Quad Lost

[pilotnbr1]

Well I finally pushed it too far and lost my quad! I was experimenting with missions and discovered the hard way that each waypoint if you are in relative altitude mode will cause a climb at each fix if the altitude value is not zero. Suffice to say that it climbed pretty high by the 3rd waypoint and was drifting off point (perhaps wind but it was very calm as the surface but I was quite a bit higher than I had planned) .

This is a 120mm quad so pretty hard to see. With my previous missions I had only 1 real waypoint so my poor flightplanning in regards to altitude was not evident.
I knew something was wrong and had set a home position just for that reason- I selected return to home. It attempted to turn and fly back but lost control in the descent (contributing may be I had recently increased the max auto descent to 3 m/s from 1.5 m/s). I could see it looping and flashing in the sun as it went crazy. I tried to control it in manual mode but it was too late (I did hear the motors so it hadn't lost battery power). I just killed the motors so at least it wouldnt fly into the ground at full thrust.

So it dissappeared behind some trees about 80 meters away. No idea where it is...

Things I will do differently in the future-
-test my max descent rate after changing it
-obviously not increasing relative altitude at each waypoint
-do these mission experiments in a more open space

I wish there was a tool to "fly" through your mission and or a 3 dimensional view of the mission rather than viewing the waypoints on a 2d map. Maybe since I won't be flying for a little bit I will give that some work within the android app.

[LPR]

Pilot

Don't give up. You should be able to find your quad. I have been able to many times.

Thanks to Fred we now have a way to create a virtual multicopter so now we need to be able to have the virtual copter fly a virtual mission.

Larry

[pilotnbr1]

Thanks Larry! I will keep searching- good news is that there is some dry weather here in Atlanta for a few days- imagine that!

I had a quick question- In rth does it first go to the home position and then attain the home altitude or does it try to make a straight line from its current position and altitude to the home position and altitude?

I am already starting to think about my next build... I think I still want the smallest possible quad that is able to carry a really good gps- the dipole was ok but the position accuracy seemed to always be just above about a meter. Other extras I want are bluetooth connectivity, osd, and possibly a tracker in case I lose one againe...

Luke

[LPR]

Luke

A tracker is a very good idea.

About RTH the answer is it depends. The settings for Navigation Altitude are explained here.

http://autoquad.org/wiki/wiki/configuri ... on-tuning/

I took a while but reading the instructions and trying new settings I found I could make my quad stay at the altitude it was at and go to the home position and then change altitude or I could change settings and the quad would go to the new altitude. Or I could set it carefully and have it come back in a straight line for where it's at to home.

If you want your quad to go up to a new altitude and then RTH you can do that by using the Failsafe function.
Switching off your Transmitter will cause your quad to go to position altitude hold even if you're in manual or in APH and your quad will stay in one place for 20 seconds if you have a GPS lock. After 20 seconds your quad will do what ever you set the failsafe to do. The failsafe has three settings and one of them is to increase it's altitude a set amount and then return to the home point and land. Failsafe works very well but you need to practice with it to prevent a quad loss.
The first time you try failsafe is the hardest and then it gets to be almost fun.

Larry

[chschmid]

[LPR]

Christof

It's been over a year since I played with the Navi settings so unless the Nav setup has changed I would expect it would still be possible.

In general the thing I found is that RTH want's to go in a straight line to the home point but if you setup the Nav Altitude speed so your craft want's to be a little higher than it's set point your craft will tend not to come down till you reach the home point. The same thing goes for making the AQ copter come down quickly as it moves to the home point. If I remember correctly the Navigation Altitude Speed's "I Max" and "Out Max" need to be adjusted the most. The other settings in Navi Alt Speed I adjusted very little. I remember being able to to set the big octo I had, to make RTH work anyway I wanted. It did take a while to understand how to change the settings.

I'll be setting up the Field Eye in a few weeks and then I'll be able to give more info.

Larry