OldRaven's Tricopter LR build

[PeterPankras]

Since dRonin is a deadend for me I decided to look at other options.

Check the following thread for more info

iNav for KakuteF4V2 based Tricopters

@jhlein already did some great work getting triflight in iNav.

With help I am now able to build his iNav branch and will use my Tri to get iNav up and running on it with the exact same setup as in dRonin.

I really want to have some good GPS options, mission planning and return to home on my Tri as my initial plan is to build it like David intended it. As a Long Range Tricopter.

Currently for testing I use a my futaba system and 5.8 video link.
I also currently have a BN220 as GPS which does not have a compass.

The plan is to replace the GPS for a BN880.S
Switch to crossfire so I can use mavlink with my mission planner and have a reliable long range system.
Switch to 2.4 or even 1.2GHz video link to increase video range.

I build branch triflight0p7 from @jhlein resulting in iNav 2.2.1 firmware for the tri and flashed it on a spare kakute board to see if it works.
It seems to work and can set it all up in the CLI.
So next plan is to flash this build on my Tricopter and get it airborn for some serious testing.

I hope eventually the iNav devs will include this special KAKUTEF4V2 Tricopter build in base iNav so it makes it easier for everyone to use it out of the box.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by PeterPankras.

[Imetomi]

Hey! First of all, thanks for the 3D parts.
I’m using iNav as well with Matek F405 which supports tricopter setups by default. What advantages does triflight has over the stock firmware that comes with iNav? I only had a few chances to fly, so my copter is still not tuned. I tried dRonin too, and the autotune worked pretty well, but the lack of a good UI for automated missions bothered me. (BTW the dRonin Windows app that is shared on this site contains a “Uwamson.A!ml” Trojan virus.)

So have you tested yours yet? What are your PIDs using iNav? My copter’s tail wobbles a little, but I think I am close to find the perfect PID values.

[PeterPankras]

I have no idea how inav flies without tri flight out of the box.
I am curious and maybe will revert back to basic iNav just to check it out.

I have not flown mine with inav yet.. Tried but had the flip of death on takeoff because I used the motor numbering from dRonin and not from iNav. Resulting in a swaped motor 1 and 3.

I have some issues I don’t understand with the servo travel and don’t have an answer yet..
If I’m not getting an answer from someone this week I will just try flying it.. and if it crashes and breaks beyond repair.. I’m out. It’s a frustrating journey so far.

btw dRonin does not have a trojan virus, windows just thinks it does.

[yumemi5k]

It’s a bit confusing to explain with text but luckily David explained how to set this without using configurator in this video. If you haven’t set tailtune as a flight mode yet you can backtrack a little.

[PeterPankras]

I have a problem where it does not seem to store the min max values.

But I will look at the video again, maybe I missed something.

Thanx

[jihlein]

I’ve been traveling for the last few weeks. Remind me of what’s going on and we’ll see if we can track things down over the next few days.

[jihlein]

FWIW, I loaded my Tri LR with the inav_2.3.0_KAKUTEF4V2TRI build that I add triflight 0p7 to. Setup the minimum settings so I could try the on ground tail tune. I was able to set the left/neutral/right endpoints, compute the servo speed, and successfully save the settings.

I’ve not flown this branch, or done any other on aircraft testing, but from what I’ve seen do far, if everything is setup correctly, I wouldn’t hesitate to fly it. I might get there this weekend weather permitting.

[PeterPankras]

@jhlein Great to hear you already have it on the 2.3 branch. Now I have to reflash mine, just got my props on 😀

Ground tailtune works with the older build, and it saves but what I do not understand is the servo travel.
When I move the yaw stick the travel to the right is half of what it is to the left.
Or does it already try to compensate for something?

I put everything together yesterday and put to props on ready for a test flight. The weather sucks this time of year and everything is wet constantly. And I really want to at least take of and land from grass to minimize damage when something goes wrong.
The last time over hard surface with the flip of death broke my props.. and with David closing the shop I cannot get spare parts for the tri if I break an arm.

What does your tail servo do on the bench when you move the stick from left to right? Is the travel to left the same as to the right?

I will try to build your latest firmware tonight and put it on the Tri, no use flying with an older build.

[Imetomi]

Since I wasn’t able to fix that wobbling issue I decided to build @jihlein’s triflight branch and uploaded on my copter. Just to make sure I don’t screw up things, should I do the bench tuning in the CLI then fly in Tailtune mode, just like with dRonin?

@jihlein Have you tried Arducopter with your tricopers? My last build flies so well, but there is a huge input lag with my Matek F405 for some reason.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by Imetomi.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by Imetomi.

[PeterPankras]

You can do the bench tune without the CLI. Just like David shows in the old video.
Set it to tail tune and use right stick to choose which side to tune and use left stick to tweak the endpoint.
When done do right stick up and it will perform a speed test and store the values. (this was sort of the short version)

I am also interested in Arducopter. I’m currently building a Rover with Ardurover.
but Ardupilot is a bit more involved to setup, I think for the Tri LR iNav is a bit friendlier to setup.
But I’ve seen great tri’s flying with Ardupilot.
For a Tri in Arducopter I think I would not use the kakute, I would love to have more serial ports for things like telemetry and a companion computer.

Also they are using Tri’s as V-Tol’s , so they at least do more with Tri copters then the inav devs who are more wings and planes focused.

I think Triflight would be interesting for Ardupilot just because it can also be use for the v-tols.

[PeterPankras]

I cannot build this one.

$ make target=kakutef4v2tri
make/tools.mk:78: *** **ERROR** your arm-none-eabi-gcc is ‘9.2.1’, but ‘8.3.1’ is expected. Override with ‘GCC_REQUIRED_VERSION’ in make/local.mk or run ‘make arm_sdk_install’ to install the right version automatically in the tools folder of this repo. Stop.

when I do a make arm_sdk_install it also gives an error.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by PeterPankras.

[jihlein]

Yeah, the Windows version of the compiler required by iNav is broken. I did a direct download of version gcc-arm-none-eabi-8-2019-q3-update and modified the make files accordingly. To save you some grief, here’s the hex file I built and am testing with. This shouldn’t be so hard…….

Also, asymmetric yaw servo travel is normal with triflight enabled. It does that to equalize the yaw force in both the cw and ccw directions.

I’ve built ArduCopter for the KakuteF4V2 (with the tricopter M4/LED pad swap). I did run it on the board and it connected to mission planner, but I never went any further than that. It was a pain to get loaded the first time if I recall correctly.

Attachments:

1. inav_2.3.0_KAKUTEF4V2TRI.zip

[PeterPankras]

Thanx a lot 😉 I will try this one instead of the one that is on the board now.

I vaguely remembered the asymmetric yaw travel, but could not check that anymore since I didn’t have an operational Tri anymore 🙂

Will flash it tonight, hopeing that the weather will be ok the coming days so I can do a test flight.

[PeterPankras]

Regarding Arducopter,

I know there is interest in Tricopters there

https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/12752?fbclid=IwAR3XIUddxrGkU3RkLsp2O4ONNxrhYYzGDUdaFuixGW1IMGBr-C4FCOHxNPU

Not sure if they know about triflight but it is worth a shot to at least them know.

[PeterPankras]

Well, wish me luck 🙂

Flashed 2.3 and did the setup and bench tuning.

Replaced BN220 with BN880 and replaced Futaba reciever with Crossfire nano.

Attachments:

1. 

   20191204_223909.jpg
   

2. 

   20191204_223730.jpg
   

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