F3FC & iNav experiences

[Marlon]

Thanks wilco1967,

I’m checking and applying the changes now.

Your “Just after Christmas, that old V3 was lost in a fly-away… Never found out how that happened. It was supposed to RTH, but it flew away into the unknown. Lost the copter with everything on it” sounded like e Stephen King Tricoper horror story to me hahahaha.

Attachments:

1. 

   FLY-AWAY.png
   

[wilco1967]

That’s pretty much how I imagined it…;-/
It was out of sight, behind some trees, when I lost it.
Wasn’t so funny at that moment, but I can see the humour of it now… 😉

[DaveL]

Wilco, thanks for the info! Yes, no-pulses and other essential tips which I’ve set and forgotten about.

Wilco, I noticed your current nav pids are changed quite a bit from the defaults, would you tell us about these settings? I’m trying to tame a wobbly position hold with cruise mode enabled. For mine, the transition from hover to movement in any axis is very touchy and I’m not at all sure which things to tweak.

I think that changing nav_user_control_mode from CRUISE to ATTI will cure this because I’ll have direct control of the transition to movement, will have to try it this weekend.

[Marlon]

No no don’t get me wrong I’m not poking fun at you situation. It’s just too SCARRY, cause when I tested my Tricopter it also had everything on it! Only flew 2 times, 1st time 3 seconds then a HARD crash, broke a prop a few minor scuffs and my pride and joy brand new Runcam2 went flying and landed rolling on the asphalt. 2nd time flew like 17 seconds then landed HARD on a roof. When it takes off I get like knot in my stomach and a sense of total fear (someone put their Tricopter for sale cause of this terrifying feeling). I just can’t imagine a fly away or fatal crash. That’s why I said YOU ARE MY HERO, you made me an iNav believer. Cause when it comes to EVRYTHING ON IT… it better have GPS to bring it all back to me hahaha. You made me take out the duster and start working on my Tricopter again! And DaveL too THANKS!

[Marlon]

PID’s hmmm have to look into it RIGHT NOW… someone said crash course? I think these values help soften or sharpen flying behavior? Have you guys look into this video?

[DaveL]

Same here, Wilco. Great to have you sharing what you learn.

Fwiw, I have my tx switches set up such that I can quickly trigger rth mode in a panic.
Also have a three-position switch set up for:
1.–
2.Altitude-hold
3.Position-hold & Altitude-hold
And a switch for angle / acro + air mode.

I can take off, flip to PH+AH, get my heart-rate down, go to angle mode for some warm-up, then a few terrifying seconds of acro practice…
It’s comforting to have these options, so I don’t break the bird every time I fly it.

[wilco1967]

Hi Marlon,

No worries…. I can stand some humour OK….
If we’re not prepared to take some loss sometime, we shouldn’t be flying….
And the new one is even better than the previous one.

Is this your first copter ?
You really should get it flying in ACRO first, before relying on GPS modes.
Yes, GPS / RTH modes can be very useful to get you out of trouble, but they will not work if normal Acro doesn’t work first.
On the first tries, only mount what is required for what you want to test… So leave your camera, VTX , etc at home until you can fly it reasonbly ok in manual.

I leared flying multicopters in Acro mode, and by putting level mode on a switch. This helped me many times to straighten out the copter if I lost orientation again. If in doubt, hit level mode switch, and drop the throttle so it decends… If you can’t get it back, let it come down before it get’s too far away. Better to repair a copter, than loose it all together.

If Acro is a step too much, learn to fly in level mode first, without GPS…. But I strongly recommend learning to fly in Acro first, and then slowly add features like POS HOLD / RTH….

GPS modes work pretty well ‘out of the box’… IF you need to tweak PID settings, only change the roll/pitch/yaw PID settings (i.e. the basic ACRO settings). Everything else depends on those…
Once ARCO works reasonbly, the rest will most likely also ‘just work’ with the iNav defaults.

