Hi,
I recently discovered a post on RCG here back in May 2015 from a new member about using a single Pixhawk for VTOL control on the BirdsEyeView FireFLY6. It lead to the PX4 page below describing some development firmware for the Pixhawk. Does anyone know if there have been updates to this development or how to obtain the firmware for testing?
PX4 Page to BirdsEyeView FireFly
Thanks.
Replies
Hi Tridge,
My CL-84 video was edited to remove several of the forward flight passes. I flew for about 4 minutes and used 50% of my 2200mAh pack. This seems to be in line with the consensus I have read from other CL-84 owners. The hover-only time on a 2200mAh pack is about 4 minutes and the forward flight time about 8 minutes with shorter hovers to start and land.
I agree with you on the tilt servo so it would be very interesting if you can compensate for it in the firmware. Otherwise, we can probably swap the servo out. The Chinese are amazing when it comes to these intricate mechanical mechanisms like the wooden tilt control in the CL-84.
On my FireFLY6, I see the main motors go from hover to just a bit forward which starts the forward motion of the wing and then the motors finish the 90 degree forward rotation with some sort of turbo boost that you can hear before it settles down to fly. The wing has been designed and the parameters set to make it almost impossible to stall...which is good for newbies. I have been communicating with their autonomous survey support in Florida (Erich F.) to change some parameters for my preference. The parameters are in their Full Parameter List but not always documented with text or units.
In hover mode on the CL-84, the rear motor provides both back end stabilization and rudder control as it can rotate left or right. In forward flight mode, you have ailerons and motor speed differential on the mains. The rear motor is completely disabled in forward flight mode. Some people have added rudder control for better authority. Some guys have re-calibrated their ESCs to fix the poor turning in one direction. Apparently, the motors were spinning at different RPMs.
I don't think the stock ESCs will work with APM but perhaps I am wrong and it just changes the PID values. In my video, during the forward flight transition to hover you can hear the sloppy side-to-side effect from the non-SimonK ESCs.
As far as the stall speed, I honestly don't remember trying to slow it down. I'm used to flying the FireFLY6 in Alt. Hold mode so the throttle is set to about mid. On my CL-84 flights, the throttle was a bit above mid and I just left it there because it flew pretty solid. As you mentioned, the wing loading is a bit high for a parkflyer. Some guy from Germany posted this, "its high wing load of 38 oz/sq.ft (or 117 g/dm). This high wing load should lead to a stall speed of roughly 30mph (or some 50km/h)".
Regards...
If the stall really is 50km/hr then that means it has to accelerate from nothing to 14m/s before the tilt mechanism finishes rotating. That is pretty fast accel. It will be running the fwd motors at roughly full throttle during the last stage of the transition (it has to in order to equalise with the pitching moment of the tail) and maybe that is enough?
I don't have differential on the fwd motors for yaw in the ArduPilot code yet. That will be worth adding, and is something people with twin motor fixed wings have asked for before.
Thanks for the info!
I've now added support for the FireFlyY6 to ArduPilot as well as part of the QuadPlane support. I submitted a PR for it today and hope it will be in master soon ready for the 3.6.0 plane release.
There is a bit more information here:
http://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/tiltrotor-support-for-plane/8805
I've only flown it in a simulator so far and I don't actually have a FireFlyY6 so if someone wants to volunteer to test it on a real aircraft that would be great.
Cheers, Tridge
We did some more flight testing on the last day of April in upstate NY and the FireFLY6 continued to perform well. The take-offs, transitions, and, landings, were all great fun! We had a Yuneec Q500+ hovering off to the side for a different perspective and changed gimbal modes from 1 to 3 during flight for some different angles.
FireFLY6 Test Flight2 from Gregory Covey on Vimeo.
Greg, are you using the standard FireFLY6 code (with the key) or did you replace it with the PX4 VTOL firmware?
I've got one, too, and really like it. It took a little getting used to initially (need to point the nose into the wind on landing), but now feels very smooth.
Hi Chris,
I'm using the AvA Pro Key with the BirdsEyeView v1.0.2 firmware that has the Smart Wind Assist feature. It helps keep the nose pointed into the wind in hover mode. It's a bit of a learning curve from flying copters and not caring where you point it. :)
I saw your 3DR coverage in the new Drone360 magazine...very nice!
Good news: Native support for the FireFly6 is coming to APM:Plane.
The video shows my second flight of the FireFLY6 VTOL. The FireFLY6 flew so well on my initial manual forward flight test that I decided to mount the GoPro Hero3 camera for the second flight. We tested several transitions showing video from the ground and air. The FY-G3 Ultra 3-Axis Brushless Gimbal was set to follow a specific point which provided some interesting on-board views of the flight transitions and landing gear.
I've been waiting all winter to test forward flight on my FireFLY6 but last weekend it snowed in upstate NY and yesterday on April 16th we finally had a sunny 60 degree day. My initial forward flight testing of the FireFLY6 was a total success! Next up will be a fully autonomous flight test...
FireFLY6 Test Flight1 from Gregory Covey on Vimeo.
Hi Greg,
Congratulations for your work, sounds very interesting. I want to start my VTOL UAV project long range, good autonomy and good pyload weight, What is your recommendation for Flight Control for VTOL UAV? my intention project is in this link:
http://px4.io/docs/quadranger-vtol/
Please if you can give some tips I will estimate your information.
Regards,
FAbian.
Hi Fabian,
The QuadRanger VTOL looks like a very interesting project! It appears to be designed for a Pixhawk (or clone) using the PX4 flight stack. It looks to be well documented so my recommendation would be to stick to the project design and use the PX4 flight stack firmware which can be loaded into the Pixhawk using QGC.
I'll bet that there is a dedicated thread on the QuadRanger VTOL in the PX4 users forum. See the link to the users forum in my earlier post on page 1. Good luck!
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