Typhoon H 480 PX4 v1.10 (Stability issues ;-)

[Pöllö]

Today I did another test flight with strong wind. Position Hold is rock solid. RTH land point is 0.5 to 1 m away from start location. For windy conditions better than stock Typhoon H.
RTH Landing is perfect without bouncing. Also manual landing feels better than stock Typhoon H especially with wind as it was today. Top speed was 82km/h. If it is fast too far away, RTH works also in case you are flying without GPS simply by flight mode switch. No fiddling around with touchscreen any more. Switch between GPS and no GPS with flight mode switch (or another) was a long awaited feature!

The descent speed is a little bit too conservative, only ~1,2m/s. This could be more. Yaw speed is too harsh with standard settings n but this can be tuned by channel settings on the ST16.
Also landing gear will not go up. I'm still a beginner. I have to check, what I can/must tune by QGC and if channel for landing gear is set correctly. I will report.

br HE

Hi HE,

I'm glad to hear that you are happy with the Thunderbird and that its performance seems to be pretty good.

That 82 km/h makes it a pretty fast commercial photo drone, only the Inspire 2 is faster with its 94 km/h top speed, but I'll take a closer look into that problem some day, I think that there could be a small possibility for improvement, like 13 km/h... ;-) I'm currently working with the SD card, it seems I could reuse plenty of code from the Omnibus F4SD target. When it comes to drones with no SD card, we could save few waypoints into the RAM during runtime with the Dataman of the PX4, but any more complex pattern will not fit there.

Regarding the descent speed; that can be adjusted from QGroundcontrol parameters, they are pretty conservative at the moment indeed, the RTH landing speed being in fact even slower, 0.7 m/s. See the Safety page, the setting is in the bottom.

The yaw, if you ask me, needs a bit more power for my taste, but if you see it being too harsh, maybe I'll tone it down a bit for the next release, or at least won't increase it for the public parameter file. Thanks for the feedback, it is good to have a solid and easy parameter set that is a good for everyone to start with.

About the landing gear; did you try to cycle the switch more than once? My parameter file should have them properly configured, but I'll take a look into it. When the gear switch is cycled, the blue led on the landing gear control board should either blink or be solid, depending on the switch position. Also please note, that the gear, like the pitch channel of the CGO3+, can be operated only when the drone is armed.

Br,

TR

 

[h-elsner]

About the landing gear; did you try to cycle the switch more than once?

Yes and during flight (in air). I still testing without camera.

 

[Pöllö]

Yes and during flight (in air). I still testing without camera.

I managed to reproduce this on my flightless development drone with the board you sent to me. ;-) However, the cause is still a bit unclear for me as it works on my flying development Typhoon, but I'll figure it out. Maybe it's something with the parameters. Are you having landing gear issues with a board that has a SD card slot?

The SD card is working: Flight Review. Those log files will be very valuable in developing and tuning the Thunderbird. ;-)
And so are the missions. I ended up saving mission waypoints to the RAM with the Dataman, so that those who have the drone without the SD card slot, can fly missions, too. Also, the PX4 seems to limit the amount of waypoints to 50, no matter where you save them, which seems to fit into the RAM OK. If more is needed, I think I could hack some more.

I'll do some flight and corner case testing, before I'll release the next version with these features supported, maybe next week... ;-)

Br,

Toni

 

[Pöllö]

It seems, that the SD card slot is not the only difference between those old and new MCU boards. The PWM drive signal for the landing gear is inverted between the boards due to slight differences in components, which is why the landing gear does not work with older boards. I'll figure out a fix for that one. Maybe we need to have two versions of the FW, unless I'll find a reliable way to detect which board it is.

Thanks h-elsner for providing me the board with the SD card slot, I could not have resolved this without it. ;-)

 

[h-elsner]

It seems, the SD card slot is not the only identificator for an old MCU. The one I use has no SD card slot but may be old too.
I got both two boars, the one with SD card slot you have and the second without it from Enrico (kopterbude.ch). He will visit me next week. Maybe he can say more from what Typhoon H the boards are an how old they was.

I will check tomorrow if I can measure the PWM signal without destroying something with my thumb fingers .

br HE

 

[Pöllö]

It seems, the SD card slot is not the only identificator for an old MCU. The one I use has no SD card slot but may be old too.
I got both two boars, the one with SD card slot you have and the second without it from Enrico (kopterbude.ch). He will visit me next week. Maybe he can say more from what Typhoon H the boards are an how old they was.

