Hoverfly Today's excitement, Hoverfly PRO beta firmware first flights

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Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
Had an exciting day today. Flew my new XY8 for the first time while simultaneously testing the new HF PRO and GPS firmware beta versions. I'm happy to say the firmware loaded exactly as it was supposed to do, I was able to access the HoverCLIENT exactly as it was supposed to, and to top it off it flew really well.

Manual or attitude mode is unreal, it could only be better if the heli were mounted to a pole. THe helicopter literally goes to the position you command and just stays there. no rocking, no wobbling, it literally is point and go.

Auto-level is pretty much the same as it was when we all first raved about how good it had become. Issues that crept up as it was being tweaked appear to be resolved.

The big deep sigh of relief comes from the fact that the GPS position hold feature is finally on the right track. After going through the steps to get the basic modes tuned, I flew to about fifty feet and switched on Position Hold. THe helicopter held its position and when I bumped the sticks, spun through 360's, whatever, it gently and calmly regained its composure and went back to holding its position. The winds were light but it's clear that progress is being made.

Lastly, altitude hold was used and the heli stayed within a foot of its altitude. With Alt hold selected I again did 360's and slammed the sticks over to try to upset it but it stayed stable and did a good job of resuming alt hold.

More than anything I was blown away by the heli's attitude (or manual) flying qualities. If that's how you like to fly, this can't be any better.

Auto-level is also very good, easily on par or better than Mikrokopter.

Many of us have been waiting for our GPS investments to pay off and I think most everyone will be happy with the progress made by this update. I'd commit more to calling it a full blown success but, as I mentioned above, the winds were light so I'll try again when it's very windy and see what happens.

Thanks to the guys at Hoverfly for giving me the opportunity to try the firmware today. I think Al's done enough to be considered trustworthy which explains why I was comfortable (maybe comfortable isn't the best word, willing maybe?) putting a new heli in the air with relatively new firmware. He knew it was a new heli and that there were some new features that I hadn't tried yet so he could have recommended I fly a beater with the new firmware instead. He didn't though and everything went fine.

I believe the new firmware will be released this week or next.

Bart
 
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Thanks for being a tested. Great to hear there is progress and an already good HFP is only getting better. I am definitely curious how my heli will handle the new GPS firmware. It will be a true test of progress. I have had very little luck with GPS in the past, even with the external Mag, but really looking forward to seeing how it flies.
 

DucktileMedia

Drone Enthusiast
thats my big question. Does this new firmware mean we dont need the external mag to accomplish decent PH results? Thanks for the feedback.
 

Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
i don't have an external mag but I do have my GPS board and antenna on 2" stand-offs above the PRO. I'll move it down onto 1 1/4" standoffs tomorrow and then try it again plugged directly into the board. Al told me after the fact that the beta software was calibrated for Orlando, FL so there will be improvements with heading related performance once the actual public release is installed.

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kloner

Aerial DP
nice, sure hope i can get the alt hold part to work. takes alot of work out of a nice level flight
 

jcmonty

Member
nice, sure hope i can get the alt hold part to work. takes alot of work out of a nice level flight
Are they still using the old MTK gps modules? A ton of experimentation has been done over at 3DR showing the the uBlox has much superior accuracy than the MTK - even with the updated firmware. I wonder if this latest release is an attempt at using inertial control (accel data) to correct GPS and alt hold
 

Mactadpole

Member
I thought they were using uBlox now? I sure hope so as it does appear to be much better. I would also like to see some sort of ground plane incorporated into it as well. They do make a difference!

edit: Bart's is a mediatek :(
 
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Webheadfred

Air Traffic Controller
I bought a uBlox back in July thinking that they were testing them. I'm still hoping to be able to use it...
 

jcmonty

Member
Well, any improvements they make should just be magnified with the uBlox.. if it get's supported. I remember seeing that they were looking into it a while back.
 

