iNav for KakuteF4V2 based Tricopters

[zophon]

OK, so the PR is only groundwork, to be able merge the triflight code (either version) with which a tricopter can fly.

If I want to test what needs testing, I need to build myself iNav, branch triflight 0.5 or 0.7 for the KAKUTEF4V2TRI target, if I am right? I can foresee that taking part in testing and moving forward a project like eats up a lot of time, so I am being cautious here, but I might have time during the weekend to test something. Could you point me towards any ressource I might need (where the branch code is, a doc on setting up the iNav buid environnment etc… if there isn’t, I will hunt for informations myself).

[jihlein]

Build environment setup instructions for various platforms are here:

https://github.com/iNavFlight/inav/tree/master/docs/development

The various branches I’m working on can be found here:

https://github.com/jihlein/inav

I’m working on merging the triflight0p7 branch with the latest inav development branch, that should be the baseline for testing. Might have something by the weekend.

[yumemi5k]

@jihlein, I just flashed triflight0p7, but can’t get on-bench tailtune to work. I had battery and USB connected, craft not armed, chose a range for tailtune and confirmed the mode was active, but nothing happened when I pulled on pitch stick. Has the protocol changed or did I miss anything?

[jihlein]

Can’t say for sure, as I haven’t tried running that branch yet. Could be I missed something in the porting so far.

I’ve only flown the basic KakuteF4V2TRI target so far, no bench time with the triflight additions yet.

[yumemi5k]

I felt brave and tried flying with triflight numbers from my dRonin backup. It hovered largely fine, but yawed a lot just before takeoff indicating either the numbers were off or triflight didn’t work. I’m not too sure if the numbers are good though, as it’s from a backup before a crash and rebuild.

It would be fantastic if you could have a look on how to trigger tailtune, or you can point me to files so I can have a look.

[jihlein]

See if triflight shows up as a feature, and if so, enable it.

I seem to recall making triflight a feature so flight performance could be evaluated with triflight turned on or off. This is different from the betaflight version where if you enable the trimixer, you automatically get triflight.

If it yawed a lot on takeoff, that’s the oscillation I’ve seen with the 0p7 version. I did push a few changes to the 0p7 branch last night that I had outstanding, that “may” fix the oscillation.

Like I said – it’s been a while since I looked at this in any detail…….

[yumemi5k]

Triflight did show up as a feature and it shows enabled. I pulled your new commit and tried again, still the same – yaw servo pointed to a pretty wrong direction on arm so yawing didn’t stop until I term kicked in. I reckon that it’s actually my servo mid/end points and other numbers being off.
Either way, I’ll be busy with work for the next 2 weeks and won’t be tinkering much. It’s nice that I did manage to build iNAV and get flying though.

[PeterPankras]

@jihlein

I flashed a spare kakute f4 v2 with the firmware that comes with inav.

I see it already has a tricopter setup, what is the difference with what we need for the Tri LR?

If I select tricopter and load the presets it assigns motors to s1,s2,and s3 and assigns the servo to s5 pin.
Can inav handle the servo feedback wire? Or is that the stuff that is currently missing and what is in your firmware?

Trying to understand the difference.

[jihlein]

If I recall correctly, there’s no s5 output pin on the KakuteF4V2. There’s definitely not one defined in iNav.

So the change isn’t specific to the Tri LR, it’s tricopters in general.

The tricopter target I created (KAUTEF4V2TRI) places the servo output on the LED pad, and the LED output on the M4 pad. Without going into the gory details, this was necessary to be able to define the 3 motors as one output type, and the servo as another (dshot300 and 370 Hz pwm for example). Looking at the STM32 docs, I found another way to do this that would be cleaner, but that ship has sailed and I don’t want to confuse things anymore than they already are.

iNav does not have the triflight routines in it, so the feedback wire is not used. I’m working on getting this workin in iNav. I’ve got untested branches at the moment that are based off an older version of iNav, they need some updating.

[PeterPankras]

I think with s5 they mean pin 2 (or R5) that is used for ESC telemetry.
That’s the pin next to motor 1

I’ve seen a Tri fly with iNav that flew pretty well.. I’ll see if I can find the video.

[yumemi5k]

On a side note, iNAV guys seem to hate DShot with a passion.
A major developer made a valid point on DShot1200 being impossible to accurately implement, but otherwise I don’t find their argument hold water. However, this does make me wonder if there is a fundamental bug in iNAV that makes DShot unreliable.
Anyway hopefully DShot150 is still okay.

[yumemi5k]

Alright I got bench tailtune to work on triflight0p7. It turns out that Triflight was not enabled at the time – command feature triflight enabled it, but I thought it was just telling me that it was already enabled and didn’t save at first.
Now it takes off straight up without yawing. But now I’m getting random significant tail wagging. It’s not swinging from side to side like a sinusoidal oscillation, but intermittent random yawing up to roughly 10 degrees. This might be the oscillation you mentioned @jihlein?

[jihlein]

No, the oscillation I was referring to was at low throttle settings, primarily on the ground before takeoff. At mid and higher throttle settings it was fine.

I’m going to re-baseline this branch on the latest iNAV release 2.2.1 tonight. Might even have a chance to get it loaded and setup on my Tri LR this weekend to see what’s going on.

[yumemi5k]

If that’s the case I hope an in-flight tailtune can help.
Anyway I won’t be around for the weekend and can fly next week the earliest. Godspeed!

[zophon]

Ok @jihlein I could setup a build environment to compile your triflight07 branch.

FWIW I’ll detail the steps here, I followed for windows this link :
iNav on windows

Only change is at the step: ” ##Setup GNU ARM Toolchain”
I had to download and install (notthe toolchain from there. It can probably be built from the source provided in the link from the page but didn’t understand how. While installing a checkbox can do the “add to PATH” step for you.

Let’s see when the weather clears up, so that I can benchtest and flytest this.

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