(22-May-2017, 04:30 AM)fftunes Wrote: Oh well then, yeah for mode 1 and mode 4 the profile stick commands are very uncomfortable, that's true...

I memorized the actual functions to change profiles like:
"throttle low, yaw left, and
- roll left => profile 1
- pitch forward => profile 2
- roll right => profile 3"
Just repeat saying the above to yourself until it "sticks" lol

FF, all good now. I do not know what I was doing wrong but I went through the sequence again this morning and all three profiles came up on the screen without a refresh.

Now all I have to do is memorise those stick combos and I am in biz.

(23-May-2017, 09:57 AM)unseen Wrote: By all means start to gently increase P until you start to see oscillations. Then drop it back to 2/3 of that value.

You might need to be a bit higher than 30cm to get out of your own prop wash though.

Unseen here is the latest.

I set all PIDs to 15 (after going through 5 and 10) and finally there is a degree a stability.

That is as far as I am going on the Hero until my new props arrive.

I managed to find two EP props in my collection so I am now flying two 12 x 6 APC SF and two 12 x 6 EP at 5.8kg.

The rapid increase of throttle requirement is still in force but with that rapid increase of throttle the quad leaves the ground cleanly at 5.8kg with a reasonable degree of stability and probably around 70% throttle..

I cannot do anything more as far as serious flying is concerned until I get back to the farm next week.
My next move is to re-install the HK V3 FC and see how that performs.

Thanks once again for your help.

Progress is slow but in the right direction.

KK

I'm surprised you get any stability at all. Mixing propellers is not a good idea!

Take off does need to be done swiftly and sharply. If you try to take off too slowly, you just get stuck in the ground effect and most of the power goes into trying to fight that.

Progress indeed!

(24-May-2017, 07:14 AM)unseen Wrote: I'm surprised you get any stability at all. Mixing propellers is not a good idea!

Take off does need to be done swiftly and sharply. If you try to take off too slowly, you just get stuck in the ground effect and most of the power goes into trying to fight that.

Progress indeed!

Re mixing props.

There were two ideas to consider.

(1)    Mixing props.

(2)    Not flying until the new props arrived.

I chose (1).

Actually the designer of the Hero told me very early in the piece that he mixed props quite successfully as a test early in the development so actually i was not quite flying in the dark

(24-May-2017, 02:27 PM)Keyboard Kid Wrote: Re mixing props.

There were two ideas to consider.

(1)    Mixing props.

(2)    Not flying until the new props arrived.

I chose (1).

Actually the designer of the Hero told me very early in the piece that he mixed props quite successfully as a test early in the development so actually i was not quite flying in the dark

Flight controller firmware is remarkably tolerant. It can compensate for significant mismatches in the thrust that's available from each motor and will often fly such a monster surprisingly well as long as you don't ask it to do too much.

However, the results will be far from optimal. When the flight controller is already having trouble because there's not really enough power available due to the available thrust being woefully less than what's needed, adding further obstacles to the flight controller's job isn't going to help!

Sure, it might work, but using mismatched props or motors should never be viewed as anything less than an emergency stop gap. In your case, where you're trying to lift a very heavy craft with a power to weight ratio that's right on the edge of what is needed, using a mismatched configuration will only serve to confuse matters.

(24-May-2017, 01:42 AM)Keyboard Kid Wrote: FF, all good now. I do not know what I was doing wrong but I went through the sequence again this morning and all three profiles came up on the screen without a refresh.

Now all I have to do is memorise those stick combos and I am in biz.

That's good to hear! Another proof that Boris B. can be very wrong sometimes... (ignore that comment, see it as an insider joke lol, but to quickly explain, at one point i had an argument with him where he insisted that stick commands are the same, no matter which transmitter mode you use).

(24-May-2017, 03:17 AM)Keyboard Kid Wrote: I managed to find two EP props in my collection so I am now flying two 12 x 6 APC SF and two 12 x 6 EP at 5.8kg.

The rapid increase of throttle requirement is still in force but with that rapid increase of throttle the quad leaves the ground cleanly at 5.8kg with a reasonable degree of stability and probably around 70% throttle..