To get a feel of the ACRO PID settings, I usually hold it in my hand, level, with props attached, and start and add some power so it becomes floaty… (WATCH YOUR FINGERS / EYES / EVERYTHING !!!!!).
It should feel very stiff in the air, and strongly resists you trying to move it by hand. It should also follow stick commands with significant force…
The stronger it resists, the better, BUT it should NOT start to oscillate / overswing. It should feel like it is ‘locked’ in the position you left it… Activating level mode should rapidly bring it to level. Be careful though, it does that with significant force, so don’t let it rip itself out of your hands / into your face.
DO allow it to move while holding, but DON’T let go (or bad things will happen).
If that works, you can fly it.
You’ll find (on a typical tricopter), the settings that I posted, should do a pretty good job.

If you can’t get it working in your hand, don’t try flying.

AGAIN, BE CAREFUL !!!! props hurt, and a tricopter flying through your home will cause a lot of damage !

[wilco1967]

Hi DaveL,

ATTI will fly it like level mode while still in GPS pos hold… I personally don’t like the transition between sticks neutral (pos hold) and flying around in ATTI mode…. If I want to just fly around, I’ll go to Acro (or if you prefer, level mode)

in CRUISE, all your doing with your sticks is changing the position SETPOINT… so rather then flying the copter yourself, it is still fully controlled by the GPS position. You only telling it to move the desired hold position towards the direction you move the stick… The pos hold controllers will then move the copter to the new setpoint.
It is less direct, but great to position the copter while filming.
It is indeed a bit wobbly in all GPS modes, but that’s mainly because the position as reported by the GPS is moving slightly all the time, which it tries to correct for. It should hold position well within a meter or so.

I’ve set mine to CRUISE… for normal flying I use Acro.

I think, my navigation settings are pretty close to default (haven’t checked for a long time what the defaults are nowadays). Anyway, I never spent much time adjusting it…

As for modes, I basically managed to get everything on a single AUX1 channel (so AUX2,3,4 are not used for the FC).
You would have to program the ‘steps’ into your transmitter (I got a Taranis, which allows me to do so).
I have one (2pos) switch on the TX set for level mode (my ‘oops’ switch), another 3pos for – / GPS HOLD / RTH, and another 3pos for – / WAYPOINT / FOLLOW-ME. But everything goes out over only 1 AUX channel.
In the Taranis, I defined the priority (LEVEL takes precedence above pos hold, WP and FM, but RTH overrides everything).
See attached file:
This allows me to have to other AUX channels free for OSD, or a gimbal, or whatever (I use a CPPM receiver to save a UART port, but CPPM only allows 4 aux channels only).
If you’re interested, I can post the Taranis configuration.

Attachments:

1. modes.txt

[wilco1967]

Hmmm…. I just checked, and I indeed have some different navigation settings as current Default….

I’ve reset them to default, and will try tomorrow if this is any better or worst then my settings….
My guess is, it won’t make a significant difference, but we’ll see….
I’ll report back.

[Marlon]

Hi Wilco,

Yes I’m familiar with the hand tether, been using it for a while now. I only do indoor float/hover tests hahaha. Yes this is my first Tricopter or multi rotor. And yes I’m extra careful. And no I’m “not” that afraid to crash. On my first crash, my only concern was… I hope nobody saw that, that was embarrassing hahaha!

The ACRO PID adjustments tip is great, gonna give it a try soon THANKS.

GPS must be there to tame my fears of flying and just prove that it could be done on the Tricopter. I can still remember being told that this has never been done on a Tricopter and would be pointless. It has been a struggle of mine to have GPS enabled on the Tricopter for those wish so. And you guys made it possible THANKS again guys. O O I still have brand new sonars lying around hmmm.

Been eying this radio for a while and hope to fly like this one day…

[DaveL]

Oh I like the idea of routing several tx switches through one aux channel.
I don’t have a Taranis but someone else might benefit from seeing your configuration.
I’m working on FPV wiring this weekend and might finally get a crack at acro flight with decent FPV range.
Thanks again for the info!

Marlon – don’t be afraid to use the ‘safety-net’ of gps modes. I for one am a terrible pilot, slow to develop the skills I need to avoid crack-ups, so anything that helps is good.
\
INAV works so well that I gave two friends their first flying experiences via PH+AH, each flew for nearly 20 minutes, gently puttering around with the goggles on and happy smiles.

