Harakiri aka multiwii port to stm32

[e_lm_70]

Just a quick thanks to the GPS tips I got here.

I made last day a little plate (took the aluminum foil, used for kitchen ... took some packing transparent tape ... made a sandwich between tape and aluminum foil ... so I got a light and protective "film", still isolated and quite strong too) ...
I guess I should post a photo of my "kitchen" GPS plate ..
I put my Neo6m on this plate ... so now the GPS has not direct view to any Radio gears ... since it sit on the top with good isolation around and behind ...

So ... I got quite fast 8 sat lock, and now my accuracy is looking way way better. And it was a very cloudy day ... just made a test between storms here.

My ACTION mode did work spot on ... and my GPS hold now is really inside few meters (not as super accurate as Mr.Fiero ... but good enough for me) ... good enough for my back yard testing without crashing on the big trees around my place.

Quite surprise this protection was not needed on my MTK GPS ... it does get a similar accuracy out of the box .... sitting even more close to my telemetry RX

Now ... I just need to wait for a sunny day, and I can make a new video of my KK2.0 doing GPS and Action ... this time with a real and proper accuracy.

These raining days of public holiday here ... I will use for complete my Frame that will host my DIY Harakiri TestCode 3 ... it will get a u-blox 7MAX ... and I will have to think how to make a good protection foil in a small 250 class copter.

[Mr-Fiero]

when you get that antenna, it will perform better as signals will be stronger. maybe your existing antenna is defect, hopefully its just that and you see gains in the near future. Even still with the larger antenna, a larger ground plane is a great thing to do as well. Never hurts. (unless its ontop....lol).

something has to be wrong, my MTK GPS's never did as well as the Ublox. The MTK's however have more delays due to averaging? which is not what one wants for a flight controller.

[e_lm_70]

when you get that antenna, it will perform better as signals will be stronger. maybe your existing antenna is defect, hopefully its just that and you see gains in the near future. Even still with the larger antenna, a larger ground plane is a great thing to do as well. Never hurts. (unless its ontop....lol).

something has to be wrong, my MTK GPS's never did as well as the Ublox. The MTK's however have more delays due to averaging? which is not what one wants for a flight controller.

I don't think my antenna is defected

As said before, after adding the isolation metal plate the performance are much better on my NEO6

Anyhow, I have a new antenna on the way ... in this NEO replace antenna is ultra simple, since gps and antenna are on two different modulea put together by hot glue

So it sound that NEO6 is more sensible to RF noise, and possibly it does not have a proper filter for take away higher and lower freq .... MTK is looking more resilient for my test, about accuracy and delay .. hard to say for me for now

For my aim, +/-3m while in GPS PH, both MTK and NEO6 do the job on a simple MultuWii board .. anything more is nice to have but not needed for my goals

ps: I did almost complete my copter that will host harakiri DIY board ... here is still raining ... if I'm lucky I will maiden my TestCode3 this weekend

[strips]

Crashpilot1000,

Will Harakiri sync with the latest Baseflight at some time again. I like the soft serial work.

[e_lm_70]

Crashpilot1000,

Will Harakiri sync with the latest Baseflight at some time again. I like the soft serial work.

Soft serail on baseflight look quite independent from the rest

Merge in Harakiri should not be a big issue.

Still I feel this is needed only for traditional RX, on PPM the 2 serial should be more then enough ... one for GPS and one for OSD/gui .... you can eventually make a switch for have FrSky telemetry if needed in case ...

Still I believe Harakiri and Baseflight should be merged, but considering that Baseflight is the 'play ground' of TimeCop, I guess this will never happen

[Crashpilot1000]

Actually the softserial part was done by Dominic Clifton for baseflight - just to get that straight. Both (Dominic Clifton and TC) have the power and programming skills to properly maintain a github and handle (debug!) code submissions - I simply can't do that. From what I see softserial will require many code changes in the lowlevel stuff (timers/interrupts etc) so that the cpu can handle/monitor voltage level changes on the pins every few us in software piecing together the serial bits. So that is currently not on my agenda.