I cannot do anything more as far as serious flying is concerned until I get back to the farm next week.
My next move is to re-install the HK V3 FC and see how that performs.

Hovering at 70% doesn't sound so bad at all, so maybe it was high PID or noise messing with power output. Question, the HK V3 doesn't use betaflight, does it? Just as a heads-up, i wouldn't want to learn yet another firmware... Not saying it couldn't work better out-of-the-box, so probably still worth a try.

(24-May-2017, 07:23 PM)unseen Wrote: Flight controller firmware is remarkably tolerant. It can compensate for significant mismatches in the thrust that's available from each motor and will often fly such a monster surprisingly well as long as you don't ask it to do too much.

However, the results will be far from optimal. When the flight controller is already having trouble because there's not really enough power available due to the available thrust being woefully less than what's needed, adding further obstacles to the flight controller's job isn't going to help!

Sure, it might work, but using mismatched props or motors should never be viewed as anything less than an emergency stop gap. In your case, where you're trying to lift a very heavy craft with a power to weight ratio that's right on the edge of what is needed, using a mismatched configuration will only serve to confuse matters.

Thanks Unseen, hopefully my good props arrive tomorrow and all that confusion comes to an end at which point the next stage begins.

I am still holding a move to 14.8V in reserve but I want to milk every drop of knowledge I can from the 11.1V batteries in the meantime.

When I make the move to 14.8V it will be with the knowledge that I left no stone unturned in my quest to use 11.1V.

(24-May-2017, 08:47 PM)fftunes Wrote: That's good to hear! Another proof that Boris B. can be very wrong sometimes... (ignore that comment, see it as an insider joke lol, but to quickly explain, at one point i had an argument with him where he insisted that stick commands are the same, no matter which transmitter mode you use).


Hovering at 70% doesn't sound so bad at all, so maybe it was high PID or noise messing with power output. Question, the HK V3 doesn't use betaflight, does it? Just as a heads-up, i wouldn't want to learn yet another firmware... Not saying it couldn't work better out-of-the-box, so probably still worth a try.

FF, I really cannot find out much about the HK V3 at the moment, but it does appear that no it does not use Betaflight.

My main worry with the V3 is the "+" format. I found it worked very well but I never got around to weight trials with it.

Hopefully that issue will be put to rest later today when I reinstall it and do a test flight.

(24-May-2017, 11:37 PM)Keyboard Kid Wrote: FF, I really cannot find out much about the HK V3 at the moment, but it does appear that no it does not use Betaflight.

My main worry with the V3 is the "+" format. I found it worked very well but I never got around to weight trials with it.

Hopefully that issue will be put to rest later today when I reinstall it and do a test flight.

FF, what originally attracted me to the HK V3 is this statement quoted from the Hobby King web site;

"The HobbyKing Multi-Rotor control board uses Japanese Murata piezo gyros that are less sensitive to vibration than SMD type gyros and also features state of the art SMT manufacturing to ensure quality. This board also uses a user programmable Atmega328PA IC."

Not knowing at the time that you could download the instruction manual before ordering, (at that point I was classified as "Knows absolutely nothing about quads") I went ahead and ordered it blindly only to find that it was a "+" config FC when it arrived.

Past experience tells me that vibration resistant componets are a good thing.

Now I await the arrival of my Atmega programmer to see if I can reconfigure the V3 to "X" config.

(18-May-2017, 10:36 AM)unseen Wrote: Sorry for the late reply, I didn't realise you were still using your intro thread for this discussion.

Once you had set the range of the throttle in Betaflight so that it goes from 1000 to 2000, did you then calibrate the ESCs using the Motors tab in Betaflight?

The ESCs need to be calibrated to the throttle range if it is changed at all and that calibration must be done against the flight controller.

If the calibration isn't correct, that might explain not getting full thrust at full throttle.

Hi Unseen, I have been going back over previous postings to refresh my mind on things forgotten and came across this one from the 18th May. I meant to ask you about this at the time but so much was going on that it slipped into the cracks.

