Hi,
In order to slow down to ease catching thermals and landing of my glider, I would like its ailerons to act as flaps, i.e. I would like to setup flaperons.
According to the arduplane release notes at http://plane.ardupilot.com/wiki/apmplane-current-release-information/#Flaperon-Support%C2%A0 flaperon support is fortunately available since the 3.0 version:
Flaperon Support
This release is the first to have integrated flaperon support, and also includes much improved flaps support in general.You can now set a FLAP_IN_CHANNEL parameter to give an RC channel for manual flap control.And you can setup a FLAPERON_OUTPUT to allow you to setup your ailerons for both manual and automatic flaperon control.We don’t yet have a full wiki page on setting up flaperons, but you can read about the parameters here:
http://plane.ardupilot.com/wiki/arduplane-parameters/#Flap_input_channel_ArduPlaneFLAP_IN_CHANNEL
Right now I have a conventional aileron setup with a Y type harness to feed the same signal from the APM 2.5 output into both of my aileron servos. I understand for flaperons, each servo must be "trimmed" temporarily toward a different direction therefore requiring an individual signal and connection to two different APM outputs, leading me to my first question I would like to address to this forum:
How can I setup aillerons for two different APM 2.5 outputs in arduplane 3.2 ? If required, I have everything setup to apply patches.
Going from there, which steps must be taken in order (i) to setup automatic flaperons to slow down the plane if required in automatic flight modes and (ii) to have a switch on the TX that allows manual activation of flaperons in manual flight modes.
Figuring this from the bare parameter description referred to in the 3.0 release notes seems a bit beyond me but once I set it up I will be happy to write it up for the wiki.
Many thanks!
Replies
It's now documented here: http://marc.merlins.org/perso/rc/post_2015-08-04_Using-Flaperons-Wi...
I have gotten auto landings to work numerous times. I recorded one here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGeQTmVVwp9mu-hxDM7qoQQ/videos
I have some more videos of auto landings in my Finwing Penguin if you want to see them. I did a whole day of auto landing testing with 20+ attempts. I was trying to hit a cone that I setup on the auto landing way point. I could get withing 40 feet a few times but being a glider I usually overshot.
I have NOT gotten flaperons to work properly. I am working on it right now with the latest arduplane on an apm 2.5 in a Sky Hunter. I am using RC channels 5 and 6 setup as 45 and 25. APM contols both channels but the servos are not centered properly after enabling flaperons. If I figure it out I will post here.
This is not quite what you're looking for, but I have
RC5_FUNCTION = 18 aileron with input
With this setup, APM can control my ailerons ok, and I can override them from my controller and use them as flaps when I'm flying in manual mode.
If you want APM to also use them as flaps then you need to look into the flaps support you're referring to, but if they're only for you to do manual landings at lower speed, I wouldn't bother and just set RC5_FUNCTION
Thank you for the input. This might be a good start to test the manual control but in the long run, I would really like to make use of the new function in order to allow ardupilot to control the flaperons.
Once tested and documented in greater detail, I am sure flaperons could become an advantage for many others who deploy ardupilot in gliders but also in other fixed wing airplanes.
I currently fly a glider with separate flaps and ailerons which work as butterfly flaps and flaperons.
However, I only told APM about the ailerons with RC5_FUNCTION since I only care about it being able to turn and RTL on its own.
Flaps allow for lower speed landings, but since I land myself, not having APM know about them isn't a big deal to me.
Honeslty, unless you want APM to do slow flight or landings for you, you'll find that it may not need to know about about flaperons at all.
Not that you can't try them, but I never bothered setting them up myself because I just don't need them in APM.
I totally see your point and I think you are completely right about your assumption that for most people, a manual flaperon mode without any ardupilot intervention will do just fine.
On the other hand, with automatic landings, you already named one good scenario in which ardupilot governance of the flaperons indeed becomes useful. Additionally I would think of aerial photography where a slowdown could be useful, enhanced navigation of fast gliders as well as -and this is the motivating use case for myself- automatic soaring (check samuelctabor's ardusoar thread), during which flaps or flaperons could help facilitate thermal centering in the future. Last but not least I believe it would just be a pity if the flaperon function, being in the arduplane mainline already, would not be used by anyone. If anybody is out there who deployed it yet would chime in and share their experiences that would be great of
It sounds like it's worth looking into for you, just hasn't for me so far :)
I've been a bit scared of trying automatic landings so far, my runway is not super long and my cameras are under the glider and can get crushed if the landing isn't close to perfect, so you get to try it before me :)
I take video in flight, but I have a prop in the front, so deploying flaps in flight will slow me down and reduce my time aloft, which is no good for me (as well as show a prop in the video, I try to climb and then turn off power and glide as long as possible, which is better done without flaps, right?)
Hopefully you hear from someone else using this, or figure it out, and post back about your experience here.
Cheers
I have not tried automatic landing myself either as of now, but it is certainly on my list of things to do with arduplane. It will be challenging though - I don't plan any externally mounted gear under my glider. But having a fiberglass fuse it is not as forgiving as my previous foamies.
Regarding your prop in the camera: Have you considered planting your camera on a wing in case it is a smaller sized one ? I just buried a ton of stuff into my covered balsa wood wings: UHF RX, airspeed sensor, pitot tube, video tx. A mobius action cam would be a nice candidate here due to its low profile. Alternatively you could consider a pusher motor conversion of your plane if the clear sight is critical for your aims.
And yes, it would be very nice if somebody else could help here. I am not losing my hope that tridge might see the thread as he seems to be the person who created the flaperon code in ardupilot.
Because google still finds this thread, flaperon setup has improved a bit in APM 3.2 and later, but from my reading of it, it still doesn't quite do what I need.
I use function 18 still, and filed this bug about it: https://github.com/diydrones/ardupilot/issues/2186
Ok, it's much later, but I got it working for real this time and it was non obvious, so I documented it:
http://marc.merlins.org/perso/rc/post_2015-08-04_Using-Flaperons-Wi...