|
Fam is outta town so I'm getting a lot of quad maintenance done this weekend. First I had to rebuild this little fucker for the tenth time after smearing it across the driveway: My 7" raven build was way too tight due to how shallow the frame is, so I decided to use the Synergy F4 board I had laying around to replace the FC/VTX/Rx in that stack and clean it up a bit. This meant that I'd need to order a Unify Pro for the Synergy, but it meant I could pull the FC/VTX off the raven, and then I'd have a spare FC/VTX plus the Rx, ESCs, and motors laying around on my bench to shove into a Braap frame, and I'd only need to buy another camera to get that going. Nothing is more expensive than building a quad out of the bench garbage you have laying around. So I buy the Unify Pro HV and a micro eagle. The day they get here I realize I have another Unify Pro HV hidden in my storage boxes; whoops, I guess I'll have a spare now. I go to match them up to the Whitenoise FC and it turns out that board requires the Unify Pro 5V V3, and all the other versions of the unify do not fit. Okay so I buy a Unify Pro 5V, and I'll have two spare VTXs laying around now. I put the Unify 5V on the Synergy, put the Rx from my 7" bird on there next to it, then gut that thing to remove the FC so I can use it for the Braap and install the Synergy into the 7" quad. Initial setup shows everything looking great, and it fits MUCH nicer under the canopy now:  So now that I've got a Braap frame, some spare motors and ESCs, the FC from my 7" raven, a new camera, and plenty of VTXs laying around, I go to work on that. I fit all the ESCs inboard because I wanted to put racelites on the arms, get the FC all wired up, set up the VTX, and then go to install my newly purchased micro eagle cam on the canopy. Except the Braap canopy doesn't fit large lens micro cameras, it only fits small lens cameras. gently caress. I amazon purchase a runcam swift 3 and put it aside for the night. The swift arrives and I decide to clean my bench up for the first time in months. I find another runcam swift I'd purchased for a different project and never used. gently caress. So I get to work finishing the install, set up betaflight, remap the motors and everything seems great:   But while I'm bench testing this thing, I notice something wrong: the FC reboots randomly. I start reflowing solder joints, then removing and testing components, but to no avail. Apparently at some point I hosed up and shorted something on this FC board because it will not run without getting stuck in a throttle signal induced reboot every five seconds. So the Braap will not fly until I buy another FC. I got the newly rebuilt 7" out for its first gopro flight, and discovered that the sweet stealth canopy is absolute poo poo at holding the camera firmly in place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB0WEqsBEmQ I also discovered that the Whitenoise Synergy F4, as slim and beautiful as it is, does not have a spare UART for me to run the GPS. Which means it doesn't work for a 7" long range rig as I was hoping it would, which means this whole rebuild was just tires spinning in expensive mud. What I'm going to do now is rob this FC out of the 7" and stick it in the Braap, then buy something else to fill in the long range gap.
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2019 07:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 22:47 |
|
|
Are you using that Rx 3 synergy pad? I also thought you could soft serial with the LED outputs, and turn it into an Rx.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2019 15:39
|
|
|
To be fair I'm making assumptions about things I don't really understand: first that the tx/rx for each number have to be used for the same function (tx3 is on smartaudio) and second that I need both a tx/rx for the gps receiver to function. I don't know why the gps receiver needs to receive a signal back from the FC but I've always run them with both connected. Is there a way to make it happen?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2019 18:49
|
|
|
Ambihelical Hexnut posted:I don't know why the gps receiver needs to receive a signal back from the FC but I've always run them with both connected.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2019 21:37
|
|
|
My Rhythmic Crotch posted:Call me old fashioned, but I just don't think dual processing is needed or beneficial, I think it provides a placebo effect if anything. Kinda modern, as in BetaFlight 3.2.5. I did the opposite of this back in October, which was taking a KingKong Hex 300, enabling damped light on the ESC and replacing the stock CC3D running LibrePilot with an OmnibusF4 V1 to see if I could get it to fly like a modern multirotor. Nope, still flew like something from 2014--a bouncy, uncoordinated mess. The same-sized Hex I built shortly afterward using the same flight controller, but with other modern components (SunnySky 1806 motors and cheap BLHeli_32 ESCs) was a world of improvement. Still much slower than a 5" quad and can't flip nearly as fast (too much bounceback at high rates), but it definitely lives up to hexacopters' reputation for smoothness. Flight controllers can only do so much to improve the natural flight characteristics of these things and the importance of good motors and ESCs is understated.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2019 22:45
|
|
|