I will check tomorrow if I can measure the PWM signal without destroying something with my thumb fingers .

br HE

Hi,

Interesting, there seems to be multiple variations of the MCU board then, like the GPS/magnetometer board and the CGO3+ with no way of telling which version it is without a very close look. I started writing a driver for the landing gear. ;-) I don't know how to invert the port in PX4's way of implementing the PWM generation so I'm going to bit-bang the PWM. And maybe add a user-configurable parameter for the inversion. With STM32 HAL or NuttX the PWM inversion would have been almost trivial, but with the PX4's PWM implementation.. I have no idea how. ;-)

 

[Pöllö]

The driver is almost done, and it seems to be working with both boards, with no setup or user intervention. ;-) I ended up reading uORB topic "landing_gear" for landing gear status and outputting pretty funky variation of a PWM waveform to the PB1 pin. The waveform consists of an inverted PWM pulse, an "idle low" pulse, a "regular" PWM pulse, and an "idle high" pulse, which after the cycle is repeated. Now some refactoring and lots of flight testing. ;-)

 

[h-elsner]

A new Thunderbird was born today. It's a Swiss drone. Hopefully tomorrow we will fly it together with my bird.

br HE

 

[Mrgs1]

A new Thunderbird was born today. It's a Swiss drone. Hopefully tomorrow we will fly it together with my bird.

br HE

Good luck.

 

[Pöllö]

A new Thunderbird was born today. It's a Swiss drone. Hopefully tomorrow we will fly it together with my bird.

br HE

Wow! That's nice to hear, good luck and if you need anything, please feel free to ask, I'm here to help with the Thunderbird! ;-)

Regarding the development: The SD-card support, full mission support and landing gear functionality are all bench-tested, but not flight-tested yet. I was thinking to do the LED support and correct the telemetry reporting before flight testing and releasing the update. ;-)

Br,

TR

 

[7cyclops]

Ha! I felt bad for you when I READ your post, and rather envious when I saw you fly.I Reminds me of my first drone a $70.00 skyviper. Can"t tell you how many times I crashed it. Funny thing was I was smart enough to buy from WalMart and get an extended warranty. I sent it back 3 times purchasing a new warranty everytime. Shame shame. You are a BRAVE awesome pilot. Keith P>S> I will not be doing that with my H

 

[h-elsner]

Unfortunately, yesterday we missed to get two Thunderbirds in the air at the same time. Mine was in the air the second time for a longer flight ind Position and Stability flight mode.

However, the first Swiss Thunderbird was successfully tested after some serious problems with calibrations. We tried to solve it outside in the field but it was too cold and windy. Decided to go back home and repeated HW settings and calibration. After that, start, position hold and landing was perfect.

On the MCU board are pads for a connector that cover all signals except the reset pin. So, we could make a de-luxe board for flashing.


br HE

 

[Enrico Jorysch]

My Thunderbird landed safely in Switzerland. I "branded" him and built a nest for him.

 

[h-elsner]

This is an example how to set up more flight modes for the Thunderbird. I recommend to create a new model and do all steps with it. Call the model "Crazy Destroyer" or something like that.
I have exchanged the AUX button B2 of the ST16 by a switch in order to use AUX channel 12 to switch between two sets of flight modes:

• Set one (B2 up) has "Altitude" in upper position of the flight mode switch S4, "Position hold" in the middle position and "Return to home" in the lower position.
• Set two (B2 down) has "Rattitude" in upper position of the flight mode switch S4, "Stabilized" in the middle position and "Return to home" in the lower position.

Set One is the same as GPS off/on. Set two contains more advanced flight modes. "Acro" was left off because I'm too old for this stuff.

Step1: Channel settings at ST16

Open channel settings at the ST16 and select A01.
Tap on B2 and hold it to get menu. Select "Edit" from the menu.
Set "Accumulation", Pos.0 to "Act" and -50%. Tap on Save.


Now you should get a mixed channel for flight modes:

• B2 up: 100% > 0 > -100%
• B2 down: 50% > -50% > -150%

Remark: Channel A02 must still have 0 > 0 > 150% in both positions of B2 switch (RTH channel)!

