Hello,

My first quad copter build, and thought I had it licked.

Spent hours learning Clean Flight, and programming the Naze32. Finally got to the first test flight:

As soon as I tried lifting off, it immediately began oscillating, as I was trying to hover.

Gave myself a headache reading up on PID tuning, and if this was a result of needing adjustment.


Not sure where to go from here. In answer to a possible question, I have not balanced props and motors. Yet another topic I need to learn.

Any feedback greatly appreciated.

A very quick video:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7hCIvH...sp=sharing

Well, that appears to be too severe to be caused by unbalanced props/motors. A couple basic things, have you calibrated your ESCs and accelerometer? Are you using the default PID settings or have you tried adjusting them? Maybe you could post a pic of your settings, as a slow oscillation like this is caused by PIDs too low whereas too high will give you much tighter oscillation

(23-Aug-2017, 11:30 PM)RENOV8R Wrote: Well, that appears to be too severe to be caused by unbalanced props/motors.  A couple basic things, have you calibrated your ESCs and accelerometer?  Are you using the default PID settings or have you tried adjusting them?  Maybe you could post a pic of your settings, as a slow oscillation like this is caused by PIDs too low whereas too high will give you much tighter oscillation

I recalibrated the esc's and checked the accelerometer as well.

I am using the default PID settings in Cleanflight.

I have spent well over a couple hours, trying to understand where to start changing the PIDs, and I am afraid that I may be even more clueless, then when I started trying to understand them. Nonetheless, the values have not been changed. The only thing I kind of pulled from the many articles, is that with oscillation problems, the adjustments should be with the "P" value.

Scott

You don't say what version of Cleanflight you are running, but the old Naze32 only has an F1 processor and probably won't run the latest Cleanflight particularly well. You may find that flashing version 1.13 of Cleanflight will give better results.

Then again, you don't tell us what motors, what propellers, what battery you are using. There could be a host of reasons why the quad flies like that.

I'd also say that you should go outside to fly. Somewhere where you have plenty of room and nice soft grass to crash into rather than indoors where you can damage things and people. Trying to fly 12 inches off the floor, your quad is still in the turbulence created by the propellers and has no chance of hovering. You need at least three feet of altitude.

What unseen about outdoors... I agree completely on that.

I am guessing this is in one of the self leveling modes like angle or horizon right? After you get it outside, see if it still does the same thing in acro mode. This will tell you if it's your accelerometer since acro doesn't use the accelerometer.

Now that I think about it, you mentioned switching the FC so probably never mind... but while you're waiting on the new one it wouldn't hurt to troubleshoot just for the learning experience.

Thank you for the thoughts.

I was in angle mode.

I did indeed take it outside for testing, just happened to be inside when I took the video. It makes complete sense about needing to get up into the air, so as to not have to fight the turbulence created by the props.

Will report back after using the recommendations given.

Scott

Just went outside for another test flight. The oscillations do indeed go away, when in rate mode.

I tried reverting back to an older version of Cleanflight, but now I am stuck on that. I backed up the latest version using the CLI.

Then downloaded an earlier version of Cleanflight (1.2) and ran it. I actually tried 2 of the older versions, and neither of them will allow me to select anything. When on the Firmware Flasher section, the dropdown menu does not show anything. 

I am not a complete idiot, but I am amazed at how you guys figure this stuff out, and actually get to a flying field. 


Scott

So something is definitely going on with either the accelerometer or the tune specifically associated with angle mode. How does it behave when you look at it in the setup screen of cleanflight configurator? Does it move smoothly as you move the quad or does it react some other way?

It's fun to figure stuff out! That's part of what makes this a great hobby is all the technical stuff that makes you scratch your head, scream bloody murder, and then cheer at the top of your lungs with joy when you resolve the issue!

(24-Aug-2017, 08:51 PM)Woobergoober Wrote: Just went outside for another test flight. The oscillations do indeed go away, when in rate mode.

I tried reverting back to an older version of Cleanflight, but now I am stuck on that. I backed up the latest version using the CLI.

Then downloaded an earlier version of Cleanflight (1.2) and ran it. I actually tried 2 of the older versions, and neither of them will allow me to select anything. When on the Firmware Flasher section, the dropdown menu does not show anything. 

I am not a complete idiot, but I am amazed at how you guys figure this stuff out, and actually get to a flying field. 


Scott

It's a little more tricky using an older version as you need to also download and manually install an older version of the configurator. Thankfully, Painless360 did a video on how to do that and some nice bloke here also provided some tips on how you can easily show which version is which in your Chrome applications list. See: http://intofpv.com/t-keeping-older-versi...leanflight

If you are getting oscillations in self levelling modes but the quad is fine in acro mode, decrease the strength of the self levelling by reducing the Angle and Horizon mode Strength settings on the PID tuning page. This often happens with very powerful quads.


Note that you can't just copy settings from one version of the firmware to another version. You should make sure that you perform the configuration from scratch and also use the 'full chip erase' option when flashing a completely different version. If you ignore this advice, all kinds of strange things might happen. Also, don't flash any of the 1.14 series of Cleanflight as they are badly broken, especially on the Naze32.