[larzac]

that's a very wise decision, just make sure harakiri's features get merged into cleanflight and carry on working on Dominic's fork !

[timecop]

that's a very wise decision, just make sure harakiri's features get merged into cleanflight and carry on working on Dominic's fork !

dominic isn't interested in playing with others anymore than I am. So it's pretty unlikely he's going to be "working" with anyone but himself

[e_lm_70]

Actually the softserial part was done by Dominic Clifton for baseflight - just to get that straight. Both (Dominic Clifton and TC) have the power and programming skills to properly maintain a github and handle (debug!) code submissions - I simply can't do that. From what I see softserial will require many code changes in the lowlevel stuff (timers/interrupts etc) so that the cpu can handle/monitor voltage level changes on the pins every few us in software piecing together the serial bits. So that is currently not on my agenda.

Thanks for the info.

At my quick look of the softserial, it was looking more simple .. just 1 timer and 1 interrupt ... that should not impact the others timers/interrupts ... but my STM32 knowledge is still too little.

Anyhow ... softserial is not really needed ... actually I still need to figure it out what I may want more from TestCode3 ... I guess I need to put one Harakiri in the air first

[e_lm_70]

that's a very wise decision, just make sure harakiri's features get merged into cleanflight and carry on working on Dominic's fork !

dominic isn't interested in playing with others anymore than I am. So it's pretty unlikely he's going to be "working" with anyone but himself

It is looking there are quite some skilled people that like to play "solo" ...

As long as the code is open for other ... yes ... everybody can work it further in case of need.

Personally I can't complain ... I see high quality code, made free available to everybody ... so ... I can only compliments with all the players here

[rank]

Hey harakiri lovers! How hard/easy it would be to map an aux channel to one of the unused receiver pins?! Need it for my retractable landing gear.

[dominicclifton]

that's a very wise decision, just make sure harakiri's features get merged into cleanflight and carry on working on Dominic's fork !

dominic isn't interested in playing with others anymore than I am. So it's pretty unlikely he's going to be "working" with anyone but himself

don't speak for me. don't make assumptions, thankyou.

[Crashpilot1000]

Hiho.
@rank that is possible but I guess you will have to change the mixer.c on the other hand you could use (or more precise: abuse) the gimbal functions for that.... like with multiwii... Or buy a receiver that puts out sumsignal and separated pwm channels simultaneously - that is future proof because you are independent of flightcontrols.
@dominicclifton: Well, everybody knows TC over the years..
Current status: Tried out some of my ideas with devastating results - omg was that bad. Reality showed me how good "theoretical better" is... however it wasn't all bad or completely wasted, because one idea actually looked like a nice stability improvement. The idea was orthogonalizing the final pid output (scaled back to mwii) because the yaw/roll/pitch axes are orthogonal to each other (that was the idea). Dunno if that has adverse effect for non x (or +) shaped setups... probably not if the mixer is correctly defined.

[e_lm_70]

Thanks to the help on GPS, I did manage to improve my KK2.0 doing GPS and now UAV



This action mode, is something that I would like to have also on Harakiri ... I will add on TestCode3 ... and then I will check with Rob if it will make sense to have integrated in his code.

My new copter for testing DIY Harakiri is ready ... so time to drop for a while the "lame" KK2 boards ... and play with 32bit toys

[rank]

Hiho.
@rank that is possible but I guess you will have to change the mixer.c on the other hand you could use (or more precise: abuse) the gimbal functions for that.... like with multiwii... Or buy a receiver that puts out sumsignal and separated pwm channels simultaneously - that is future proof because you are independent of flightcontrols.

Thank you, makes sense to go this route

Another question I have, can Minim Osd be used with Harakiri with the stock firmware?! I fried my ftdi chip, so won't be able to upgrade the minim board till the new one arrives.