Photronix

Pilot
So the current beta firmware that Bart tested can use the GS407 UBlox leah-5 that we started with, DT2523 Ublox leah-5, Mediatek (original small package), Mediatek (larger footprint with battery backup and larger ground plane). We use all of these at various times and don't see that much difference between them. That being said we also have one of the newest Ublox leah-6 modules that we still need to add to the firmware and test. We have shipped HFGPS boards with all of the mentioned GPS modules so our performance must be optimized for any of them.
 

Photronix

Pilot
So far in the Beta we have.

AH working as well as we can based solely on the barometer. This includes a very nicely controlled altitude slew at a constant descent and ascent velocity. Center of the stick plus and minus 10% is a deadband for hold-at-current-altitude. Above and below is variable descent and ascent rate. It has never worked as well as it does now. In the coming weeks after this release we will be adding some other motion data to firm up altitude hold. Currently its very smooth and I personally can't wait to use it for shooting.

PH is working very well in still, constant wind and gusty conditions. We tested today during the tornado watch today! In wind the position will fall off until a balanced roll/pitch angle is determined and then it will return to the position and hold. Once again it has never worked this well.

RTH we are adding now. Currently it returns a bit faster than we like. We will finish this in the next few days. We are adding automatic landing to RTH. I am not sure we will have this done for this release but we are trying. Then solid fail safe will be possible once RTH is bound on your receiver.

Manual mode was changed in 4.6. We changed it back to earlier versions. It now works better than ever as reported by Bart.

AL is the same. We didn't touch it because it is performing well. Try some different smoothing values. I use 25%.

We also added a small safety feature. When armed and throttle is below 7% the PRO beeps annoyingly at you to signal that it is armed. The beeping stops once you lift off. When you land the beeping starts again. The beeping is just annoying enough to remind you that the craft is armed...

Also, we have reduced the response time on our ticket system greatly. If you have an issue submit a ticket and we will get back to you ASAP.

We are planning on a Monday release.
 

jcmonty

Member
So far in the Beta we have.

AH working as well as we can based solely on the barometer. This includes a very nicely controlled altitude slew at a constant descent and ascent velocity. Center of the stick plus and minus 10% is a deadband for hold-at-current-altitude. Above and below is variable descent and ascent rate. It has never worked as well as it does now. In the coming weeks after this release we will be adding some other motion data to firm up altitude hold. Currently its very smooth and I personally can't wait to use it for shooting.

PH is working very well in still, constant wind and gusty conditions. We tested today during the tornado watch today! In wind the position will fall off until a balanced roll/pitch angle is determined and then it will return to the position and hold. Once again it has never worked this well.

RTH we are adding now. Currently it returns a bit faster than we like. We will finish this in the next few days. We are adding automatic landing to RTH. I am not sure we will have this done for this release but we are trying. Then solid fail safe will be possible once RTH is bound on your receiver.

Manual mode was changed in 4.6. We changed it back to earlier versions. It now works better than ever as reported by Bart.

AL is the same. We didn't touch it because it is performing well. Try some different smoothing values. I use 25%.

We also added a small safety feature. When armed and throttle is below 7% the PRO beeps annoyingly at you to signal that it is armed. The beeping stops once you lift off. When you land the beeping starts again. The beeping is just annoying enough to remind you that the craft is armed...

Also, we have reduced the response time on our ticket system greatly. If you have an issue submit a ticket and we will get back to you ASAP.

We are planning on a Monday release.

Do you have any videos of the new position hold performance? AH with inertial data will be great. It's working very well on other platforms that don't have your level of performance in non-auto modes

As for the GPS unit, do you have a recommendation? If I was to purchase a GPS board today, would I have a choice as to what antenna to use?

Sounds like you guys are making great strides. Keep up the great work.
 

Efliernz

Pete
Just awesome Al.

I might just repair my "good quad" just to test this firmware... and do the DW Hexa second. Not that I don't trust you ;) ... it's just you can't test everything / every setup & weight.

Lookin forward to it...

Pete
 




Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
ok, thanks, i'll have to try it later this week. i was able to fly it again this evening with the new camera mount and my T2i. It was dark, windy, snowing, and the camera mount hasn't been tuned yet but it was fun! Only a couple of minutes but more tomorrow or Thursday hopefully.
 

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