of "APM Speed" errors, which show up as INAVerr @250.
I received a reply from CSGShop. They think it is a Pixhawk issue. Oh the fun never ends.
On the positive side, I ordered an Arsov AUAV X2 FC to test in place of the PIxhawk. If it still does it even after that and replacing the wiring, then fingers start pointing to the GPS. I don't know how else to track down the problem and as of yet I've found no threads on people having this problem and if/what they did to fix it.
There appears to be gaps in the GPS data. Logs from last year did not exhibit this (see bottom picture).
2/21/2015
August 2014 Mission run:
Another thing, but probably not related, is when uploading log files using MP, it doesn't seem to do the complete file every time. I tried it 3 times and each time the log was slightly different in size and the data was garbled/incomplete when opening it. That's the reason for the picture above not being a graph. Taking it off the sd card directly in the PC it's fine.
Hmm.
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