The introduction of active braking on ESCs definitely made a huge change, because it allowed to stop propulsion on demand, instead of waiting for a motor/prop to lose inertia via drag. However, there's a still bunch of things you could do on the flight controller side. It's just that things get a more complicated due to the math involved. Ain't done with just cascading a bunch of more filters and loving around with the PID. Need to model some sort of dynamics. Too bad it's nigh impossible to make a third-generation fork of two ancestors, that died due to loss of interest and mismanagement respectively (loving OpenPilot), relevant again, because over on dRonin we had an initial implementation of LQG control working, which was pretty promising. Not that it matters anymore, the project's pretty much on ice now, too, lol. Interestingly enough, there was an interesting uptick in forum activity when development ceased. Like what the gently caress.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2019 23:14
|
|
|
dRonin kinda hosed itself by having like half a dozen supported targets IMO.Zorilla posted:Flight controllers can only do so much to improve the natural flight characteristics of these things and the importance of good motors and ESCs is understated. evil_bunnY fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Feb 25, 2019 |
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2019 00:27
|
|
|
True on the ESCs. Most of the advancements in the last couple of years seem to be more about adding features rather than performance. Motors, on the other hand, have come a very long way in a short period of time. Even within the same stator size, the difference between those years-old KingKong motors and the SunnySky 1806 was astronomical. The KingKongs wouldn't even idle properly below 1250μs and couldn't hold attitude properly during level flight, let alone during punchouts. The high idle meant I couldn't use anything except the lovely stock 5040 bi-blades it came with without risking a runaway climb. Edit: picture of the hex build that followed up on my KingKong experiment featuring the above motors. Not a build I would recommend doing, but I had to get at least one crazy one out of my system. The VTX is loose because I had to borrow the right angle adapter for my main quad. 
Zorilla fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Feb 25, 2019 |
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2019 01:05
|
|
|
evil_bunnY posted:dRonin kinda hosed itself by having like half a dozen supported targets IMO. Also, there's probably a lot in the name/branding. Can't be that TauLabs and dRonin never caught on that much (IMO, they're pretty dumb names, autotune is mainly the reason I landed there), but Librepilot is still popular, judging the forum activity, despite not introducing much over defunct OpenPilot (including new targets), and having been without development for more than a year now. Combat Pretzel fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Feb 25, 2019 |
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2019 04:07
|
|
|
Hi all, just started doing FPVs after spending years and years doing on road RC racing. At the moment I am not looking at flying competitively, mainly flying with friends around parks near my/their homes. I currently have a Mobula 7 with a FrSky Taranis X7. Borrowing some goggles from friends at the moment to get a feel and idea of what I want to buy. The Fatshark HD0s are nice...
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2019 11:49
|
|
|
You Am I posted:I currently have a Mobula 7 with a FrSky Taranis X7. Borrowing some goggles from friends at the moment to get a feel and idea of what I want to buy. The Fatshark HD0s are nice...
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2019 14:06
|
|
|
CapnBry posted:I'm not sure about the other specifics of that flight controller, but at least in iNAV, the GPS needs both TX and RX because when the GPS starts up in 9600 baud 1hz mode, iNAV uses the UART TX to send a bunch of initialization commands to change that (as well as some other settings I can't remember). Some GPS have onboard flash to store the settings so it only needs to be done once and saved so it might be possible to use the TX for something else as long as the baud, parity, start, and stop bits are the same, but not smartaudio which is 4800 baud. I think SmartAudio can use SoftSerial though, right? Right, didn't notice the Tx3 being used already. I haven't run across anyone splitting usage of the Rx and Tx of one UART to two different devices. I'm setting up a Nano Goblin right now with iNav, and just have Tx of the GPS (BN220) to the FC Rx. But I went and changed the default settings of the GPS in uCenter to 115k baud, and 5Khz rate. Soft serial would be the way to go though, and would have no trouble at 4800 buad.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2019 16:42
|
|
|
evil_bunnY posted:All I'm gonna say is try a decent box goggle too, some people just prefer the format (and the only downside is size). I currently have borrowed two sets of goggles, a box set and a bifocal(?) type. The bifocal one is a cheap goggle and does not fit my head properly at all and the image is tiny on it. The box is nice and big with its image, but it's almost sub-VGA resolution. I've tried a few other goggles that friends have, including a couple of Fat Shark models. Holy poo poo isn't the Mobula a fun little quad to fly though 
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2019 03:01
|
|
|
Golluk posted:Right, didn't notice the Tx3 being used already. I haven't run across anyone splitting usage of the Rx and Tx of one UART to two different devices. https://oscarliang.com/betaflight-soft-serial/ Well I did some reading and it seems this is definitely the solution to my problem. Thanks!
