Hello everyone. Sorry about the long post but its only about a 5 minute read.
Anyone interested in Return to Home with AutoLanding, Auto Hover(Position Hold), Auto Altitude Hold, Auto Heading Hold, Auto Cruise Hold, or setting up routes (Missions) for your quad to follow and then come back to take off point? I was, so I started using INAV.
I just wanted to post my experiences with INAV in hopes of encouraging others who have or are thinking about or possibly in the process of trying Inav. I have Inav installed in a 5” quad, a 6” cruiser a wing and a high wing sport plane. About a year ago I attempted Inav and it was a complete failure. Looking back it was my fault that things didn't go well. This second attempt worked very well and I am glad I gave it another try.
If you are wanting to only race or free style I would recommend that you stay with Betaflight because now BF 4.1 and above is so much easier to tune that unless you are trying to squeeze out every ounce of performance the stock tune is really good.
And if you want Return to Home (RTH) BF does that very reliably although it will not allow you do a safe landing. I had RTH on all my quads when I was using Betaflight (BF) and it worked great! Some have the opinion that Inav isn't worth the trouble... I will say this, Inav for me was exactly what Betaflight was a few years ago when I first got into quads (a necessary pain you know where) but now Betaflight for the most part is a piece of cake to use. I expect Inav to also get easier as I understand it better.
Yes, there is a learning curve to INAV but for me it is well worth the effort especially when I see the quad coming down autonomously for a perfect unassisted landing. I'm no expert with Inav but I'm learning everyday.
So, I decided to try Inav because of all the hassle in 2019 with release of BF 4.0. I kept BF 3.5.7 on all my quads and was very content with it but I wanted to try Inav to get the Mission Planning and totally ‘hands off landing’ on the quad. So I built a 5” and a 6” quad for Inav.
I am using a Kakute F7 v1.5 FC which will accept BF or Inav. The F7 came with BF 4.0 ____ which I immediately upgraded to 4.1. I felt that it would be best if I got the quads set up and flying with BF first so that if I ran into any issues with Inav I would know that the equipment all worked well in BF (turned out to be a very smart thing to do). So I got them built and flying and was ready to switch to INav.
Flash Inav 2.4 (BEWARE: NOT ALL FLIGHT CONTROLLERS WILL ACCEPT INAV)
I flashed Inav 2.4 and all went well. It is very similar to BF installations. The configurator seems a little intimidating at first but it is very similar to BF. The 'motors' page is called output page. And you must check a box to get the motors to spin. If you like to reverse your prop rotation that is a little more tricky than BF but totally doable.
The Preset Page
Some Inav pilots suggest to use the INAV “preset’ page others say don’t. I tried both ways and found that using the ‘preset’ page got me into the air and safely flying pretty quickly as opposed to needing to do some tuning because I didn’t use the ‘Presets’. The preset page is just a choice of what type of RC aircraft you have 3”,5”,7” quads, a wing, v-tail, normal airplane, etc. After choosing one, it puts in some defaults to get you setup quicker.
One issue came up for me using the Preset: I chose the 5” quad and the ESC default was DShot 600. From previous knowledge I knew that Inav and Dshot didn’t play well together so I was surprised that Dshot 600 would be put in as a default by INAV?? So,I am ready to take to the skies. Or NOT. I went out in the back yard and that quad would idle but touch the throttle and it went to full power!!! Long story short: it took me all day and the suggestion from SnowlepoardFPV to try another ECS protocol which got it flying correctly (my decision to set it up in BF saved me a lot of time because I knew the equipment was OK in BF).
Setup Auto Land, Auto Hover(altitude and Gps position), Cruise, RTH, Failsafe
Now that I have a reasonably well behaving quad: on to the FUN STUFF
The GPS and magnetometer had been calibrated so I did a half dozen or so test flights to verify they were setup correctly. Return to home, altitude hold, position hold, cruise, auto landing all were tested and tweaked in the CLI to my liking.
For those of you who are wondering….YES the auto landing is FANTASTIC. Most of the time it will land within a meter of your take off position and disarm without any pilot input!! There are many CLI settings for RTH, Failsafe, Altitude hold/Position hold (very nice mode to put the quad in whilst you slap bugs and flies or a sip of the much need cool liquid refreshment) and Mission Planner that I will not cover here but you can tweak them to make it perform better for you.
