First post, sorry for any toes I step on in this learning process.
First off, here is the base information. Please let me know if I can provide anything else.
Versions:
Mission Planner 1.3.31 build 1.1.5696.33420
APM: Copter V3.4-dev (bc26eaab)
The symptoms:
Take off and guided mode work great. As soon as I command a mode of "Loiter", the vehicle starts losing altitude until it hits the ground. I have only been able to save it from crashing by putting it back into Guided mode.
The same symptoms also occur in AltHold and Circle. I'm aware that all three of these modes are highly related, so I'm assuming the same problem is effecting all of them. Note that Guided mode works flawlessly.
The only thing I've found online that might fix this has to do with setting the Throttle Mid Position. The SITL defaults to 500, but the vehicle hovers at about 42% throttle. So, I set the mid point to 420, but that had no effect. In an attempt to test the limits, I then proceeded to set the mid throttle at it's lowest value (300) in hopes that the vehicle would climb instead of drop. No luck, the vehicle continues to lose altitude.
I've also tried the following: I changed the parameters of the orbit from 20 deg/s to 5 deg/s and from a 10 meters (1000cm) radius to a 100 meter radius. When commanding circle mode with these variables I am able to see the copter start flying the circle as described, but it loses altitude the whole time.
I tried changing the SITL frame type from "X" to "Plus" which had no effect.
Clues:
This same behavior appears when controlling with MavProxy. So it must be a Sim issue?
Can anyone provide me some clues or keywords here? I've exhausted my google search terms, and need a point in the right direction.
I've attached Telemetry logs that demonstrate the behavior in each of the modes.
Thank you so very much for any time you spend reading or replying to my post!
Replies
Also wondering if a solution has been found for this as I too am having the same issue.
I did learn that loiter mode is closely tied to the manual control mechanisms and in order to initialize the values that will be used one must send a manual command. At the MAVProxy prompt sending the command "rc 3 1500" seems to do the trick with regards to holding altitude. However, I am still having trouble with the circle radius. At present after entering the above command I can enter circle mode but the craft simply hovers and spins in place even though I have tried multiple values in the CIRCLE_RADUIS parameter.
Kevin said:
Hey Earendil,
Did you ever get anywhere with this problem? Been having the exact same issues the past couple of days trying to set up new SITLs for the first time.
Thanks!