After upgrading my ST16 do I need to do a firmware upgrade?

[h-elsner]

First of all I must say, I'm not a friend of antenna modding. So many thing can go wrong. Really helpful measurement equipmet starts at some 10000 Dollars. Usually you have no chance to see if all is right or wrong, only by try and error.
You need the right antenna for the right frequency with the right impedance. If this is all OK you can hope...

The IPEX connectors (the tiny sockets on SR24 or WiFi module) are not made for many plug-out, plug-in actions. First I would check with a good magnifier glass if the tiny pins in the middle are all OK and not bent.
What quality are the used pigtail cables at the drone? What kind of antennas are the that? Do they fit 2.4GHz?

From the flight logs:
The 2.4GHz connection was lost for 1min14sec! Also WiFi connection is bad, telemetry frequency is low, gaps are too big. 400m distance should be working with stock antennas and with booster anyway.

The red pins shows the time point of the telemetry datasets. We have a long time very rare data received.
-72dBm are not bad for RSSI from 2.4GHz RC connection. There should no drop in 2.4GHz RC connection with that signal strength. -90dBm should still work but below it gets dangerous. I cannot understand why the RC connection is lost.

It was good luck that RTH was received at last!


Eighter something went completly wrong with the antenna mod or you did not direct the ST16 antenna to the drone. Antenna booster have a more narrow antenna radiation beam and direction plays a bigger role compared to stock antennas.

Compass calibration: The flight path is going straight sout but Yaw shows only 165°. I would expect something near 180°. However, RTH works perfect. You can try to correct this by performing another compass calibration starting with aiming the drone to north.

Attached the KML file. You can playback you flight and look waht happend.

br HE

 

[Vaklin]

Really helpful measurement equipmet starts at some 10000 Dollars.

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Under 100 GBP with free delivery and is working...

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$150 - dedicated for FPV channels, but is good for the WiFi aerials too.

I have both.

I have a lot of expensive and sophisticated equipment too for all RF tasks, but these two are enough for drones.

 

[h-elsner]

Nice colors, but...
It needs to look like that:

Antennendiagramm – Wikipedia

de.wikipedia.org

br HE

 

[DoomMeister]

The earlier firmwares for the Typhoon H only did control and telemetry via the 2.4 GHz RC channel (Zigbee transceiver- the small rectangular board the antennas attach to in the controller and the aircraft). Later versions incorporated a redundancy via the 5.8 GHz WiFi via the camera (not as robust - the camera and FC in the aircraft talk to each other on a serial communications bus much like cars do) to make for a safer system. In the software I use to read the telemetry, zeros in the fsk_rssi column indicate the use of the WiFi redundancy.

BTW one our members from Germany @h-Eisner wrote the program I use. It runs on Windows or Linux (I have an earlier version that will run on a MAC) and is self contained so it does not rely on any special drivers or runtime routines. You can get it at http://h-elsner.mooo in the downloads page. The program is Q500log2kml.

The mapping was done with the Q500log2kml Converting flights to a kml file that can be viewed in Google Earth Pro or other maps.

We will see how things look in the next flight with the stock antennas.

If you decide to download and install the program, you will get a message when you try to run it the first time, because it is not a signed program. I have used it for three years now with zero problems. This guide will help you understand things in the program in addition to the included manual. https://yuneecpilots.com/attachments/typhoon-h-control-data-pdf.24608/

 

[Vaklin]

Nice colors, but...
It needs to look like that:

Antennendiagramm – Wikipedia

de.wikipedia.org

br HE

Depends on the target. In most cases, good SWR is enough. Do you plan your flight in accordance with your antenna lobes?

90% of the losses come from a bad design in the lines, not matched connectors, and so on. Fancy colored devices, mentioned here, give orientation for the direction of improvement.

 

[Seachange01]

Hi guys,
Sorry for the delayed response. I really hate shift work sometimes
Anyway, just wanted to say, I pulled apart my H again, just incase I had a line that was damaged or kinked like I did in my ST16.
I found one that was slightly kinked, so I flattened it out, covered it in tape, ran a slightly different route and put everything back together.
I also did up the antenna's themselves a LOT tighter than the hand tighten I had done the first time around, just to be sure there was a good end to end touch of the antenna's and the leads coming from the card that they plug into.
I re-started the H and everything fired up first time.
My ST16 recognizes I have realsense, and it says I have version V1.10
Is there a later one I should be running with?
I am going to try another test flight, first with the 4hawks seeing as though that's what I currently have on, but then next with the standard antenna's for the ST16.
Oh, for what its worth, I definitely faced my drone the whole time with the antenna (4hawks) and the ST16, so that won't be the issue, but I am determined to find out what the actual issue is though.
For the record, Just so I can sleep at night ... The Typhoon H WILL auto RTH if my signal is lost for too long right? I dont have to worry that I only got it to RTH by chance? I know if my signal is lost then even me selecting RTH wouldn't change a thing. But I have been under the impression that if signal is lost, it pauses on the spot before saying to itself "Ive lost him, I better head back".
(or something like that)

 

[Steve Carr]

The Typhoon H WILL auto RTH if my signal is lost for too long right?

