XAircraft X650v Tech help please?

Jzquad

Member
Kuau,
Thank you for the reply. I will load that firmware and try it.
About the drifting and the ATT and return home functions, it is understandable that they won't work as long as there is drifting in the AHRS
like I mentioned before, I calibrated my quad before flight and during flight I had to compensate on the roll and pitch more and more, until my pitch was almost maxed out going forward and my roll stick was mid-point towards the right since the model was drifting to the left when I let go of the stick. When I landed and checked the AHRS, there was 20 degrees of drift to the right and the pitch had 15 degrees towards the front. I re-calibrated and within 7 minutes I got the same drift (watching it in the XAIRCRAFT center).
I think one reason for the drift is that inside my house, the temperature is 70 degrees, while outside it was 60 degrees, so between the calibration and flight environment, there was 10 degrees difference.
The problem I see with that is that I can't carry a laptop every time I want to fly the 650 to calibrate it outside.
With Helis, that is also a known issue, we usually wait until the heli gyro is "climatized" before we fly, but at least we don't need to carry a laptop to be able to fly.
 
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kuau

Member
jzquad,
let me know how the beta fw works for you. Do you have a V4 or V8?
I am already thinking about ditching the xaircraft fc and bite the bullet and get the DJI wookong.
at this point I am still to nervous to mount my sony nex 5n on my V8.
I never know what's going to happen when I lift off...
 

Jzquad

Member
Kuau,
I have the 650V8 like you.
I also think this product has a lot to be desired and I deeply regret I went with XAircraft products.
Like you, I am thinking on moving on and do better research before I buy my next multicopter so I don't make the same mistake twice and buy a product that really works next time.
I will be doing some testing today on the AHRS drifting issue and I will post the results here
 

I took out my 650v4 today with the external BEC installed and all ECU BECs disabled. I also hooked up am amp meeter to it. Max amps during full throttle climes were 43.2 amps. The FC seems to use about .2 amps at rest. The stock ESC's are rated 10 amps. I think some of the problem may be caused by current draw at the motors starving the FC at times. That is why i hooked up the external BEC. I had no problems with my FC today. Possession hold worked and i raced the thing around the park going in to possession hold several times. I will take out for more tests this next week. Also no camera and light battery only 1100 grams total flying wight.

I found this video on youtube today http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE-04yHu50M

It really makes me want to take a closer look at the DJI Wookong, but $1100 is a lot to spend if it only gets me slightly better performance. Dose any one have one and want to share.
 
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Jzquad

Member
That is one cool video.
I am still uploading the AHRS drift videos ( not sure why is taling so long )
In the mean time, someone asked me about my settings and location in the quad, so I am attaching 2 pictures.
Basically, everything is installed following the videos from XAircraft.
I am using JR12X xmiter with a AR9000 receiver.
I have the GPS and Compass modules.
The FC firmware is 1.33 and the AHRS firmware is 1.23
I am using the XAicraft center to do my settings since the XAircraft configuration software does NOT work with my current firmware version and XAicraft support told me that the XAircraft configuration software is no longer suported / needed in newer firmware, all settings can be done from XAicraft centerView attachment 1456View attachment 1457
ccdanieldb, what are you using? I wonder if older version of the AHRS work better...
 

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Topflight

Member
Just had a couple good flights. Heading lock works and so does Return to Home. I then set down for about 10 minutes and went up a second time (never turned off the radio or unplugged the main battery). Went up ok, but when I flipped the switch to Return Home, the unit started to jump all over the place, up and down, backward and forward, left and right. I thought I was going to crash, but I took it out of RTH and was able to land ok. This has happened in the past. Anyone else experience this?
 

Jzquad; I am using the same firmware as you and I also have the same setup with the GPS and compass. Are you using this version of xaircraft center http://www.xaircraft.com/wiki/XAircraft_Center(en):RC_Settings

Topflight; I to have had varry little luck with return home. Last time I used it the x650v4 went straight for my camera man. I took it out of return home and regained control. Not very happy with it's performance.
 