Step 2: Assign flight modes in QGroundControl
Bind the new model to Thunderbird and connect it to QGroundControl by USB cable.
Now we have more possibilities to add flight modes (COM_FLTMODE2 and COM_FLTMODE5).
Go to "Settings" > "Flight modes" and assign flight modes to the mode items.

• Mode channel remains Channel 5.
• Flight mode 1 is lower position of the Flight mode switch S4, remains "Return" for both Sets.
• Flight mode 2 belongs to Set Two, middle position, will be assigned to "Stabilized".
• Flight mode 3 remains "Unassigned".
• Flight mode 4 belongs to Set One, middle position, remains "Position".
• Flight mode 5 belongs to Set Two, upper position, will be assigned to "Rattitude".
• Flight mode 6 belongs to Set One, upper position, will be assigned to "Altitude".

Test all switch positions carefully in flight mode settings of QGroundControl. The active switch combination is marked in Yellow (day time color setting of QGroundControl).

Buy some more propeller and go out testing flight modes on your own risk.

br HE

 

[Pöllö]

Ha! I felt bad for you when I READ your post, and rather envious when I saw you fly.I Reminds me of my first drone a $70.00 skyviper. Can"t tell you how many times I crashed it. Funny thing was I was smart enough to buy from WalMart and get an extended warranty. I sent it back 3 times purchasing a new warranty everytime. Shame shame. You are a BRAVE awesome pilot. Keith P>S> I will not be doing that with my H

Hi Keith and thanks! ;-) I've been there too.. I am not sure if I even want to admit how many drones I've crashed when I was learning to fly and tweak them. I built my first one in 2011, with Arduino, sensors from Nintendo Wii and software called MultiWii that I modified quite heavily. All the control data and WiFi was transmitted over my custom WiFi implementation and the whole thing was controlled using either Sony Vaio UX ultra-mobile PC or Nokia N900 smartphone. That thing was rebuilt many times... ;-)

Although the Typhoon is a very nice, reliable and tested drone in its stock form, I know that you'll want to fly the Thunderbird some day too! ;-)

Br,

TR

 

[Pöllö]

On the MCU board are pads for a connector that cover all signals except the reset pin. So, we could make a de-luxe board for flashing.
View attachment 19938

br HE

Wow, that was something that I did not even test. A good find, that will make things easier! I just went for the production tester pads. ;-) I've been thinking to make a flashing jig design for 3d-printing / machining using pogo pins to make the process a bit easier... ;-)

 

[Pöllö]

My Thunderbird landed safely in Switzerland. I "branded" him and built a nest for him.

Hi Enrico and nice to hear that you like the Thunderbird! I'm glad that the upgrade process went fine for you too and you are enjoying it! It is nice to see the Swiss Thunderbird and its nest, looking very good! ;-)

I have a firmware upgrade coming soon after few more test flights. I was testing it today with pretty awesome results. You'll like it! ;-)

Br,

TR

 

[Pöllö]

This is an example how to set up more flight modes for the Thunderbird. I recommend to create a new model and do all steps with it. Call the model "Crazy Destroyer" or something like that.

Wow, that's looking good, thanks! ;-) I've modified the current switch assignment a little bit. I am not sure if I'll keep it that way, but at the moment the mode switch has modes Stabilize, Position and Mission. The leftmost, opposite, switch that was previously a gimbal pitch mode switch, now initiates RTH. That Multi-Channel Mode selection is pretty nice tool if you would like to assign more flight modes for more switches.

I like that "Crazy Destroyer". I'm going to reuse it, for example as a project name for non-flight-tested firmware. ;-)

Br,

TR

 

[Pöllö]

I've been testing the version of the Thunderbird today, that I am going to release next. I think it would be safer to advance in slightly smaller steps after all, so I am going to postpone the LED and telemetry fixes for the next version. Here is a video of todays flight, the new landing gear driver, logging and mission mode are being tested with pretty good results, I think. The Thunderbird has a full mission capability now. ;-)

This flight was done using the older version of the MCU board with the on-board SD Card, from H-Elsner and Enrico. ;-)

Video:

Flight log:

Flight Review

logs.px4.io

3D representation of the flight:

3D View - Flight Review

Br,

TR

 

[Enrico Jorysch]

I like what I see here very much.
Since I do not speak English, I translate everything with the DeepL translation program.
So I have the possibility to understand something and to communicate with you.