Would it be too much to ask you to run quickly through the calibration of the ESC to the throttle range?

I am swapping the existing props shortly and it will be an ideal time to recalibrate the ESC using the motors tab, if that is how it is done.

Regards,

KK.

Howdy Boys,

Just did my first test hop with the HK V3 retro fitted.

Still the same old mishmash of props and now in "+" configuration.

This is straight out of the box for the V3 as my programmer has not arrived yet.

Still the same sweet sound from the 4 motors but I am having great difficulty getting used to the "+" config after flying the other for so long. It just looks so confusing with one motor leading. Especially with the rectangular layout of Wooden It.

Also I am still haunted by that accident in the garage so I am very, very wary in my backyard especially now that I am using stick disarming instead of the switch disarm on the Hero.

However all that said the quad now jumps cleanly off the ground on about 60% power with good stability at 5.8kg. (That is if I put in the correct corrections, which at the moment I often do not.) So that I believe is a good start for the V3.

So more progress but at the cost of having to figure out how to convert the V3 to "X" config.

Getting there.

KK

[attachment=1097]
Howdy Boys,

Definitely my last posting until the new props.

I did a quick test with Wooden It loaded to 7.4kg.

It broke from the ground cleanly but very close to full throttle.

You can see the load just sitting on the runners.

The vice weighs 1.36kg

The steel runners approx 2.kg

The quad just on 4kg giving an all up weight for todays hop of 7.4kg

That is getting close to my motor test results of 8+kg static thrust.

It will be interesting to see what all this means when I start flying down on the farm.

Regards,

Bob.

I am not too sure what happened on my last post. I attached a photo but it did not show up.

It was only a small one. Is there some sort of cumulative total on attachments that span all posted attachments?

(25-May-2017, 01:34 AM)Keyboard Kid Wrote: Hi Unseen, I have been going back over previous postings to refresh my mind on things forgotten and came across this one from the 18th May. I meant to ask you about this at the time but so much was going on that it slipped into the cracks.

Would it be too much to ask you to run quickly through the calibration of the ESC to the throttle range?

I am swapping the existing props shortly and it will be an ideal time to recalibrate the ESC using the motors tab, if that is how it is done.

Regards,

KK.

ESC calibration is easy in Betaflight.

0. Set minimum throttle to 1000.
1. With only the flight controller powered (via USB), go to the motors tab and use the master slider to set all motors to maximum.
2. Connect the battery and wait until the ESCs stop beeping.
3. Press the 'End' key to return the master slider to minimum. The ESCs will beep again.
4. Finally, the ESCs make the normal start up tones.
5. Remove battery and disconnect from flight controller.

Calibration completed!

Now all you have to do is work out what the minimum throttle should be set to. So, reconnect to the flight controller and plug the battery in again. Using the motors tab, gradually increase the throttle output to each motor until the motor just starts to spin smoothly. Make a note of the value needed for each motor. Once you've done that for all four motors, take the highest value you noted, add 20 to that and set your minimum throttle to that value.

(25-May-2017, 07:52 AM)unseen Wrote: ESC calibration is easy in Betaflight.

0. Set minimum throttle to 1000.
1. With only the flight controller powered (via USB), go to the motors tab and use the master slider to set all motors to maximum.
2. Connect the battery and wait until the ESCs stop beeping.
3. Press the 'End' key to return the master slider to minimum. The ESCs will beep again.
4. Finally, the ESCs make the normal start up tones.
5. Remove battery and disconnect from flight controller.

Calibration completed!

Now all you have to do is work out what the minimum throttle should be set to. So, reconnect to the flight controller and plug the battery in again. Using the motors tab, gradually increase the throttle output to each motor until the motor just starts to spin smoothly. Make a note of the value needed for each motor. Once you've done that for all four motors, take the highest value you noted, add 20 to that and set your minimum throttle to that value.

Thanks Unseen, that is a big help.

My props arrived late this afternoon so I will do a test hop in the morning after I calibrate the ESC.