Pixhawk on traditional helicopter

Hey guys hope everybody is doing well in their Hobby life I'm in the middle of a project and I'm kind of giving up in have installed a pixhawk on a Hirobo shuttle plus helicopter, it's a 30 class nitro heli with a flybar system (it's a mechanical pitch system) so think it's the H1 setting please correct me if I'm wrong, so up to now I have made a kind of a 4 step vibration damping system that the Pixhawk is sitting on, I have installed it as closely possible to the propeller shafts to kind of stay on the CG point of the heli , I have installed another base on the boom for the GPS to sit on and just in have made a cover that covers the Pixhawk from propeller wind pressures, it basically deflects the air pushed from the main prop for it not to push the Pixhawk in different ways while flying, I will post pictures, and now to the weird and annoying part if the project:

I have a Taranis X9D Plus as a transmitter with a S-Bus connection going into pixhawk

I have all 5 servos plugged directly to a 10A Castle Creation BEC AND also feeding the Pixhawk and it's derivatives

Now I have the Ch8 of Pixhawk going to throttle servo

Ch1 to aileron servo

Ch2 to pitch servo

Ch3 to elevator servo

Ch4 to Rudder servo

Now on the Taranis sideI use a V8FR-II and a encoder for the only reason that as read on the Wki page Chanels should be crossed , I know I could cross them internally but I'm not the best at it with a Taranis

So Now evrything should technically work fine ... but no it can't be that easy...

Throttle servo works , ailerons error works alone , rudder servo mixes aileron with it ... and rudder movement is sooo slow pitch servo works in incensed mode and even when I reverse it in taranis it does not want to change direction... elevator doesn't work at all...

This bird is getting me crazy, I think that maybe it's a Taranis setup that I'm doing wrong ? Please help me put this heli back to flying

Thanks

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Good morning; I’m italian; I own a Logo 500SE; the mechanich, battery, servos, motor and ESC are almost perfect because the Logo 500SE has flown from about 2 years with mini Vbar;

Since last summer I put a Pixhawk, and than a Pixhawk Lite (I had the same problem);

I have another identical Pixhawk in a plane that after autotuning flyes very well also in auto mode.

The helycopter flyes since 1 year, but very bad in stabilize/althold, and not in loiter/poshold or auto mode.

I have read all manual, for multicopter and for traditional hely, I tryed to tune it by a potentiometer. All that I reach, reading the graphs of logs, is: height desidered in althold is immediatly followed by height effective without tune; the tail is quite tuned and follow the desidered heading, it could be better;

The pitch and roll in stabilize or althold, don’t follow the desidered attitude; the desidered attitude is followed not immediatly and with shift of 8/10 degrees in random directions of pitch or roll, especially in traslate flying and in wind or little turbolence conditions, so when I land the helycopter I have to hold the pitch and roll sticks away from center of the equivalent of many degrees (5/6 degegrees); and when I fly and left the sticks, is possible that the copter bank of 8/10 degres from horizontal; with mavlink and mission planner seems that the horizzontal not have problem; also the magnetometer was set and is perfect in heading readings; it has a M8N chip.

In the log that I put, there is not the loiter mode because I tryed it before and the copter is not able to maintain the position, in loiter or poshold that I prefer, if there is little wind; only if there isn’t wind I can left the stick for seconds, maybe for minutes.

I downloaded Mission planner 1.3.41 and the firmware of traditional helicopter in the same day, and than I preferred not to update the firmware and the Mission Planner, because I wanted to know how to tune with a version, and then update all, because if I update, may be that some parameters varies and I go confused. So is over a year that I try to tune it.

I know that an Italian, Marco Robustini, is very expert of Ardupilot, but I don’t call him because with plane I haven’t problem, and I suppose that he only have multicopters and not traditional helicopters; it is supposable, after the initial setup that I have done perfectly with the videos of Robert Lefebvre, that multicopters and helycopters are similar, but I don’t own any multicopter to try; I know that the autotune for multicopters runs.

A friend have done this video, but it can’t see much:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_9oCMCu8ipU

Excuse me for bad english and for errors.

I thank if someone can watch the last log of yesterday that I put and can suggest me wicht parameter of pitch and roll tuning is low. Because I cannot tune the copter, and I have fears to do in manual with potentiometer, I tryed to put a mode 15 for autotune only for tail, tried to switch in autotune for 2 times from althold, I left the sticks in a no wind day, but it don’t enter in autotune and in log there are the errors.

Thank you to everyone.

