Here is another interesting ESC data graph.

The first thing of note is that it is the first graph I have done since I started playing with the gain settings.

Now this graph is quite different to the other graphs on display in that the throttle setting (blue) and RPM (purple) trace have become quite well separated  and very distinct. Now everything is the still same, - same ESC, same motors, same props, only the NAZA gain settings have been changed.

One other thing that has changed is that I have lost a bit of power.

Note the jump in throttle and revs right at the end of the graph. This is the result of me loading "IT" up with an additional 3.1kg. Poor old Wooden It could just barely break ground with an AUW of 7.6kg. However I must point out as well that this test was done after 2.5 minutes of flight time as against with fresh batteries as in previous tests.

Apart from that I think I did push the gain settings too far with basic at 65% and Atti at 40%. I have taken them back to basic 75% and Atti 50%, settings that worked well previously.

So all in all I am very happy with my little DJI Naza M and am planning a trip to the farm for my first real flying session.


Whooopppeee!!!  

   
Another interesting graph.

Everything the same except the gain settings. Back to basic 75% and Atti 50%.

Very stable at that and very easy to fly so that is where the gain settings are staying for the moment until test flying at the farm.

One point to note. The throttle and RPM traces have moved closer together again with the change in gain settings.

All very interesting.  

So after all of this and my first personal milestone achieved, I feel that another promotion is in order.

How about;

"Knows a lot of stuff about stuff but needs to learn more stuff about other stuff".

KK

   

Howdy Boys,

Attached is a Video grab of the farm taken by my newly installed video camera on Wooden IT.

Things are not going too smoothly.

Very windy and much harder to fly in the open especially when IT starts to move along.

Very different from my sheltered little backyard.  

Still this is what I signed up for.

How about another promotion to help cheer me up.

"Knows a bit of stuff about stuff and now know some stuff about video stuff."

KK

Hey KK, still following your progress here... Just out of interest, what camera are you using for video capture, and do you plan to add FPV to IT?

Edit to add : Is it being 'harder to fly' due to the design of IT or the FC misbehaving? Did you get the Atti mode throttle issue sorted?

(14-Aug-2017, 04:39 AM)Keyboard Kid Wrote: Howdy Boys,

Attached is a Video grab of the farm taken by my newly installed video camera on Wooden IT.
...

How about another promotion to help cheer me up.

"Knows a bit of stuff about stuff and now know some stuff about video stuff."

KK

How about the next promotion being:
"Knows a bit of stuff about stuff and now knows some stuff about posting video on Youtube stuff." 

   

(14-Aug-2017, 06:50 AM)Tom BD Bad Wrote: Hey KK, still following your progress here... Just out of interest, what camera are you using for video capture, and do you plan to add FPV to IT?

Edit to add : Is it being 'harder to fly' due to the design of IT or the FC misbehaving? Did you get the Atti mode throttle issue sorted?

Thanks Tom, I really appreciate your help and interest.

I have waited so long, looked so forward and worked so hard for this first open field flying session and now I just feel completely flat.

Things have not worked out well I am afraid. I just found Wooden It so hard to fly in that wind.

I ended up breaking a couple of props in bad landings but no serious damage.

I am flying here again tomorrow so hopefully I will have more to report, perhaps even better news.

For your interest I have attached a photo from one of my better landings.

I had a few of those, hence the broken props. The skids keep catching in the long grass.  

I found today that I had to keep flying every moment Wooden It was airborne. I do not seem to get any real help from the FC at all. If I miss one single correction things get out of hand very quickly indeed. Should the FC be more help than this?

Anyway to answer your questions, no, no FPV and the camera was just an afterthought. I bought it cheap at a local electronics shop. It is a GoPro look alike and seems to work quite well so I thought I would mount it as a lark.

One thing I did learn from the camera is that the level of vibration is much higher than I suspected and that woulld not be helping poor old Wooden It one bit. So I may have gained some useful insight from the camera after all. I will now start to work on reducing that vibration level if possible. I have previously balanced props and motors so I am not sure where to from here.

So at this point poor old wounded KK is limping off to bed. See you all tomorrow.

KK.    