[Bamfax]

@rank: it could work. The standard firmware on minimosd should be arducam-osd, which speaks mavlink, if i remember correctly. Harakiri does autosense msp/mavlink (see readme) and should sync with your osd, if its talking mavlink. You need to have the same baudrate on both devices of course. Depending on your settings, harakiri might need to be armed before it starts talking mavlink.

[Crashpilot1000]

Hi!
@dominicclifton: Thx for implementing, it really looks much cleaner now
@e_lm_70: Google revealed this viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3916#p40356 hmm, looks like the action mode is a PH (tested in windy condition)?
@rank: Bamfax is right, there was recently a discussion (look at the last pages).

[e_lm_70]

Yes , 'my' ACTION mode is just a PH with an automated increase of altitude, and once on top, a slow 360 rotation ... then a descend back ... ultra easy to code in any platform ...but .. personally I find it quite usefull for take aerial video with LOS, or poor man FPV

If you have seen the video, you may have notice the copter was all time around 30deg off for compensate the strong but steady wind ... I'm sure a normal DJI phantom would have flown away.

Ok ... today was a family day, no fly, no experiments ... anyhow ... now I'm going to focus on Harakiri TestCode3

[Peterkins]

Hi. I've got Harakiri loaded on my stm32 Dev board. Where do i find out which multiwii output corresponds to which stm32 chip output? For instance if i use serial gps which pin is input and output. If I was battery alarms, what pin is it?, etc?

[e_lm_70]

Hi. I've got Harakiri loaded on my stm32 Dev board. Where do i find out which multiwii output corresponds to which stm32 chip output? For instance if i use serial gps which pin is input and output. If I was battery alarms, what pin is it?, etc?

You can find more info here: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2154329

Clearly I still did not cover all the possible pin ... since some of them are no interest for me, like voltage monitor or buzzer ... not even the led ... but the serial pin are defined on my thread.

So far I just did bench test Harakiri on my DIY Naze32 ... I'm moving slowly .... at the end the free time for the hobby is limited ... and I have tons of concurrent hobby projects


... UPS ...

I see you know already my RCG thread ...

Not sure if Rob or other here have any experience on DIY Naze32 boards ... I think most of the Harakiri user do use the real Naze32 board ...

[e_lm_70]

Check on my RCG thread ... I did update page #1 .. with the info you are looking for ...

[Crashpilot1000]

@Peterkins: Hi, Dude!
The Connections are like depicted in the original BF manual - so no change of that. I haven't been jumping on the softserial train for some reasons. Concerning the serail stuff there are some general topics to concern:
The TX (transmission line) has to be connected to the other ones RX (receive line). So it's like on your telephone, you wouldn't speak into the ear part of your phone. The next thing to consider is the speed of talking (Baud) of the two parties involved (automatic mode in haraikiri should take care of that).
The next *not so biological explained* stuff is the voltage level. The STM serial pins (like depicted in TC manual) are not 5V tolerant, they use 3,3V and tilt out below 4V so 5V will burn your stm (buy another hardware..resolder...cry... etc). So what's that stuff. The ublox6 modules I tested have 5V voltage input but put out serial in 3,3V levels. So everything is fine. The only thing you can mix up are the RX and TX lines, it will burn nothing but it won't work. Normally (some arducopter hardware doesn't obey to this) the RX / TX labeling is EGOCENTRIC of the device. That means if Naze says the pin is RX it is RX concerning STM, if your GPS says some Pin is RX it is referred to the GPS CPU (yes, it has a powerful one), so it is the GPS CPU RX line - to connect GPS and STM you will have to cross the lines - right? (STM RX - GPS TX and vice versa). However the depreciated MTK gps produce 5V on serial lines if fed with 5V input voltage, so you will have to feed them with 3,3V to make them put out serial in 3,3V.
Bottom line: You can mix up RX/TX as you wish without burning Naze as long as you make sure the levels are 3,3V ( if rx/tx mixed up it simply won't work, but no hardware harmed). Ublox work at 3,3V so the onboard voltage regualtor will take care of that (when fed with 5V), MTK work at 3,3V-5V and will output serial at the operating voltage (so operate them at 3,3V) - I hope I get that right, my GPS (and my knowledg are 2 years old) - so check with your GPS datasheet that you don't burn precious hardware!!
I hope to get you completely confused now.
It's friday I am not sober anymore... just violated my rule, don't post when already having a few beers.
Cheers Rob

