Tau Labs CC 1st flight, Having troubles fighting the wind.

[FlyEYE]

All in all a pretty good 1st test flight, no crash and I had a smile on my face at the end.

I did however found it very floaty, likely smaller props would help here (it had lots and lots of power tho). The main problem was that it was difficult flying into the wind, I couldn't angle it enough, going with the wind no problem. I felt like I was fighting the stabilization. What should I go about tweaking 1st? Thanks.

RCTimer 2830-14 750KV
1045 EPP props
4500 3S Lipo

View attachment 414

 

[Gary Mortimer]

First off turn the angle limits up I fly around at 70

 

[dankers]

The defaults are very floaty, we can help you get it tuned for sure. Apart from the angle limits start by increasing the inner loop Kp, this will make the board feel much more locked in, once you have that nice and tight but with no oscillation, start on the outer loop Kp.

 

[Gary Mortimer]

Added to the flying roll call, http://forums.openpilot.org/topic/4476-cc-platforms-flying-roll-call/page__view__findpost__p__12678

 

[Crash]

I have found the stock settings to be very 'soft' in attitude mode. Full stick would have to be used to fly in any wind.

Another thing that should be changed is the video you made Dave. 2000 is too high for max motor speed. I got mine hovering pretty well and started playing 'rocket ship'. One motor couldn't keep up and I did a high speed flip into the ground. This was with the RCTimer 750KV motors and a 4S battery.

I have a sample size of 1 so take the above as just ones person's opinion based on very limited experience. Oh, and increase the price and include a serial cable.

Maybe a public google spreadsheet could be created with end user settings. Then we could determine a set of conservative settings for default.

 

[Gary Mortimer]

Well a library of settings is being prepared but very few people are documenting their builds and settings in the wiki.

Maybe with the ability to export the settings they could be all bought together from files, just have to find someone to do it!

 

[Crash]

Well a library of settings is being prepared but very few people are documenting their builds and settings in the wiki.

Maybe with the ability to export the settings they could be all bought together from files, just have to find someone to do it!

Hmm, it would be very cool if that could be built into the GCS. A database of your own model's specs with saved settings and a place for notes. Then allow export to a master database. Maybe one day.

 

[FlyEYE]

I changed the angle limits to 70. WORLD of difference, this thing is a blast now. Speaking of blasts, "rocket ship" is fun

Crash, I blindly changed the motor speed to 2000 as in the video, I haven't had any issues but only tried it on 3S.

2 more questions.

1) When running the motors at idle they "click". Not noticeable at higher RPMs. Any idea why? I have the ESC set to high timing (is this correct?).

2) How would I go about increasing the yaw rate, it's a little slow, fine for flying around but I'd like to try spinning it like a top.

Gary, let me know how I'd go about documenting the build in the wiki, or do you mean the OP forum?

 

[Crash]

I asked the motor speed question in chat. Bottom line is that if the max motor speed is higher than what the ESC can deliver the firmware will still try to push it faster and it won't know that the motor isn't going faster and that could cause instability. Especially when playing rocket ship.

I used the test function to spin up the motors and listened for when the sound stopped changing. 1850 was the number I arrived at. I'll do it again when I get a better way to measure RPM.

I also lowered the max throttle to about 85 in the throttle curve. That should give some headroom for the CC firmware to go higher.

I hope that makes sense. One of the OP pros can explain it better or correct me if I'm wrong.

My motors click too sometimes. Is that because they loose timing? They also did it on medium.

 

[osnwt]

2) How would I go about increasing the yaw rate, it's a little slow, fine for flying around but I'd like to try spinning it like a top.

Latest unpublished yet GCS allows you to change rotation rates in Rate mode.

But now you can do this using UAV Object browser, see this wiki page about it:
http://wiki.openpilot.org/display/Doc/UAVObject+Browser

Go into Settings.StabilizationSettings.ManualRate.Yaw and change default 150 deg/s to something like 250 or so. The same is for other axes.

Gary, let me know how I'd go about documenting the build in the wiki, or do you mean the OP forum?

You can register on the wiki and add your model to the example CopterControl airframes section in any form you like.

 

[FlyEYE]

Thanks, that did it. I set it for 360 deg/s and that's more like it. 10% expo on the tx and it's good. I'll try 720 at one point this week.