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2019 06:11
|
|
|
My Rhythmic Crotch posted:Also I wonder if Bardwell still wears kilts Why would you ever stop bein a sarong boy
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2019 22:45
|
|
|
Also he specifically won't call it a kilt because I imagine it would be too easy for lovely people "ahh, like Braveheart. That guy's cool, Mel Gibson makes a lot of good points..." so he just constantly hammers home that it's from the middle east. Also its not a dress because that's full body, this is technically a skirt. Bardwell rules
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2019 22:57
|
|
|
CrazyLittle posted:Hah. timecop was right So I didn't know all the history around this guy and decided to do some digging. Boy... does he really like to call anyone and everyone "tards" lol Still haven't found exactly what you were referring to though 
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2019 00:37
|
|
|
My Rhythmic Crotch posted:So I didn't know all the history around this guy and decided to do some digging. Boy... does he really like to call anyone and everyone "tards" lol I imagine something along the lines of 640kb is more than enough storage for anybody. Except holding up a bit better. Made an attempt to flight this evening before the sun went down. But Things did not like the -8c it seemed. M80 quad dropped from the sky at 1 min Th%. Just over half what I usually get. My flying wing was fine for a bit, but then I heard the motor cut out briefly a few times. Landed, prop was tight, so took off again. Then noticed I was losing connection at just 100m or less, and "landed". After a run across the field to retrieve it, decided to try just short range acrobatics, and lost connection just 15m away, with another "land". My only guess is the cold was messing with the timing of the Tx or Rx (OrangeRx DSMX, LemonRx DSMX). Both are a few years old.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2019 00:45
|
|
|
bring back old gbs posted:Also he specifically won't call it a kilt because I imagine it would be too easy for lovely people "ahh, like Braveheart. That guy's cool, Mel Gibson makes a lot of good points..." so he just constantly hammers home that it's from the middle east. Also its not a dress because that's full body, this is technically a skirt.  the amount of people outing themselves as morons every time you see can see him wearing one is awesome to watchGolluk posted:My only guess is the cold was messing with the timing
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2019 13:36
|
|
|
evil_bunnY posted:
In the first video about it, he explains it something like "I run hot! I live in a place that gets warm in the summer and this is just easier." then like 5 videos later he's sarong'd up, PID testing a chameleon with snow up to his shins He's the most low-key troll.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2019 14:12
|
|
|
evil_bunnY posted:The cold is messing with your lipos, that's all. If you have telem set your alarms to that. Yeah, sadly the M80 is below the price point for telemetry. Doesn't really explain the Tx/Rx problem on the wing though. I was thinking the same thing, but the voltage alarm never went off. I've been slowly working out a conversion to FC and Frsky gear on it anyways.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2019 15:02
|
|
|
After a crash all bets are off as to what could cause intermittent failures IMO
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2019 13:19
|
|
|
evil_bunnY posted:After a crash all bets are off as to what could cause intermittent failures IMO I suppose that's true. These were pretty gentle though, the plane is that squishy foam laminated. You can full throttle into the ground, and toss it back into the air sort of thing. Playing around with 1s batteries, I discovered those little voltage alarm meters you plug onto the balance port, don't really work on 1s. They light up, and show a voltage, but are inaccurate until the voltage goes above 3.9v. Was very surprised to see it show 3.89 volts for a battery that was actually 3.4v. Sure enough, it said only works as an alarm for 2s and up. 1s metering above 3.7v. Golluk fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Feb 28, 2019 |
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2019 16:05
|
|
|
Had some fun over the weekend trying to get Inav v1.7.3 loaded onto some old Naze based F1 flight controllers, with Sbus and S.port telemetry working. Only to discover late Sunday, what they mean by telemetry possible on F1 boards, involves compiling your own version of it with telemetry on, and other features off so it fits. So many attempts of inverted, just Tx, Tx shorted to Rx, Tx to Rx over 1kohm resistor. Seeing as I just want it for stabilization and telemetry, I'm going with betaflight since that still supports it. Of course now I have the fun problem of sensors dropping in and out. Might be the 1kohm resistor across the Tx/Rx though.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 20:44
|
|
|
In other words, you had a very typical and normal iNav experience.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2019 17:00
|
|
|
Modern inav with the new servo config is actually the bomb, TYVM
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2019 19:13
|
|
|
I had such bad experiences with it a couple years ago that I have not wanted to touch it again. A lot of it was the main developer guy (Digital Entity) just kinda doesn't "get" the whole concept of people putting faith in your FW not to crash their planes.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2019 21:30
|
|
|
Fair enough, I’ve never flown a fixed wing made of something else than foam (board).