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Jzquad

Member
OK,
Here are the 3 videos I took demonstrating the drifting problem.
The drifting problem will have a negative effect in the position hold ( ATT ), Return Home ( ATT GPS ) and in the heading lock function, since the 3 axis gyro is drifting and providing incorrect feed back. ( read my posting in page 2 of this thread. Needless to say, it also affects the regular flight, at times, rendering the model unsafe to flight and uncontrollable.
Is a series of 3 videos that illustrate the drifting of the AHRS when the 650 V8 is "seating" 100% level in a table.
Video#1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9WhFy20k0c&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Video#2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev_WubKNfO8&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Video#3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBIxnNaMKCk&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBIxnNaMKCk&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
 

kuau

Member
Jzquad
Wow not to promising, now what? No way am I going to mount my Sony Nex 5n on my V8...
To bad, besides Xaircraft FC, it's not a bad little copter. Looks like the only option is wait for new FC from Xaircraft or get the DJI wookong.
Or do you have any other ideas?
 

Jzquad

Member
Topflight, see my posting above. It explains why your model behaved the way it did. The problem is the AHRS drift. I hope that XAircraft either fixes this drifting issue or stop selling this product until they correct the issue.
It the past, the drifting was blamed to vibration during flight, but for my test, I did not flight the model, it was seating i a table "drifting away"

Ccdanieldb, my XAircraft center is a bit different than the version you posted. judging by the version I have, it seems a bit newer ( notice that in my version, they changed the name of the "return home" and now they call it "ATT GPS"
 
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Topflight

Member
Bad news (for me). Went out again hoping RTH feature was going to work proper this time. Was up for about 2 minutes and my X650 was about 100 feet away. I then put it into the RTH mode. Unit did not respond. Took it out of RTH mode and it wouldn't respond to any of my commands. It kept flying further and further away. Last I saw it was over a swamp on the other side of the highway. Not a clue where it is. Don't know what failed. Was only a little over 100 feet away, shouldn't of been radio failure, but I'll probably never know. Will go out tomorrow and look, but area is a dense swamp. This was the third battery I was using since last calibration.
 
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Jzquad

Member
Kuau,

I will send this information to XAircratf and hope that they correct the issues we are having.
I contacted 4 of my friends who also got the 650 V8 at the same time I did and they have the same issues. One of them replaced the XAircraft electronics with a DJI system and it flies very nice. I really hope we don't have to take a similar path to get ours to work fine.
XAircraft seems like a responsible company, like you say, this model is very nice and looks promising, but they have to fix those bugs if they want to continue selling in this country. The "word" is already spreading about this issues.
I really hope they address the problem or we are all stuck with a nice looking quad that does not fly as advertised.
 

Well i am ready to buy the DJI system but I read some where that it can't handel all 8 speed controllers and the camera servos do to only having 8 outputs.
 

Jzquad

Member
Topflight,
I am sorry to hear what happened to you.
You don't have the pilot lamp installed to hopefully find your quad?
That is about the only feature that works fine...
This afternoon, before I was ready to do a flight test, I noticed that the gps was not connecting by looking at the pilot lamp, connected the quad to the the the XAircraft center and if fact the gps lamp in the FC was not on and the gps was not connecting, I pushed all the wires in and they were all the way in but no gps connection. I had to take both end out and reconnect them and the gps was connecting again.
If you do find your quad, chech for that.
Good luck!!!
 
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I know exactly how you feel Topflight, same happend to me RIP. On the comments of an earlier entry I have been switching to normal flight mode as soon as AHRS starts to misbehave or I need to move the ship more than say 30m, about an hour flown this way so far and all seems to be good....has anyone had these problems in normal mode?
 


Kilby

Active Member
How about someone who knows how, inviting Jingchen (of Xaircraft) to comment on all of these issues?


Good luck with that. It wouldn't be the first invite he has turned down. He seems to only follow the thread on RCGroups for some reason, and even then dodges questions and only pops in from time to time.
 

Topflight

Member
Just got off the phone with the person I purchased my X650 V8 from and let him know about some of the issues we are talking about on this thread. He said that most of the problems we are describing are related to the six pin connectors between the FC and the AHRS and the FC and the GPS, which includes the drifting of the unit in ATT mode and awkward gyrations when in the RTH mode . He said the problem arises from faulty wires on the six pin connector or the connector themselves not being seated properly. Worth checking into. Let us know if you find anything.
 
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