Mission Planner... program in a route for the RC aircraft to follow
Now it’s time to give the Mission Planner a try. The Mission Planner page in INAV loads a map centered off the quads GPS that allows you to set up a ‘route’ for the quad to follow and then return back to ‘Home’ and lands. You set ‘Waypoints’ (WP) along your route that tells the aircraft how high and fast you want it to fly and the direction. The route is only limited by your FPV signal and/or your TX/RX signal, and of course your battery. One thing to note about coming to a Waypoint with a quad is that the quad will abruptly slow down, do a turn and head to the next WP. This slowing down will cause the quad to pitch up to where you will think it is going to do a loop but in reality it doesn’t pitch up a lot but the FPV makes it seem that way. Cool thing about doing a Mission is after you take off and hit the 'Waypoint' switch you can take you hands off of the radio and go along for the ride. Inav takes over and flies the Mission and comes back home. And you don't even need to touch the radio when landing because Inav will disarm for you. How cool is that
?
So, if you can setup BF you can do INAV. I would recommend that you get everything working in BF first so when you have an issue you know that it’s something in the INAV setup and not your equipment.Right now I plan to keep Inav on my 6” cruiser and both fixed wings. I will probably switch the 5” back to BF just to keep up with BF changes.
The only negative things I have about INAV is 1. I have NEVER been able to get a Beeper to work off of a radio switch in INAV (it works on the same quads in BF)?? Others using the same equipment as I do say their beepers are working?? 2. You cannot remap anything. So if you tear a pad off you cannot reassign it to another pad. 3. Almost all of the parameters are in CM??? Why not meters or feet? So if you want the RTH height to be 100' you need to convert it to cm...dumb really dumb. But I'm sure there was a good reason for that.
Today I did a 4+ mile (6.4km) total distance mission with the 6” cruiser and my 3000mah battery and had enough mah left for at least 1.5 mi (2.4km) further. Bigger and brighter horizons
Anyone interested in Return to Home with AutoLanding, Auto Hover(Position Hold), Auto Altitude Hold, Auto Heading Hold, Auto Cruise Hold, or setting up routes (Missions) for your quad to follow and then come back to take off point? I was, so I started using INAV.
I just wanted to post my experiences with INAV in hopes of encouraging others who have or are thinking about or possibly in the process of trying Inav. I have Inav installed in a 5” quad, a 6” cruiser a wing and a high wing sport plane. About a year ago I attempted Inav and it was a complete failure. Looking back it was my fault that things didn't go well. This second attempt worked very well and I am glad I gave it another try.
If you are wanting to only race or free style I would recommend that you stay with Betaflight because now BF 4.1 and above is so much easier to tune that unless you are trying to squeeze out every ounce of performance the stock tune is really good.
And if you want Return to Home (RTH) BF does that very reliably although it will not allow you do a safe landing. I had RTH on all my quads when I was using Betaflight (BF) and it worked great! Some have the opinion that Inav isn't worth the trouble... I will say this, Inav for me was exactly what Betaflight was a few years ago when I first got into quads (a necessary pain you know where) but now Betaflight for the most part is a piece of cake to use. I expect Inav to also get easier as I understand it better.
Yes, there is a learning curve to INAV but for me it is well worth the effort especially when I see the quad coming down autonomously for a perfect unassisted landing. I'm no expert with Inav but I'm learning everyday.
So, I decided to try Inav because of all the hassle in 2019 with release of BF 4.0. I kept BF 3.5.7 on all my quads and was very content with it but I wanted to try Inav to get the Mission Planning and totally ‘hands off landing’ on the quad. So I built a 5” and a 6” quad for Inav.
I am using a Kakute F7 v1.5 FC which will accept BF or Inav. The F7 came with BF 4.0 ____ which I immediately upgraded to 4.1. I felt that it would be best if I got the quads set up and flying with BF first so that if I ran into any issues with Inav I would know that the equipment all worked well in BF (turned out to be a very smart thing to do). So I got them built and flying and was ready to switch to INav.