(14-Aug-2017, 02:15 PM)Keyboard Kid Wrote: I do not seem to get any real help from the FC at all. If I miss one single correction things get out of hand very quickly indeed. Should the FC be more help than this?

I have no experience with this (or almost any) FC, but I tend to think that it should be more help than you describe. Realistically the FC should work to maintain the attitude of the craft provided by the stick inputs. Even getting blown around, the gyro shouldn't allow this to affect the degree of roll and pitch? Unless there is a problem with the sensors? Please wait for someone else to weigh in before acting on any of my uninformed thoughts though!

(14-Aug-2017, 02:15 PM)Keyboard Kid Wrote: Thanks Tom, I really appreciate your help and interest.

No, thank you! From what I understand of the desired final result, I think that this is a really exciting project, and I am glad to have such a great seat to watch it unfold from! Also I would like to build a heavy lifter at some stage and this will be a great resource to call back on, happy to have the opportunity to learn from it in real time!

(14-Aug-2017, 11:55 AM)sloscotty Wrote: How about the next promotion being:
"Knows a bit of stuff about stuff and now knows some stuff about posting video on Youtube stuff." 

Slo, you are terrible !!    

Howdy Boys,

Sad news I am afraid, I badly damaged Wooden It this morning so no more flying for a while.

It is repairable but it will take some time.

All previous flights have been in manual mode so I decided to try Atti mode again. This is only the second time I have tried Atti.

The same throttle thing as before with a definite dead spot while increasing the revs but it left the ground OK and I thought that the stability was better. However it was drifting strongly to the left. I put in some right roll trim to counteract that and had a few more little hops but I could not stop the left drift. All  told that amounted to about one minute of flying.

Then on the last hop I took off and it just flipped up near vertical and hit the ground hard.

Replaying the video, from leaving the ground to the hit was about 3 seconds. Even now I cannot work out what happened. I just have this vision of IT standing on its side then bang.

I am afraid I feel completely lost at the moment. I need to rethink what I am doing.

I am reluctant to blame the Naza. I feel it is more a combination of my not knowing how to set the Naza up properly and bad flying.

It may also be that I am doing the wrong thing with the heavy motors and the standard ESCs.

I was warned in the early days that approach was not the best approach. D shot ESC and the lighter more modern quad motors were a better way to go.

Anyway time to lick my wounds and sort things out.

One thing I will try to do is find someone down here that I can go to and seek help. I would like to join a quad club so I will see if I can find a local group down here.

That is how I learned the R/C trade by going to flying fields and talking to people, getting advice and watching and learning from other people's mistakes. It took a long time but I got there in the end. Now I must start all over again learning quad stuff!

OOHh AAhh!!  

KK

(15-Aug-2017, 01:13 AM)Keyboard Kid Wrote: I am afraid I feel completely lost at the moment. I need to rethink what I am doing.

Oh no KK, I'm so sorry for your troubles. I hope you manage to diagnose, and get the issues sorted...

Maybe something small, light and fun to fly, to take your mind off IT for the mo..?

Sorry to hear you crashed, but I think you're on the right tracking in assuming that it may be the setup. It's too bad that I didn't live closer so that we could meet up and work things out. A few things come to mind though and the basic rates are first as I have a feeling that they're much too low. I just checked my Disco, and even at only around 2.5 kilos they are P=166, R=135, Y=131 and V=179

You will get oscillations at both too low and too high rates (just a slower vibration and vague, slow feeling reaction with low rates) so here's my recommendation:
Set all basic rates to 175 and test hover. Start increasing pitch and roll 20 points at a time until you get quick oscillations. Now back off 10 at a time until oscillations are gone. Now you're at least in the right range. At this point your yaw will probably be too high. At hover, if you yaw left or right and throttle goes up and altitude increases, lower yaw until you can yaw and IT remains level'

You mentioned strange throttle behaviour in ATT and GPS modes, the Naza is designed so that in these modes, throttle doesn't kick in until stick is at 50% and is on a different scale than manual mode and only goes to about 80%, so what you're feeling in ATTI is actually normal. But this is why it's imperative to have your ESCs calibrated correctly.