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2019 21:41
|
|
|
My planes are foam too... but that doesn't really factor into it. Here's iNav losing its mind and almost crashing into me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QpxfgakFmA Those 2 events were both autolaunches where it was ostensibly in stabilized mode after the launch, but sent the plane looping back around. The first time I saved it before it hit the ground, the second time I was screwing with my goggles and it slammed into the ground a few feet from me, scaring the gently caress out of me. The logs showed nothing out of the ordinary, developers didn't care - as I discovered, crashing planes is (or was at the time) a somewhat frequent occurrence.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2019 22:04
|
|
|
Hello goons! I'm meaning to get into fpv mini quads for acrobatics and was hoping to get some comments on a kit list I've devised. I went for a mix of cheap stuff with some better future proof parts thrown in: FlySky FS-I6x with X6B Rx (already bought) Holybro Kakute F7+Atlatl HV2 vTX+Tekko32 4in1 ESC 35A stack DYS Samguk 2207 1750KV per Joshua Bardwell's suggestion Dragon X5 220mm frame T5047C props As for FPV, I intend to buy one of the Runcam Split variants. Not sure yet which, I was thinking the of the split 2 mini or caddx turtle V2. Being able to feed it up to 20V straight (excludes the non-mini split 2) seems nice. For goggles I will go with the Eachine EV800D. Seems the best for its price point and I'm not ready to go 200+ priced goggles yet. Finally the battery will probably be 4S Tattu 1500mAh (75C, not RLine), and I'll just get an IMAX b6 type charger. Does this seem like a reasonable build? I know that there is some mismatching between the capabilities of the components but as I said this was to get something that has some space to grow without having to order everything anew.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2019 02:04
|
|
|
Leandros posted:Hello goons! I'm meaning to get into fpv mini quads for acrobatics and was hoping to get some comments on a kit list I've devised. I went for a mix of cheap stuff with some better future proof parts thrown in: Get a Split mini, one of the single board ones. My friends splits have infinitely better video quality than my turtlet. I have no proof, but it just looks like the turtlet takes a 720p image and scales it up to 1080 but the split mini is actually native. It just looks that much better, and the colours are much nicer too, though there is a saturation/contrast menu on the turtlet I could probably mess with. Also 1750kv motors are better suited for a 6s battery. You will definitely get airborne with 1700kv 4s, but if you can get ~2400kv motors you'll probably be happier. https://m.banggood.com/DYS-Samguk-S...bottom-alsolike EDIT: also, don't rely on your components to step down your voltage if you can help it. Like a TBS Unify VTX will happily step down 25v to 5v or whatever its working at internally. It's designed to do it. But that means it's burning off 20v somewhere in there, and no matter how efficient the circuit is thats creating extra heat on TOP of transmitting your video at 400mw. If you have a PDB or FC that takes 25v and cuts it down to 10v to feed your components your VTX only has to go from 10v to 5 v and it has less work to do. The step down is still occurring but it's happening outside of your component which (in my special idea brain) will keep it in better shape, and working longer. bring back old gbs fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Mar 7, 2019 |
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2019 13:18
|
|
|
Leandros posted:Does this seem like a reasonable build? I know that there is some mismatching between the capabilities of the components but as I said this was to get something that has some space to grow without having to order everything anew. Get a frame where you can order spare arms, and order a few. Make sure the stack fits the frame, especially with a split cam board added. More kv if you want 4s speed.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2019 13:30
|
|
|
evil_bunnY posted:Modern inav with the new servo config is actually the bomb, TYVM
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2019 14:33
|
|
|
