Hey all, here is a place to post details and info of your FPV setups, questions, vids etc.
My setup is as follows:
Trex 450 PRO frame stretched to 480
APM2.5 with UBLOX GPS and power module
Tarot DFC Split Lock head
MKS DS95A+ servos
Scorpion 2221-12 motor
Castle ICE Lite 50 governed @ 1798 rpm
Direct Drive VP tail
Spin 350mm asymmetric blades
2800mah 3s battery
FRsky D8RII rx
ER9x tx with FRsky 2.4GHz tx and 7dBi patch
FPV gear:
Sony Super HAD II 600tvl camera
Fatshark predator goggles
5.8GHz video transmitter
ImmersionRC clover leaf tx antenna
Circular Wireless 7 turn helical rx antenna
MavlinkOSD
Gopro HERO3 Black Edition mounted with 3D printed mount w/ 4 degree roll offset
ZFW (weight without battery): 918g
MFW (weight with battery and no payload): 1151g
AUW (including gopro): 1227g
Replies
Changed ball links to inner hole on servo horns. I was able to increase RATE_PITCH_P from 0.010 to 0.050.
Changed INS_MPU6K_FILTER from 10 to 20. Wobble was gone!!!!!I had to change RATE_ROLL_P down a touch as roll developed a high frequency twitch on stops.
Then had a crash when my finger bumped RTH. I was testing in an alleyway, so I was super fast to flick back to acro... It came down too fast and the blades smacked the ground. By some miracle the battery was thrown from the heli, so the power was cut instantly. No major damage apart from ruined spinblades and an unbalanced tail.. All the bearings in the head seem a little bit sad now :(
Did you know spinblades have lead rod in them? Well they do lol.. Now I'm stuck testing with crappy HK 325mm blades. They are like twigs compared to the 350mm spins. It barely even flies at 2200rpm with these little blades lol. I'll keep the good pair of spins for actual flying days, not alleyways tests ;)
At least the wobble seems to be gone.. Now to buy a NON-DFC rotor...
I've been thinking of something to improve FPV on helis -- weather-vaning
Speed fliers use weather-vaning to keep the tail behind the heli during speed runs. They change the tail gyro to "rate" mode, meaning they cannot maintain heading-hold. We can very very easily add this feature without losing heading hold ability:
Leaky-i for yaw
If we can do this, heli FPV on arducopter will be easier and better.
I love my earplugs; they did a great job in getting the jelly out of the video.
Just watch the Sample Video
Hey guys I updated the photos in the first post to show my current setup. Sorry bout all the grass on the blades, I'm tired of always cleaning it off :P
Since I trimmed the swash to level not in stabilises but in acro mode (very important with 2.9.1 not with 2.7.3) , the 600 hovers now at 0 pitch and roll. I really enjoyed flying the heli, I tried just flying stab and AltHold, tested loiter and yawing, and everything looks great as you can see here. I tried to fly a mission, but the weather turned to rain, so some excitement for next time.
Joly
You are my hero!!!
Manfred, this is another obvious one but just in case, how level was your swash when you first set up? It's critical to have it exactly level (don't do this in stab mode because the servos won't be centered)
I did level my swash again in acro mode, I did it in stab mode before, and now I fly at 0deg roll and pitch.
Thanks a lot for this tip, no one else had this idea so far, and I was posting about it for months.
Now yawing while loitering and flying feels much better.
Great, now I can focus on FPV.
Cool stuff. Any pictures of the heli? I'm curious to see how it's laid out. I've thought about doing FPV on my 450, but it's already starting to look like the Clampets:
So I don't know where to put more stuff.
That was a cool flight in a nice area. I really need to get into this because it's what I've been building up to, but got sidetracked with all this development stuff.
Can you change the pitch of your camera?
Saturday we got up at 4am to drive up mt. Kosiuzsko for some fpv and sadly because of time restrictions I could do any final test runs before hand.
When we got there and set up for flying I noticed I couldn't get the camera feed working. Minimosd was cooked. So I bypassed it with some tape and swearing. Then the image was inverted... I forgot to flip it and left the config tool at home. More swearing and tape fixed that.
Then when I got in the air I went into alt hold. It slowwwlllly bobbed up and down. I forgot that I had tuned alt hold for 2400rpm, not 1800rpm. So that left me without loiter or RTL.
So essentially I was left with a flybarless fpv heli with no way of monitoring the battery. Oh good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=89UCfCtSoc8&sns=em
Despite all that I did get the above flight in. As you can see I took off @ 2100rpm until 1:10 (notice jello effect on camera) because the air was thinner than at sea level. The climbout at the lower rpm at that altitude was terrible (understandable, it is bad at sea level let alone at 1300m asl).
Sunday was better. I 're-tuned alt hold and everything was sweet. Until I enabled compass learn. Toilet bowls 50m in diameter!!!! 're-did the compass cal with motors running and it was sweet.
RTL is set for 50km/h and man it is awesome.
Nice work Joly
I’m in the process to go FPV with my 600.
But first I have to sort out some problems I encounter with 2.9.1
These issues did hold me back for a while.
Maybe I have to switch back to 2.7.3 to get going.
I’ll try this Camera for FPV and recording
Have still to decide on the goggles and video transmitter.
Will keep you posted.