[Marlon]

Hahahaha gently puttering around with the goggles on and happy smiles, sounds like me.

[wilco1967]

This is how I programmed the modes on Taranis to get all on AUX1 (= channel 5)
(in mixes)

CH05 (aux1) MAX Weight(-100%) [init]
:= MAX Weight(-40%) Switch(SG-) [WAYPOINT]
:= MAX Weight(-20%) Switch(SG?) [FollowMe]
:= MAX Weight(-60%) Switch(SC-) [POSHOLD]
:= MAX Weight(-80%) Switch(SF?) [Angle]
:= MAX Weight(+100%) Switch(SC?) [RTH]

(? = down arrow)

When done like this, the last line has the highest priority, the first the lowest… So RTH overrules everything.

See the iNav CLI dumpfiles I posted earlier for the iNav modes setting.

INAV works so well that I gave two friends their first flying experiences via PH+AH, each flew for nearly 20 minutes, gently puttering around with the goggles on and happy smiles.

Yeah, been doing that also…. Give the radio to total strangers / spectator, and let them fly for a while…
Just put it in pos+alt hold, and tell them not to touch any of the switches, and they can fly around.

[Marlon]

Can you help me understand these lines, are the Transmitter related or cli settings?

CH05 (aux1) MAX Weight(-100%) [init]
:= MAX Weight(-40%) Switch(SG-) [WAYPOINT]
:= MAX Weight(-20%) Switch(SG?) [FollowMe]
:= MAX Weight(-60%) Switch(SC-) [POSHOLD]
:= MAX Weight(-80%) Switch(SF?) [Angle]
:= MAX Weight(+100%) Switch(SC?) [RTH]

And don’t make me crazy here, you know I’m all about automation on the Tri… “:= MAX Weight(-20%) Switch(SG?) [FollowMe]”??? FollowMe??? How please xplane this?

[wilco1967]

These are Taranis settings (OpenTx printout).

It shows the mixer for channel 5 (= aux1)
The first line: CH05 (aux1) MAX Weight(-100%) [init]
simply sets the channel to -100% as an initial valve (it will only be sent out after all lines are completed)

The second line will set the value to either -40 or -100, depending on switch SG- (- means mid position)
:= MAX Weight(-40%) Switch(SG-) [WAYPOINT]
so the result will either remain at -100 (when SG is NOT in the middle postion, or become -40 when it is.

the next one, set to -20 when SG in the down position, or whatever remained from the previous line.
:= MAX Weight(-20%) Switch(SGdown) [FollowMe]

following lines do the same but each time with a different value
:= MAX Weight(-60%) Switch(SC-) [POSHOLD]
:= MAX Weight(-80%) Switch(SFdown) [Angle]
:= MAX Weight(+100%) Switch(SCdown) [RTH]

For each line, it either use the previous value, or overrides with the new number. So the last rules override previous lines.
So switch SC in the down position (SCdown), which is used for RTH, will override all the other lines / modes.
Only the end result will be sent out over the radio to the copter.

On iNav, the modes are set as follows (ALL using AUX1)
SP LOW HIGH % Mode Taranis Switch
1000 0950 – 1050 -100 Acro None
1100 1050 – 2100 -80 Angle SF down
1200 1150 – 1250 -60 GPS HOLD + ALT HOLD SC –
1300 1250 – 1350 -40 WAYPOINT SG –
1400 1350 – 1450 -20 Follow me SG down
2000 1900 – 2100 +100 RTH SC down

In CLI ‘language’ this looks like
aux 0 1 0 1050 2100 ; LEVEL mode
aux 1 4 0 1150 2100 ; MAG
aux 2 3 0 1150 2100 ; ALT HOLD
aux 3 9 0 1150 1250 ; POS HOLD
aux 4 8 0 1900 2100 ; RTH
aux 5 19 0 1250 1350 ; WAYPOINT
aux 6 22 0 1350 1450 ; Follow me (GCS-NAV)

looks complicated, but is actually very simple..

[Author]

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