P.s: And def. check out e_lm_70 rcg site, he is an open source and open hardware animal in the best sense (*hicks*)!

[Peterkins]

Check on my RCG thread ... I did update page #1 .. with the info you are looking for ...

Thanks mate. Hope to maiden the board over the weekend

@Crashpilot1000: I already follow elm70 and found him very helpful. I was hoping that someone could point me to how multiwii ports are mapped to stm32 ports rather than keeping asking him dumb questions. I've found the baseflight wiki but not "the original" documents to which you refer. I figured out the swapping tx and rx issue when I programmed the stm32.

I was planning on using an aged royaltek rgm2000 mouse gps to play witfh. It's usb so 5v though. Could I not just run it off 5v and clamp the data line to 3 and a bit volts?

How's your head?

[Mr-Fiero]

Somebody needs to slap me.

I built a hex, a nice one, with awesome vibration dampening as posted in a previous post. everything was tight, 1000Kv RC timer 2830's i think, RC timer ESC's , and lots of custom cut CNC parts. 11" x 5 props. A really nice and tight unit.

but

I thought, hey lets flash the new firmware for arducopter on APM2.5 and see where its at these days. Well, everything at first was perfect in flight. not much setup and flew nice. Was low altitude and just flew around and tried to see how it responded. No GPS functions at all while testing flight.

Then

I wanted to see how it would handle throttle and if it had good payload, so started jumping throttle up and down. All of a sudden, flip, and it was laying on the ground wrong side up. No damage but really, what a piece of crap FC. This is weird because this hex had substantial weight under it (gimbal and batts) and it would of taken a deliberate amount of power to flip upside down. Not just a motor cut-out. Also, it was flyable right after again which says everything is functional. What I did notice, is arducopter now detects its upside down and shuts the motors down with a warning beeper that sounded like it was coming from the ESC at 1 PPS. But atleast the motors didnt stay running cause to disarm arducopter its delayed. Still a piece of .... though.

Yea I could try to figure out from the logs, but I just dont care anymore. Probably a brownout, vibration, defective whatever, but who cares..... My 5 other Harakiri's never suffer from this. So, yes, I have another flight controller for Harakiri and its going on tomorrow.

No, seriously, slap me.

On another note, I finally ordered the Ublox 7m to test with the 35mm active GPS antenna's. Should be even tighter for position updates and it will also run at a true 10Hz. I will post my results soon.

[e_lm_70]

@Mr.Fiero
Could it be just a wrong PID on your APM ?

Keep flyable a copter should be something trivial on any decent multi-copter ... it would be very embarrassing for 3Drobotics if they did fail on this basic , simple but vital functionality

About 7M ... I have it on my bench, I was thinking to configure it up exactly as the NEO6M ... but since you have way more experience then me on configuring GPS module ... I will be more then happy to copy your set up.

Your suggestions over NEO6M did miracles ... I'm still waiting for the big antenna from asia, but as it is now is more then enough for my usage.

[e_lm_70]

Check on my RCG thread ... I did update page #1 .. with the info you are looking for ...

Thanks mate. Hope to maiden the board over the weekend

@Crashpilot1000: I already follow elm70 and found him very helpful. I was hoping that someone could point me to how multiwii ports are mapped to stm32 ports rather than keeping asking him dumb questions. I've found the baseflight wiki but not "the original" documents to which you refer. I figured out the swapping tx and rx issue when I programmed the stm32.