Drift - DO NOT correct with trim and sub-trim after initial setup. The Naza is a little touchy to COG, make sure IT is well balanced and you have identified the exact spot that your COG is located. Have you input the distance figures for X, Y & Z axis in the Mounting tab? BTW, measurements are taken from the point of COG to the GPS module, NOT from the FC.

Do you have drift in GPS mode? You may have to adjust your GPS puck to compensate for magnetic declination depending on your location.

Did you mount the Naza using the thin 2-sided sticky tape provided? The Naza has an internal damping system and using the typical thicker grey 3M 2-sided sticky tape can actually have a negative affect on flight performance.

Max Angular Rate - defaults are 150, try increasing them 50 at a time and see if that smooth's things out as these adjust ESC reaction. Just one note though, there's a bug. When you change the rates and save, close out and then go back in to the configurator, it'll show that the rates aren't saved and have gone back to the default 150 settings. The rates are actually saved but just don't show, so make a note as to the rates you changed.

Done rambling for now and just got a a critical battery warning on my 'puter but I'm sure I'll think of a couple other things.........

(15-Aug-2017, 05:06 AM)Tom BD Bad Wrote: Oh no KK, I'm so sorry for your troubles. I hope you manage to diagnose, and get the issues sorted...

Maybe something small, light and fun to fly, to take your mind off IT for the mo..?

Thanks BD, I will get it sorted believe me. I do not give up easily.

Re something light, two years ago when I first came up with the concept of Quadraptor I purchased a foam quad about 60cm across and used that to confirm the validity of certain aspects of Raptor.

I have not used it since so I will drag it down from the attic tomorrow and start playing with that. I will be interested to see the difference in handling. From memory it flew very nicely.

So there you have it, a bit of R & R and full on into re-furbishing Wooden It.

KK.

(15-Aug-2017, 05:12 AM)RENOV8R Wrote: Sorry to hear you crashed, but I think you're on the right tracking in assuming that it may be the setup.  It's too bad that I didn't live closer so that we could meet up and work things out.  A few things come to mind though and the basic rates are first as I have a feeling that they're much too low. I just checked my Disco, and even at only around 2.5 kilos they are P=166, R=135, Y=131 and V=179

You will get oscillations at both too low and too high rates (just a slower vibration and vague, slow feeling reaction with low rates) so here's my recommendation:
Set all basic rates to 175 and test hover.  Start increasing pitch and roll 20 points at a time until you get quick oscillations.  Now back off 10 at a time until oscillations are gone.  Now you're at least in the right range.  At this point your yaw will probably be too high.  At hover, if you yaw left or right and throttle goes up and altitude increases, lower yaw until you can yaw and IT remains level'

You mentioned strange throttle behaviour in ATT and GPS modes, the Naza is designed so that in these modes, throttle doesn't kick in until stick is at 50% and is on a different scale than manual mode and only goes to about 80%, so what you're feeling in ATTI is actually normal.  But this is why it's imperative to have your ESCs calibrated correctly.

Drift -  DO NOT correct with trim and sub-trim after initial setup.  The Naza is a little touchy to COG,  make sure IT is well balanced and you have identified the exact spot that your COG is located.  Have you input the distance figures for X, Y & Z axis in the Mounting tab?  BTW, measurements are taken from the point of COG to the GPS module, NOT from the FC.

Do you have drift in GPS mode?  You may have to adjust your GPS puck to compensate for magnetic declination depending on your location.

Did you mount the Naza using the thin 2-sided sticky tape provided?  The Naza has an internal damping system and using the typical thicker grey 3M 2-sided sticky tape can actually have a negative affect on flight performance.

Max Angular Rate - defaults are 150, try increasing them 50 at a time and see if that smooth's things out as these adjust ESC reaction.  Just one note though, there's a bug.  When you change the rates and save, close out and then go back in to the configurator, it'll show that the rates aren't saved and have gone back to the default 150 settings.  The rates are actually saved but just don't show, so make a note as to the rates you changed.

Done rambling for now and just got a a critical battery warning on my 'puter but I'm sure I'll think of a couple other things.........

Hi Reno, thank you for a very helpful post. I am going to print it out as I estimate that it will be about two weeks before test flying re-commences and I do not want to lose your tips. During refurb I am going to examine and test every single component on Wooden It as the poor old girl has had a hard life.

