First - apologies for the poor video. I'm running a $30 gimbal on a standard Martinez without tuning, and a TBS with a mysterious vibe problem. I've left prop sound in, so you can hear the motors misbehaving.
Ok, my previous forays into autotuning have not had great results; today was better.
I ran autotune on my testbed, and it was done in about 3 minutes - super quick. Looked pretty tight in the air...until I tried the settings for myself. It was way too floppy, like the APM was loose or there was a drunk driving it (not me!). It was downright dangerous. The PIDs were way soft, so I tweaked them. Was much better after that. A few tiny tweaks to go, then I can start thinking about optimising the gimbal.
The Disco took slightly longer, but was strange - too aggressive on pitch, too soft on roll. Mad oscillations when in fast forward. Pitch P was tuned down, Roll P was tuned up, and D was tuned up on both. Much better. Now I just have to find that damned vibration...it's driving me mad, and the video is unuseable! Using a TBS Loveseat, but might try switching to moongel for a while.
I think I'll continue to use autotune, even after the crashes...it's not perfect (for me! Your mileage may vary), but it's definitely a quick way to get to 80% right, then it's a quick tweak or two to get to optimal. It's also a high risk way of highlighting any deficiencies in your airframe...
Comments
I thought the auto tune was supposed to be down with out the gimbals in order to have good results, has this changed now? can we tune with the gimbal on?
Excellent news Jason - this will be especially useful in video shots I suspect - I can't seem to get the balance between locked in Yaw with no bounce, and a smooth, slow panning (though, there's the probability I'm just a crap pilot!) - I can use expo admittedly, but this sounds like it will allow the same slow panning. I assume I can attach this setting to a dial, so I can fly fast, then slow it all down for a shoot? Will this apply to all three axis, or can each axis be controlled individually?
We added a new param called RC_Feel to the latest code. The idea is to get the craft highly tuned and adjust this parameter to get a smoother or softer feel. That way you don't detune the craft to change the feel.
Jason
I suspect they'll be better quality than the RC timers! Do as some have suggested - do it in stabilise, not alt hold, and it should mean you retain full control at all times.
I'm now afraid to try autotune on Mr Red (surname of my X8) because he's with SimonK ESCs (blueseries, may be better than the RC timers)...
lol Hughes.
Cause 1 (test bed): still unknown. A battery failsafe engaged (outside of the failsafe range I might add), and the land event did nothing of the sort
Cause 2: The RCTimer ESC's freaked out, possibly due to either a simonk issue, or just generally being rubbish.
So to summarize your experiments for saving our multicopters (thank you), what were your identified root causes for the failed auto tune ?
Apart from the PID's it chose in the end. But one set of tweaks, and it was flying great. So I still consider autotune to be useful - I'm just not expecting it to deliver the "on rails" sensation.
Yeah, it crashed the TBS. Or rather...the cheap nasty RCtimer ESC's couldn't handle the autotune program. I replaced them with multistars, and it went flawlessly.
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