A stick with up/down and a knob on the top would be the perfect emulation of the combined throttle/pitch control on a helicopter.
I can't even begin to imagine trying a different control system for multirotors though. All the work I did in my first season was about making the controls something that my conscious brain didn't have to think about. Undoing that would be painful to say the least!
Hi Unseen, actually I had not thought about it but a single stick TX is ideal for quads. The way an SS TX is used it is nestled on the left forearm and the fingers on the left hand are used on the slider control for throttle. The right hand controls the stick. Thus pitch is controlled by fore and aft, roll left to right and the knob controls yaw with throttle on the left index finger. (see photo and note throttle slider on the side of the TX)
A very natural set of movements. It is a pity I did not keep one from the olden days.
(14-Jul-2017, 02:01 PM)Keyboard Kid Wrote: Hi Unseen, actually I had not thought about it but a single stick TX is ideal for quads. The way an SS TX is used it is nestled on the left forearm and the fingers on the left hand are used on the slider control for throttle. The right hand controls the stick. Thus pitch is controlled by fore and aft, roll left to right and the knob controls yaw with throttle on the left index finger. (see photo and note throttle slider on the side of the TX)
A very natural set of movements. It is a pity I did not keep one from the olden days.
I know heli legend Curtis Youngblood uses a setup similar to this... he has elevator/aileron/rudder on the right stick (also with a knob on top), and blade pitch on the left stick only. There's a short explanation in this video at around 3 minutes (inserted it as link, as it has nothing else to do with this thread) :
(14-Jul-2017, 03:09 PM)unseen Wrote: That Stingray is an incredible machine. Far beyond my humble abilities I fear. Certainly far beyond my wallet's abilities for sure!
(14-Jul-2017, 03:13 PM)unseen Wrote: I see that HK are still selling the kit version of their Stingray clone.
Just €260 if someone is feeling adventurous!
Yeah i figure it's ok for experienced heli pilots, but that thing is a lot more fragile than our common quads - definitely not something to start learning to fly with. ...still interesting that he actually made it with FPV racing in mind, but i don't think he intended it for the typical 5x5' gates that normal quads race through.
Hitting a gate with a Stingray would be quite an expensive crash!
Banggood still have the 1:1 Stingray clone made by WLToys (the V383) in stock as a RTF package with transmitter and everything for just €177, but I'm sure the quality won't be that great and getting spare parts would probably be a nightmare.
I really like that controller! I don't think that would be so bad for even "ordinary" quads. (With just throttle on the left stick - none of that heli stuff.)
(I also just realized that video is almost 4 years old!)
(14-Jul-2017, 03:01 PM)fftunes Wrote: I know heli legend Curtis Youngblood uses a setup similar to this... he has elevator/aileron/rudder on the right stick (also with a knob on top), and blade pitch on the left stick only. There's a short explanation in this video at around 3 minutes (inserted it as link, as it has nothing else to do with this thread) :
Hi FF, a very impressive and novel quad. I have heard about Curtis but have never seen his single stick TX before. That is vastly different to what I described in my last post. It is interesting how things develop to suit each individual.
I love the concept of using a single motor, belt drives and heli tail rotors. Brilliant.
When I first saw the word Stingray I wondered what on earth you were talking about. Curtis never flew a Silvertone Stingray to my knowledge. See photo for the Silvertone Stingray the first all fiberglass model made in Australia (about 1974). I still have that black one. The white one is still in Wagga with the new Silvertone owner.
After weeks of playing around trying different drivers and configurators I finally came to the point where I thought nothing to loose so I started flashing the various versions of Air hero firmware.
Guess what? The last of the four versions listed worked and I now have a working Hero loaded with AirheroF3 quad firmware and ready for use with the iNav configurator. Previously I had been trying to flash the Hero32 firmware.
Whooopppeee!!!
Can you believe it?
But why always the last? Why not the first or the second or the third, but always the last? Weird!!
So when I finally have time to get back to my Quadraptor project; Wooden It sub-branch; I am going to have a very busy time of it.
Sooo....... Do you think another promotion is in order?
How about knows a lot of stuff about stuff and is about to find out more stuff ......maybe?
