I've been flying in HiL, and it doesn't look like the code is doing anything to maintain a target altitude while navigating on auto. I also can't put in my own stick inputs to correct it manually.
Does this happen in real world application as well? Is auto mode currently supposed to be controlling altitude correctly?
If not, I'll be happy to help implement it. I'm a controls engineering student, so making the PID work for altitude hold would be a nice project for me. If you guys could point me in the right direction as to where the code is for doing the regular attitude feedback on the other channels, and which structures are already set up to handle the collective channel on the radio, it would eliminate a lot of research work for me, and I could get right into the coding.
-Chris
P.S. I made a thread on this earlier, but I accidentally deleted it. Sorry if anyone was inconvenienced.
Replies
Hi Chris,
Great to see you're giving HIL a try for the trad heli. I think you're the first after Michael O and I.
Yes, altitude hold is already implemented. It uses the same code as for the quad. Have a look for get_nav_throttle function in Attitude.pde. I haven't played with auto in the very recent past (I did try it a few weeks ago and alt hold seemed to work) but if you give loiter or ALT_HOLD flight modes a try you should see it working...if it doesn't work then I suspect something is incorrect about your HIL set-up.
-Randy