Acro mode! And more...

[Max]

Thanks for the flowers everyone. Yes, acro mode may be a "new revival" for AQ. Someone needs to get Warthox to try it now... last time I saw him, he was asking why AQ is so boring to fly.

Heiko, are you taking off in full manual flight mode when this happens, or PH? Is it just landing which resets it back to north, or an disarm/arm? Are you using heading-free mode? I've never noticed this, so I will need some more details to recreate (as you can tell). Thanks.

Cheers,
-Max

[Max]

More fun facts about acro mode...

Quatos will recover your copter from any attitude (given enough altitude and power). It can be completely upside down or whatever in rate mode, then switch back to angle mode and Quatos will do its magic. You mostly just need to give it extra throttle once it is righted again. Now obviously it's not really magic and the laws of physics still apply, so it's not going to save you from an impossible situation. Also how well Quatos is set up and tuned will make a difference.

Do NOT try this with PID controller. It may work, or you may get "gimbal lock" and turn into an RFO (rapidly falling object, with sharp spinning blades). Gimbal lock at extreme angles with PID controller is quite real and it is very unlikely to recover from it. It is especially vulnerable when two axes are close to 90* tilt (eg. extreme pitch and roll at same time, one arm on quad X pointing steeply down) AND yawing at the same time. Flying in the sim with extended Pitch/Roll Scale settings, I can easily cause it on-demand.

-Max

[funth1ngs]

Hi Max,

it happens in manual mode, nothing else is active (no heading-free...). I was indoors, so no gps fix. It occurs again after motors off/on. As soon as I hit the yaw stick (after starting the motors) it stops at the current yaw angle.

[Max]

Interesting... PID or Quatos? No luck recreating that problem here yet.

Thanks,
-Max

[Max]

QGC 1.7.B3 for Mac OS X - full package: ftp://ftp.autoquad.org/3/334693_22529/g ... B3.app.zip

[funth1ngs]

PID

Cheers,
Heiko

[Max]

Thanks! Found it. Affects PID only. Will publish the fix soon.

-Max

[Max]

OK, fixed and published. New builds of v7.1.1919 are up on FTP site. As mentioned, this affected the PID controller only.

Thanks Heiko for testing and reporting!

-Max

[Mullet]

Max! Thanks for doing this! It's been on my wish list for quite a while.

Hopefully, this will bring more attention to an already excellent multi-rotor platform.

So I'm assuming this firmware can be used for both jMAVSim and/or straight up firmware...

[Max]