While I am at it I am going to test each component for variations and performance as I discussed and promised earlier.

I have been thinking hard about what took place during this trip to the farm and number one on the "needs sorting" list is that vibration problem.

I had been warned by a true expert in quads about vibration but it was not until I saw that video played back that I realised just how bad the vibration was. So what started out as a lark has suddenly become immensely important.

I went to quite a deal of trouble to balance props and motors during the initial set-up but apparently did not do a good enough job.

So as you can see I will be some time getting ready for the next test flying session.

Stay tuned.

KK

(15-Aug-2017, 05:12 AM)RENOV8R Wrote: Sorry to hear you crashed, but I think you're on the right tracking in assuming that it may be the setup.  It's too bad that I didn't live closer so that we could meet up and work things out.  A few things come to mind though and the basic rates are first as I have a feeling that they're much too low. I just checked my Disco, and even at only around 2.5 kilos they are P=166, R=135, Y=131 and V=179

You will get oscillations at both too low and too high rates (just a slower vibration and vague, slow feeling reaction with low rates) so here's my recommendation:
Set all basic rates to 175 and test hover.  Start increasing pitch and roll 20 points at a time until you get quick oscillations.  Now back off 10 at a time until oscillations are gone.  Now you're at least in the right range.  At this point your yaw will probably be too high.  At hover, if you yaw left or right and throttle goes up and altitude increases, lower yaw until you can yaw and IT remains level'

You mentioned strange throttle behaviour in ATT and GPS modes, the Naza is designed so that in these modes, throttle doesn't kick in until stick is at 50% and is on a different scale than manual mode and only goes to about 80%, so what you're feeling in ATTI is actually normal.  But this is why it's imperative to have your ESCs calibrated correctly.

Drift -  DO NOT correct with trim and sub-trim after initial setup.  The Naza is a little touchy to COG,  make sure IT is well balanced and you have identified the exact spot that your COG is located.  Have you input the distance figures for X, Y & Z axis in the Mounting tab?  BTW, measurements are taken from the point of COG to the GPS module, NOT from the FC.

Do you have drift in GPS mode?  You may have to adjust your GPS puck to compensate for magnetic declination depending on your location.

Did you mount the Naza using the thin 2-sided sticky tape provided?  The Naza has an internal damping system and using the typical thicker grey 3M 2-sided sticky tape can actually have a negative affect on flight performance.

Max Angular Rate - defaults are 150, try increasing them 50 at a time and see if that smooth's things out as these adjust ESC reaction.  Just one note though, there's a bug.  When you change the rates and save, close out and then go back in to the configurator, it'll show that the rates aren't saved and have gone back to the default 150 settings.  The rates are actually saved but just don't show, so make a note as to the rates you changed.

Done rambling for now and just got a a critical battery warning on my 'puter but I'm sure I'll think of a couple other things.........

Hi Reno, just to answer your questions and comment on suggestions.

I would be very keen to meet up with you, sadly I live in the underworld while I suspect you live above us. Still it is a nice thought.

The whole rate thing is a mystery to me and I will increase my rates before flying again and follow your suggested plan of increasing until rapid oscillations occur.

I have been trying to find out what to expect in Atti mode but have had no luck so far. The Naza manual mentions almost nothing about how the Naza behaves in each mode. Your comment is the most information I have received so far.

I am not using GPS, my Naza is the LIte version. The last time I checked the CG it was on center. I am not aware of the distance figure mounting tab. I have the Naza mounted on the CG. Does the Naza have the distance tabs?

Re mounting tape, no I used double sided sponge tape but I also mounted the Naza in the sponge bucket that the HK V3 FC came in (mounted previously when using the V3 FC) using that double side sponge tape. I will remount the Naza using the correct tape in the re-build.

Re angular rates, will do.

So that is it for a while. Thanks Reno, those tips will be a big help.

BTW, where do you live?  

Regards,

KK

Yes, I do live on the other side of the world, Canada to be exact. I didn't notice that you weren't using GPS, so my comments regarding entering the distances of the X Y Z axis are irrelevant as they are telling the Naza the location of the GPS module in relation to the COG.