Acro mode! And more...

[Cookiemonsta]

Perfect Max and you included wp recording? That's so cool next to rate mode. Got to try this once I got mine flying with quatos

Keep up the good work, I really appreciate it!

Cheers!

Gesendet von meinem SM-G920F mit Tapatalk

[Mullet]

Over the weekend, I was able to fly about 3 packs on my LadyBird (with Quatos). My first impression is that this implementation works quite well. It felt very smooth, but a little slow.

I'm curious what parameters would be used to effect the rate of movement in Autoquad. In Cleanflight, you'd change pitch_rate or roll_rate. It looks like Tilt Rate is the equivalent to this? Is there an equivalent to rc_rate and expo?

Also what do the smoothing filters do and are they applicable in rate (acro) mode?

Finally, I'm assuming the options for reducing throttle while being inverted are akin to "air" mode in Cleanflight / Betaflight.

[Max]

Cool, glad you got to try it. Yea the defaults are a bit conservative. Did you read my notes in the 2nd post?

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=4821#p36674

To summarize, for crisper response increase the Tilt Rate (as you said) and/or reduce the Tilt Rate Smoothing filter setting (0.001 might be a good start). Let me know what settings you like.

There is no expo setting in AQ, that's what your Tx is for.. I'm not sure what rc_rate is in CF.

I couldn't really figure out all of what "air mode" actually does in the code (there's a lot of it), so I'm not sure about that either. All my version does is as I described... auto-reduce throttle output when past 90 degree tilt (inverted). But you keep all your directional controls (tilt/pitch/yaw). It will not prevent you from cutting the throttle completely yourself with the stick.

Cheers,
-Max

[Mullet]

Oops my bad... Missed that 2nd post. It pretty much explains all my questions thus far.

I believe air mode keeps the motors active to maintain control authority at zero throttle. What it essentially does is allow one to do long floaty flips or rolls while either in Horizon or Acro mode.

At this point, I can barely do a flip while in Acro mode on a Cleanflight / Betaflight based quad, so I don't use Air mode. I'm working at getting there though.

Here is an excellent example of what I'd love to be able to do with "any" quad.

https://youtu.be/4Hs93XrLRAo

[jason0999]

Hi Max once again you have done us proud with all your hard work, I am very aware that if we lost your input as a developer Autoquad would struggle to progress and improve as there does not seem to be any other active developers like Ardupilot for example who seem to have quite a few. I am not able to help with coding but if we can help in any other way please let us know regards Jason.

[Max]

Thanks Jason, much appreciated.

I'm putting a new site together where people will be able to help sponsor my work on the project. But it would also be great to get more people involved. Besides coding, there is always documentation to be written or updated (especially new features and changes to existing ones), testing/troubleshooting (and perhaps formalizing the process a bit), community involvement (forums, promotion, etc)... other supporting activities of that nature.

Maybe a good place to start would be a "how to contribute" document. Organizing bug reports and/or feature requests somewhere would be another worthwhile activity. Actually any kind of organization could go a long way... at this point I think anyone who doesn't follow the project closely could get pretty lost in all the scattered information and firmware versions. I can't even keep it straight sometimes.

Anyway, just some ideas. This subject probably deserves it's own thread. I'm very much open to new ideas and input. Everyone is invited to join the new team...

Cheers,
-Max

[Max]

Good news -- thanks to Heiko (aka. funth1ings), the simulator problem has been fixed! If anyone wants to try out new (or old) AQ features in a simulator first, this is your chance.

You will need the latest release of the simulator: https://github.com/mpaperno/jMAVSim/releases

An M4 and firmware from the "feature_integration" branch: ftp://ftp.autoquad.org/3/334693_22529/a ... tegration/

Follow these instructions: https://github.com/mpaperno/jMAVSim/wik ... h-AutoQuad

You'll need a computer that's up to the task. No Atoms or netbooks. On older/slower computers (eg. < 5th gen i5), don't run anything else at the same time as the sim.

Have fun, and let me know how it goes! Once again, big thanks to Heiko for his persistence in .

-Max

[r0sewhite]

Max, you're a hero! I've been missing rate mode in AQ all the time. Thanks for this great work.

Can you explain why gimbal lock may happen with PID controller? It's not that I really need it but switching back to level mode usually helps with any simple flight controller so I wonder where the difference is.

[Max]

Hi Tilman, welcome and thanks.

Well, the PID controller works on Euler angles, which are vulnerable to effect. Quatos works on quaternions, which don't suffer from that issue. It's not that you can't (or shouldn't) switch from rate mode to PID angle mode ever, but if the craft attitude is just right (or wrong), it may lead to the gimbal lock problem while it tries to recover past ~90* tilt. I can't tell you how likely this is to happen (or not).

Since AQ already tracks its attitude using quaternions, we just need to get rid of the angle-based PID controller. I actually started playing with a simple quat-based PID controller, but it was a bit too simplistic and I ran out of time for now.

Absolutely the best way to test all this is using the simulator. Trying stuff that would be stupid to do in real-life is great fun (and educational). The main situations where I can force gimbal lock is when one of the quad X arms is pointed sharply down (so, near 90* tilt and roll) and I initiate yaw -- at some point in the spin it'll go into gimbal lock and start rapidly rotating around one of the pitch/roll axes (and then drill into the ground arm-first).

Cheers,
-Max

[nigelUNO]

Hi Max,

I've tried the MAG CALIBRATION procedure with the latest fw (7.1 1919)

The procedure starts correctly (announced by the GCS and by the on-board beeper) but it never ends.

I've done the MAG CALIBRATION procedure several times but none succesfully ended.

With the 1897 version everything was fine.

Can you check what's happening?

Thank you very much for your awesome job!!

Luca