Hi,
I am new to the Ardu world, I just put together my first APM25 based quad. It flys great in stabilize mode and althold work great. In loiter and position mode, not so great. It seems to be being controlled by the controller because I have to kind of fight it to keep it in front of me. I should say, at times it seems to loiter fine, just not for long, it seems to me it is picking random coordinates to go to, or it will kind of walk around getting farther and farther away.
I am still very new at this and learning, I haven't learned how to log flights yet or pretty much anything with the flight planner except for basic setup. I did change the loiter radius to 1 meter, I also enabled gpslock. I do get a 3dfix in the flight data screen and in the osd it shows lock.
I am kind of thinking noise, I know it is not from the a/v tx because it did the same thing before I installed the a/v tx. I am kind of thinking maybe noise from the esc's. I ordered some new esc and bec to try.
After reading around in the forum, it seems people were having the magnetic declination
set wrong. I am using the option to automatically set the Magnetic declination by flying round. I did try to set this manually but it wont seem to take my settings
I get this form the site
"Magnetic declination: 0° -54' EAST
Declination is POSITIVE"
the site shows it is -54 but says positive, when I enter the "-" (minus) sign in front of the 54 it wont take in my settings in the planner. how should I enter the values given?
thanks for any help,
Regards,
John
Replies
Hi,
It is weird, all I did is reflash the 27 firmware (and now the 2.8) and it started working, or at least looking like it was working, now I have been tuning the pid's and I have it loitering/position holding very well now, not perfect, but at least now when I hit loiter or move a stick it doesn't go crazy. every time I have adjusted the pids it seems to be getting better.
There is one other thing I did when I re flashed, I noticed there was a setting for the esc refresh rate, I changed it to 400 because the new esc's I am using max is 450hz, don't know if that helped or not but something did!!
John
I think I got it pretty good, I reloaded the firmware, loaded my prameters and test flew. it stayed pretty good in a 6" radius or so for about the whole batt. It is dark here now but will do some tuning tomorrow and see if I can get it better.
Just wondering, have you had any luck compiling the firmware? I have tried to but I get errors, like code errors. I am using the file from the arduino site called "arduino-1.0.1-windows.zip"
I also tried the relaxpatch one and Minimal Arduino 1.0.1 Compiler "ArduinoCpp101.zip"
the ArduinoCpp101.zip wont run on my system, or I dont know how to use it, I tried using the comand prompt but it wont run that way either?
I would like to try some of the beta's but cant compile them
also, the load previous option in the planner, do you know how to tell which version is which? They look like crc codes but they dont match to the crc's I have looked at in the dnload page???
thanks for your help
Hi,
In stable it is fine, what I mean by this, say the copter is taking off to the north, I pull the stick back to move the copter south, after I get the copter back south a bit and let go of the sticks the copter heads north fast, I then have to hold the stick south to keep the copter still. like it is fighting me to get back to some other lat/lon.
Hi,
In stable mode it is great, it holds position very well in stable. loiter, I just dt get it, it seems to try to loiter, but does go off in different directions, I hit the stick to pull it back to where I hit loiter and it really fights me, I have to hit stable to keep from crashing.
John
Hi,
My gps numbers on the bench I posted here
http://www.diydrones.com/forum/topics/would-someone-please-look-at-...
as for my comapss, it looks very steady. the declination numbers for me are, well it is kind of weird
Latitude: 38° 34' 29.1" N
Longitude: 90° 23' 26.3" W
Magnetic declination: 0° -54' EAST
Declination is POSITIVE
Inclination: 66° 59'
Magnetic field strength: 52878.7 nT
so, mine is positive, but the second number has a "-" in front of it, so should it be entered as "0.54" or should it be "0.-54"
it wont take the one with the "-" in it so I have tried the other. still has no effect on how it flys in loiter or position hold, I have tried the dance and the auto too, both come up with "0.50" in the box
oh, what got me wondering about my gps was, in a post I saw someone had posted there gps numbers and they were rock solid, so I thought that was normal.
Hi,
thanks for replying. I tried the test (actually tried earlier) again you mentioned. My compas seems pretty good. it doesnt move much (just a twitch) and rarely motors running or not.
My gps, the last 3 numbers of lat and lon both move almost constantly, I have it mounted up on a pole like on the dji copters, about 6" up from the top (as far as the wires reach). I dont know what else to try.
thanks again
well, I am getting fed up with this apm25, it flys great in stablize mode, but so does my $18 kk2 quad. loiter/position mode, well it still is going where it wants, can anyone help me with this? I have played with the pids, replaced the esc's bec, everything I can find to read about.
please help
John
You would enter -0.54 or -1 would be close enough.
Also, are you making sure you have full GPS lock before you try to loiter? Need to have solid blue on GPS and APM board both before you take off.