Yes. After a pause the aircraft will begin flying back to the last known position of the controller. However, if it regains the signal it will stop and hover waiting for command input. For that reason it's always best to switch to Home and wait until you have a good visual of the aircraft. At that point you can switch back to Angle to verify you have control.

 

[DoomMeister]

The RealSense is the correct version.

For your test flights make sure you get good GPS Ready for a couple of minutes before you launch. I only recommend this because you need GPS to get the auto RTH on signal loss.

Then what @Steve Carr said above. He answered while I was writing this post.

It will be interesting to see the difference in the flightlogs from these tests.

 

[Yuneec Skins]

First of all I must say, I'm not a friend of antenna modding. So many thing can go wrong. Really helpful measurement equipmet starts at some 10000 Dollars. Usually you have no chance to see if all is right or wrong, only by try and error.
You need the right antenna for the right frequency with the right impedance. If this is all OK you can hope...

The IPEX connectors (the tiny sockets on SR24 or WiFi module) are not made for many plug-out, plug-in actions. First I would check with a good magnifier glass if the tiny pins in the middle are all OK and not bent.
What quality are the used pigtail cables at the drone? What kind of antennas are the that? Do they fit 2.4GHz?

From the flight logs:
The 2.4GHz connection was lost for 1min14sec! Also WiFi connection is bad, telemetry frequency is low, gaps are too big. 400m distance should be working with stock antennas and with booster anyway.
View attachment 24881
The red pins shows the time point of the telemetry datasets. We have a long time very rare data received.
-72dBm are not bad for RSSI from 2.4GHz RC connection. There should no drop in 2.4GHz RC connection with that signal strength. -90dBm should still work but below it gets dangerous. I cannot understand why the RC connection is lost.

It was good luck that RTH was received at last!
View attachment 24882

Eighter something went completly wrong with the antenna mod or you did not direct the ST16 antenna to the drone. Antenna booster have a more narrow antenna radiation beam and direction plays a bigger role compared to stock antennas.

Compass calibration: The flight path is going straight sout but Yaw shows only 165°. I would expect something near 180°. However, RTH works perfect. You can try to correct this by performing another compass calibration starting with aiming the drone to north.

Attached the KML file. You can playback you flight and look waht happend.

br HE

A very Impressive Diagnosis....

 

[Seachange01]

Sorry again to leave you guys hanging and wondering if your assistance has been helpful.
So after yesterday morning taking apart my H and making sure I had left nothing to chance there, I noticed one antenna line was a little kinked, so I flattened it, taped over it, and re ran it a different route. So, to my knowledge, everything from the H's end looks good.
I then re checked my antenna (4hawks) connections, and much to my embarrassment... one line was ridiculously loose. As in so loose that I had clearly never even properly hand tightened it. All 3 lines were securely tightened to the ST16, but at the other end of those lines that go into the 4hawks... well, much to my embarrassment, 2 were loose, but 1 of those 2 was really really loose.

So I tightened all lines and felt very positive. I went for a flight after work this morning (I am a 911 dispatcher and work night shifts this year 7pm till 7am).
Despite the cold weather, everything went really well, and the whole flight and control felt great. No issue with loss of picture or control, and I definitely went further than I did on the flight I had posted the log for here when I lost control.
So, without turning this into a book, I will post this mornings log for you to take a look at as a comparison

I honestly don't know how to thank you all enough. I seriously wish I could throw a big BBQ for everyone that has helped, and have my Typhoon H come and drop the meat in to us all lol.
Thanks again and all the best,
Alan.

FWIW... to anyone reading this and thinking of doing a similar set of mods .... YES, it is absolutely worth it.. but from my new experiences... pay attention to the little things.. cause they matter... eg.. is the line going to be squashed or kinked when you close up the ST16 or the H itself. I could have saved a bunch of time, typing and angst had I done a better job of that.

 

[DoomMeister]

Alan,

Good to hear your flight went better this AM. I’ll take a look see at the new flight data in the morning.

Thank you for the job you do, and all the other emergency and first responders. Dealing with people on a day in day out ( night in your case) would drive me nuts. I much prefer dealing with machines and electronics.

Next time I throw some meat on the grill (no veggies over my coals) I’ll raise a glass in your honor for the thought.

Catch you after your shift.

 

[DoomMeister]

The good news is no loss of control with this flight. I am still unsettled at the amount the system is falling back on the redundancy. Some of the reason may be that the WiFi signal is much stronger than in the past, but by the same token the 2.4 GHz RC signal should be much stronger also. There is a lot of improvement compared to the previous flight in that respect. I would still like to see a comparison between the 4Hawks and stock antennas when you have a chance to do so.



I would like to get @h-elsner 's opinion comparing this last flight (00088) with 00071 before the modifications.