Safe Eddy and Alakazam (3) Before moving on to the main story just a note on the problems of editing tape recordings of Pulse Position Modulation (PPM) pulse trains. The ability to record and to update previous recordings in four channel steps was absolutely vital to the success of this project, as we found out when operating Claude the Koala. The drawing attached shows a seven channel PPM wave train as applied to the TX modulator. The servo position is related to the distance between the leading edges of each successive pulse which can move from 1 – 2ms apart with neutral at 1.5ms. Now if channel one is modified; eg narrowed (pulse 1 and 2 moved closer together); then all other pulse following will move as well which calls for the entire pulse train to be re-recorded. In the case of the transmitters used for Safe Eddy and Ali, we used standard Silvertone 8 channel encoders, 3 in Safe Eddy’s TX and 4 in Alakazam’s TX, thus delivering 24 and 32 channels respectively. We further broke the pulse train into blocks of 5 pulses with a fixed frame width of 9ms. (every 5th pulse ending at 9ms, 18ms, 27ms, 36ms, 45ms, 54ms) with the 8ms reset (sync ) pulse of 8ms.In each block of 5 channels, the first four channels were control channels and the 5th channel was a buffer pulse (not a control pulse) which absorbed the pulse position movements on channels 1 - 4. Thus channel 5 for example could vary between 1ms – 5ms thereby absorbing the variations in channels 1 – 4 without effecting the positions of channels 6 – 32.
This allowed us to pull out any one of the 6 blocks available and to modify them and then re-record them without disturbing any of the other channels. Each block of 5 channels being selected with a press button switch from a bank of six switches. The last two channels were not used on the 32 channel set.
Thus Alakazam's transmitter gave us 24 control channels and Safe Eddy's TX gave us 16 control channels. The big problem we faced being the frame rate on the 32 channel TX which was 62ms, aframe rate that started to slow the servos and reduce their power. A normal PPM frame rate varies from 14 – 25ms depending on how many channels. To overcome this we used especially designed Silvertone servos with Silvertone servo amplifiers or modified stock servos if required. It all worked very well in practise and so armed with robots, transmitters and enough gear to load down a Boeing 707 we set off for Los Angeles. (To be continued)
What really gets me about my Hero problems is that after months of fiddling around with different configurators, drivers ,driver fixers and firmware with no success, when I finally loaded the Airhero F3 quad firmware it was all so easy.
Load the firmware, firmware load successful, green light starts flashing and remove bootstrap. All with no drama.
Close iNav config, disconnect USB. Load iNav, connect USB and bingo. Connection to iNav config, green light flashing and all was well. So easy.
What on earth was all the previous drama about?
So there you have it. To all of you who stood by me during those dark months thanks for your help.
I would have given it up weeks ago without that help.
Now I have two new FC to play with. The comparison is going to be very interesting.
20-Jul-2017, 03:22 AM (This post was last modified: 20-Jul-2017, 03:25 AM by Keyboard Kid.)
As is always the case when I finally overcome a difficult situation I try to look back to see what made such a simple outcome in the end, so difficult at the beginning? It really did boil down to the old “This problem when solved will be simple”. So I am presenting this summation in the hope that it will save other people the weeks of frustration that I went through. The Flight Controller I purchased was a Hero PARIS Sirius™Air HERO•32 r2 BetaFlight BorisB - Sbus - METAL case - Controller Naze32 and worked in conjunction with the Betaflight configurator. For those who followed my story it fell short on power delivered to the rotors whilst giving good stability. It was clearly marked on the case Hero 32 and on the PCB it was Marked Hero 32 r2a. Following a suggestion from this thread I set about trying to flash the iNav firmware. The three firmware offerings on iNav are AirHero32, AirHeroF3 and AirHeroF3 quad. The FC manufacturer also suggested that the Hero r2 could be flashed with Naze firmware. So following the logical approach I confined my efforts to loading the Air Hero 32 and Naze firmware. Neither worked. After weeks of frustrating effort trying everything and every combination of configurators, firmware and drivers and always with that warning about BAD THINGS happening if you loaded the wrong software on my mind, I finally arrived at the point where I really did not care about bad things happening. What could be badder than what had already happened. I could not use any new firmware and the old firmware no longer worked, thus I had a completely useless FC on my hands. What could I do that was worse than that. I was finally convinced that the Hero 32 firmware could not be successfully loaded, so with gay abandon I set about loading the other versions of Hero firmware, AirHeroF3 did not work but lo and behold AirHeroF3 quad did work and so my tragic little tale come to a happy conclusion. Now what lesson can be learned from all of this? Could I have done anything other than take the logical course? As it turned out logic had nothing to do with the final outcome. It was only after I had given up all hope of ever getting my Hero back that I felt free to try a more radical approach. I can say this, knowing more about software and quads in general would have been a big help, but knowing very little about the subject was my main hindrance. So it appears that I need to know more stuff!
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...still interesting that he actually made it with FPV racing in mind, but i don't think he intended it for the typical 5x5' gates that normal quads race through. 