My Rhythmic Crotch posted:I had such bad experiences with it a couple years ago that I have not wanted to touch it again. A lot of it was the main developer guy (Digital Entity) just kinda doesn't "get" the whole concept of people putting faith in your FW not to crash their planes. Huh, well hopefully it's gotten better since then. I did make some progress in a custom build of the 1.7.3 firmware. Spit out a hex which flashed and seemed to run OK. Except smartport still isn't working, and iNav doesn't have the handy CLI resource remapping that Betaflight has. I need to do SS1 Tx and SS2 Rx off one plug. Yeah F1 boards.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2019 15:29
|
|
|
CapnBry posted:Speaking of, I have a switch I want to make two stage flaperons through iNAV. Their FLAPERON mode is a fixed amount so I can't use that. I tried to mix another channel and add it to the ailerons in the mixer, but that makes them go up as well as down, instead of just the two two-stage down I want. Is there any way to add an offset in the new iNAV mixer or do I need to set up the transmitter to scale and offset the channel? I tried messing with my transmitter and flapperons (sans any flight controller) and ran into the same problem. One possible solution is to set your servo center position half way to what you want max flaps to be by adjusting your arm length. Should be a better solution with the state of technology, though.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2019 15:42
|
|
|
CapnBry posted:Speaking of, I have a switch I want to make two stage flaperons through iNAV. Their FLAPERON mode is a fixed amount so I can't use that. I tried to mix another channel and add it to the ailerons in the mixer, but that makes them go up as well as down, instead of just the two two-stage down I want. Is there any way to add an offset in the new iNAV mixer or do I need to set up the transmitter to scale and offset the channel?
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2019 15:53
|
|
|
bring back old gbs posted:EDIT: also, don't rely on your components to step down your voltage if you can help it. Like a TBS Unify VTX will happily step down 25v to 5v or whatever its working at internally. It's designed to do it. But that means it's burning off 20v somewhere in there, and no matter how efficient the circuit is thats creating extra heat on TOP of transmitting your video at 400mw. If you have a PDB or FC that takes 25v and cuts it down to 10v to feed your components your VTX only has to go from 10v to 5 v and it has less work to do. The step down is still occurring but it's happening outside of your component which (in my special idea brain) will keep it in better shape, and working longer.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2019 16:42
|
|
|
My Rhythmic Crotch posted:Where did you read or hear this? Or is this personal experience? Switching regulators (what pretty much all high input voltage RC electronics use these days) are really efficient and I would not hesitate to feed them up to the max voltage rating. yeah oops I was describing a linear regulator. iirc buck regulators tend to be more efficient as the amp load goes up and the amperage FPV components use isn't really in the 90% efficiency range, but even at ~70% they aren't putting out the type of heat a linear regulator does, if any at all. I just don't trust them, and try to feed my components as close to the lowest voltage they'll allow. The step down has to happen somewhere, just on a purpose built PDB not a section of my VTX.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2019 17:07
|
|
|
Shesh, stumbled across this video of an engineering project. 40" flying wing, 100g AUW, carrying a 60 gram payload, flies for 22 minutes, on a 2s 180mAh battery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSD69jdi2CE
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2019 17:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 22:47 |
|
|
bring back old gbs posted:yeah oops I was describing a linear regulator. iirc buck regulators tend to be more efficient as the amp load goes up and the amperage FPV components use isn't really in the 90% efficiency range, but even at ~70% they aren't putting out the type of heat a linear regulator does, if any at all. I just don't trust them, and try to feed my components as close to the lowest voltage they'll allow. The step down has to happen somewhere, just on a purpose built PDB not a section of my VTX. You should still have a cap near the cam/vtx
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2019 17:47
|
|