00088 post-mod

00088


00071 pre-mod

00071

 

[Seachange01]

The good news is no loss of control with this flight. I am still unsettled at the amount the system is falling back on the redundancy. Some of the reason may be that the WiFi signal is much stronger than in the past, but by the same token the 2.4 GHz RC signal should be much stronger also. There is a lot of improvement compared to the previous flight in that respect. I would still like to see a comparison between the 4Hawks and stock antennas when you have a chance to do so.

View attachment 24924

I would like to get @h-elsner 's opinion comparing this last flight (00088) with 00071 before the modifications.

View attachment 24921
00088 post-mod
View attachment 24923
00088

View attachment 24920
00071 pre-mod
View attachment 24922
00071

I'm not even going to pretend that I know what 99% of this means lol.
But seriously, thankyou sooooo much. I have a bunch more reading/research and learning to do now.
I am not finished yet with my setup. I bought a 2nd card for the H unit itself, just incase it was damaged in anyway at all during the heating for the shrink wrap process when I haad to do that after switching to the new cables for the antennas.
I will absolutely do the standard antenna's test too.
Seriously, thanks for all the info you have taken the time to print/save and post here. Its awesome.

 

[DoomMeister]

You are welcome. It is a fun challenge to pull information from the telemetry. It would also help on the H480’s if Yuneec would release some of the information that is hidden in the telemetry (such as a confirmation or a clear explanation of the IMU Status and Pressure Compass Status and especially what their non-standard MAVLink messages are in the Sensor files for the H480. Since this is a legacy system I see no harm in releasing information that will help us maintain the fleet. This type of action would help Yuneec gain respect with their user base.

 

[h-elsner]

There are two complete drop down of the 2.4GHz RC connection for ~3min in flight 00088. The reason for this behaviour is not clear. We do not know how Yuneec implemented their Dual Band Control Redundancy feature. The strange thing is that 2.4GHz was replaced by 5GHz WiFi during good conditions. The same thing took place at flight 00085/00086 but in this case the 5GHz went down in the middle of this gap too. 2.4GHz came back before WiFi connected again.

From my point of view we have had here two of the same outages but this time luckily the WiFi connection was stable. The big question is, why 2.4GHz connection was lost. In both flight the signal strength before and after the gap was very good. In this last flight the second outage started in the moment when RTH was set. It cames back with a single dataset that still has had the attitude 99m as it was before the outage occured. Where was this datapackage all the time in this 3 min? On Mars with the rover or what? OK, in a buffer or cache, possibly. I don't know.
A slack joint in the 2.4GHz system of the ST16 comes in my mind, triggered by mechanics. The first outage coincidences with J1 from max to zero, the second with RTH switch. Sounds sounds far-fetched, but who knows...

I have no good feeling with that.

br HE

 

[DoomMeister]

So @h-elsner , are you also suspecting there may be an issue with possibly the connector on the Zigbee module in the ST16? I am a bit suspicious of the one that did not stay connected when the mod was first done.

Did the fsk_rssi for 00071 look normal to you? I see that there were several instances of the redundancy being invoked, but there were no total losses of the 2.4 GHz RC.

This is part of the reason I would like to see a test with the stock antennas also. This takes the 4Hawks out of the equation at that point.

 

[Vaklin]

One flight without a camera will give a lot of answers.



With panel antennas, this request is not covered. Information is from the attached document.

 

[Vaklin]

The first outage coincidences with J1 from max to zero, the second with RTH switch.

Yaw position in relation to the remote? Possibility to has only one antenna on the copter?

 

[h-elsner]

Yaw position in relation to the remote? Possibility to has only one antenna on the copter?

This would require a 3D modeling of this situation. If you don't know which antenna is affected this is not so easy.
My idea was more that manipulating on the ST16 may provoke the outage, because the RSSI is very good in the moment where the outage appear. That speaks against problems with antenna diversity/directing antennas.

Did the fsk_rssi for 00071 look normal to you?

Yes, it did. The Dual Band Control Redundancy feature is always a mysterium. But so far it looks normal.

This is part of the reason I would like to see a test with the stock antennas also.

The significance of this test is limited when I think of bad connectors or hairline crack on the receiver board due to pressing force and so on. However, it is worth to try.

br HE

 

[Seachange01]

I am smiling here, purely at my level of ignorance and lack of knowledge at what you guys are talking about. I feel like such a dumb @ss lol. I understand about 1 percent of the previous posts you guys are talking about, but... I WILL do a flight tomorrow morning with no camera, and a flight with the stock antenna's. So, 2 flights. Both the same route and at the same place.

I did fly again this morning, but I got a drop out in video which froze up, so I hit RTH and it came back and I was able to regain control on the way home. I don't remember the exact distance away, but I could still see it by LOS and I am sure it was still less than the standard antenna would have let me fly. So in my mind, yes, there is absolutely still an issue ... I just wish I knew how to give better info to help fix it. But, I guess I am hoping the logs give you all you need.
I will fly about 25 or so hours from the time I post this post in the forum and then try and upload once I get home about an hour after that on Sunday morning.
Till then, have a great day and weekend, and as always my sincerest thanks,
Alan