Flash Inav 2.4 (BEWARE: NOT ALL FLIGHT CONTROLLERS WILL ACCEPT INAV)
I flashed Inav 2.4 and all went well. It is very similar to BF installations. The configurator seems a little intimidating at first but it is very similar to BF. The 'motors' page is called output page. And you must check a box to get the motors to spin. If you like to reverse your prop rotation that is a little more tricky than BF but totally doable.
The Preset Page
Some Inav pilots suggest to use the INAV “preset’ page others say don’t. I tried both ways and found that using the ‘preset’ page got me into the air and safely flying pretty quickly as opposed to needing to do some tuning because I didn’t use the ‘Presets’. The preset page is just a choice of what type of RC aircraft you have 3”,5”,7” quads, a wing, v-tail, normal airplane, etc. After choosing one, it puts in some defaults to get you setup quicker.
One issue came up for me using the Preset: I chose the 5” quad and the ESC default was DShot 600. From previous knowledge I knew that Inav and Dshot didn’t play well together so I was surprised that Dshot 600 would be put in as a default by INAV?? So,I am ready to take to the skies. Or NOT. I went out in the back yard and that quad would idle but touch the throttle and it went to full power!!! Long story short: it took me all day and the suggestion from SnowlepoardFPV to try another ECS protocol which got it flying correctly (my decision to set it up in BF saved me a lot of time because I knew the equipment was OK in BF).
Setup Auto Land, Auto Hover(altitude and Gps position), Cruise, RTH, Failsafe
Now that I have a reasonably well behaving quad: on to the FUN STUFF
The GPS and magnetometer had been calibrated so I did a half dozen or so test flights to verify they were setup correctly. Return to home, altitude hold, position hold, cruise, auto landing all were tested and tweaked in the CLI to my liking. For those of you who are wondering….YES the auto landing is FANTASTIC. Most of the time it will land within a meter of your take off position and disarm without any pilot input!! There are many CLI settings for RTH, Failsafe, Altitude hold/Position hold (very nice mode to put the quad in whilst you slap bugs and flies or a sip of the much need cool liquid refreshment) and Mission Planner that I will not cover here but you can tweak them to make it perform better for you.
Mission Planner... program in a route for the RC aircraft to follow
Now it’s time to give the Mission Planner a try. The Mission Planner page in INAV loads a map centered off the quads GPS that allows you to set up a ‘route’ for the quad to follow and then return back to ‘Home’ and lands. You set ‘Waypoints’ (WP) along your route that tells the aircraft how high and fast you want it to fly and the direction. The route is only limited by your FPV signal and/or your TX/RX signal, and of course your battery. One thing to note about coming to a Waypoint with a quad is that the quad will abruptly slow down, do a turn and head to the next WP. This slowing down will cause the quad to pitch up to where you will think it is going to do a loop but in reality it doesn’t pitch up a lot but the FPV makes it seem that way. Cool thing about doing a Mission is after you take off and hit the 'Waypoint' switch you can take you hands off of the radio and go along for the ride. Inav takes over and flies the Mission and comes back home. And you don't even need to touch the radio when landing because Inav will disarm for you. How cool is that
?So, if you can setup BF you can do INAV. I would recommend that you get everything working in BF first so when you have an issue you know that it’s something in the INAV setup and not your equipment.Right now I plan to keep Inav on my 6” cruiser and both fixed wings. I will probably switch the 5” back to BF just to keep up with BF changes.
The only negative things I have about INAV is 1. I have NEVER been able to get a Beeper to work off of a radio switch in INAV (it works on the same quads in BF)?? Others using the same equipment as I do say their beepers are working?? 2. You cannot remap anything. So if you tear a pad off you cannot reassign it to another pad. 3. Almost all of the parameters are in CM??? Why not meters or feet? So if you want the RTH height to be 100' you need to convert it to cm...dumb really dumb. But I'm sure there was a good reason for that.
Today I did a 4+ mile (6.4km) total distance mission with the 6” cruiser and my 3000mah battery and had enough mah left for at least 1.5 mi (2.4km) further. Bigger and brighter horizons
IF YOU BUILD IT, IT WILL CRASH
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