2017-12-30%2016-02-37.bin

2017-12-30%2016-02-37.kmz

Replies

Matteo Tarsi December 31, 2017 at 4:13am

Good morning; I’m italian; I own a Logo 500SE; the mechanich, battery, servos, motor and ESC are almost perfect because the Logo 500SE has flown from about 2 years with mini Vbar;

Since last summer I put a Pixhawk, and than a Pixhawk Lite (I had the same problem);

I have another identical Pixhawk in a plane that after autotuning flyes very well also in auto mode.

The helycopter flyes since 1 year, but very bad in stabilize/althold, and not in loiter/poshold or auto mode.

I have read all manual, for multicopter and for traditional hely, I tryed to tune it by a potentiometer. All that I reach, reading the graphs of logs, is: height desidered in althold is immediatly followed by height effective without tune; the tail is quite tuned and follow the desidered heading, it could be better;

The pitch and roll in stabilize or althold, don’t follow the desidered attitude; the desidered attitude is followed not immediatly and with shift of 8/10 degrees in random directions of pitch or roll, especially in traslate flying and in wind or little turbolence conditions, so when I land the helycopter I have to hold the pitch and roll sticks away from center of the equivalent of many degrees (5/6 degegrees); and when I fly and left the sticks, is possible that the copter bank of 8/10 degres from horizontal; with mavlink and mission planner seems that the horizzontal not have problem; also the magnetometer was set and is perfect in heading readings; it has a M8N chip.

In the log that I put, there is not the loiter mode because I tryed it before and the copter is not able to maintain the position, in loiter or poshold that I prefer, if there is little wind; only if there isn’t wind I can left the stick for seconds, maybe for minutes.

I downloaded Mission planner 1.3.41 and the firmware of traditional helicopter in the same day, and than I preferred not to update the firmware and the Mission Planner, because I wanted to know how to tune with a version, and then update all, because if I update, may be that some parameters varies and I go confused. So is over a year that I try to tune it.

I know that an Italian, Marco Robustini, is very expert of Ardupilot, but I don’t call him because with plane I haven’t problem, and I suppose that he only have multicopters and not traditional helicopters; it is supposable, after the initial setup that I have done perfectly with the videos of Robert Lefebvre, that multicopters and helycopters are similar, but I don’t own any multicopter to try; I know that the autotune for multicopters runs.

A friend have done this video, but it can’t see much:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_9oCMCu8ipU

Excuse me for bad english and for errors.

I thank if someone can watch the last log of yesterday that I put and can suggest me wicht parameter of pitch and roll tuning is low. Because I cannot tune the copter, and I have fears to do in manual with potentiometer, I tryed to put a mode 15 for autotune only for tail, tried to switch in autotune for 2 times from althold, I left the sticks in a no wind day, but it don’t enter in autotune and in log there are the errors.

Thank you to everyone.

2017-12-30%2016-02-37.bin

2017-12-30%2016-02-37.kmz

YouTube
Michel Maalouf January 28, 2017 at 9:31am

Hey @cool dude yes only one servo articulates the pitch

@Miguel thanks for jumping in I'll ne poating more pics of this project i have changed the way im damping the Pixhawk and changed its location to under the landing skid.
I have just ordered a L9R receiver that ill be putting on this bird I'll will try again remixing in taranis but i think that this is my main problem I wish someone can just upload a file configuration and ill transfer it to my taranis lol .
Miguel Marta January 28, 2017 at 8:45am

Hi,

That Heli looks like it has a Mechanical Swashplate, "H1".

Check in the radio tab that one stick only moves it's respective bar and that you don't have any CCPM (for newer flybar helicopters" mixture in your Taranis.

It would be better if you could use any Frsky receiver that has Sbus, or even CPPM and reorder the channels on your Taranis, it's easy and there's info on youtube.

Don't worry about the slow tail and cyclic. Go to the Heli setup on the Initial setup tab and click the green button "manual" and check movements, they should be quick since there's no PID loop.

I had a lot of trouble with my first Pixhawk traditional heli build, There's really very little information, but it's really rewarding.

Keep us posted, i'll probably be builing a raptor 50 in the near future.
Cool Dude January 27, 2017 at 4:45pm

Hi Michael,

Looke like you have basic setup issues. I am not familiar with this hirobo model but by the pictures it does not appear to be H1 setting (Although it is not very clear). It is more like swash plate based system. I quick web search indicates that is model initially has H1 system while the later models had swash plate (http://www.vrhc.co.uk/rc%20helicopters/japan/Hirobo/Shuttle/Shuttle... ). However you may know better. I have never used H1 system as all my heli’s are swash driven directly by servo type. Can you please check if only 1 servo controls the pitch or all servos need to move to control the pitch. That will give you an idea of how to move forward. You have posted pics of controller being installed. I do not think that it is important at this point. You should get proper servo movement, irrespective of how the controller is installed. It is only after you start the motor that vibration isolation matters.

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Pixhawk on traditional helicopter

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