I was planning on using an aged royaltek rgm2000 mouse gps to play witfh. It's usb so 5v though. Could I not just run it off 5v and clamp the data line to 3 and a bit volts?

How's your head?

I guess you have a volt meter

So power up your 5v GPS, and check what you read both on RX and TX pin ... if you read around 5v don't use as it is, if you read around 3.3v , like my U-blox do when power at 5v, then you are fine

Assuming you have a bad luck and your read 5v, then put both in tx and rx line a 2k2 resistor between the gps and the stm32 module ... these two resistors should protect the stm32 and still allow full functionality ... anyhow possibly you need only to connect the tx from gps to the rx on stm32 ... I don't believe Harakiri or Baseflight can do any special configuration at start up for a generic NMEA gps

[Mr-Fiero]

> e_lm_70
Trust me, its not as simple as a PID being the issue. My PID's are very close as I used to have a hex before, and this one is of same design. Another thing to note also, is that it flies perfectly and is responsive as well. PID's are not the issue. Mode switch is not either because I was not switching, I was keeping it in stabilize only at this point.

It was the infamous out of control "sky drop" as I like to call it. All my APM's suffer this. Its not "if", it is "when" something will happen with arducopter. There is usually no hints as a unit will fly so well for an extended period of time, but all my APM 2.5's x6 units have had this happen. Not ordered at same time for the boards, and not same builds.

Stupid me, I just thought "maybe they fixed it by now".

I'm typing while I remove the APM problem from my hex.

maybe I can use it for a automatic lawnmower. Seems to be better suited for the ground. I have to think about that, cause maybe arming it with blades might not be a good idea...LOL.

GPS
the files I use for config of GPS was originally setup for my Ublox7's I do have, but I needed the 7m because I am changing the antenna. I did not know this and when i discovered it i just grabbed my neo6's for the antenna's, but now i have more antenna's as they do perform, Ublox7m almost here, and will finally see how the ublox7m works.

so, yes, use that config for your ublox7, but one change can be made on the position update rate if you want to increase from 5hz to 10hz. That would be the only thing to modify if you wish, but its not critical.

[strips]

@Crashpilot1000

I saw your comments about soft serial. The reason I want it is because I have never been able to get the dedicated telemetry output to work with my Taranis. I have tried a everything in this thread and timecops Naze32/Baseflight threads. Telemetry worked on first try when I went back to Baseflight and enabled soft serial. I'm not very happy about the PH and "loiter" in Baseflight.

Maybe I have to get another Naze32 board just to test it

[strips]

On another note, I finally ordered the Ublox 7m to test with the 35mm active GPS antenna's. Should be even tighter for position updates and it will also run at a true 10Hz. I will post my results soon.

Where do you buy it? Is it complete or only gps-chip?

[Mr-Fiero]

>strips

I was going to buy it from thanksbuyer.com, but instead got the GPS from Ebay
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Flight-Controlle ... 365&_uhb=1

And this antenna from Ebay as well
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/32db-High-Gain-R ... 324&_uhb=1

Since the antenna plugs into the board, the replacement 35mm antenna plugs right in. I usually just place both the antenna and the smaller GPS board under it, inside of heatshrink thats big enough for both.

[e_lm_70]

So 26$ sound the current price for a NEO7M

I'm curious to know what's the difference between NEO and MAX .. I did got time ago my MAX7 for 17$ shipped ... what it is nice is that the GPS module has a working and exposed i2c connection ... the seller now (a guy from taiwan) sell some RYN25AI that are reported to do 10hz .. and again the module is looking having both rs232 and i2c ... 17$ shipped

I see the NEO6M now get sold for less then 14$ on ebay

Edit: the ebay guy changed something in the description and this did confuse me .. RYN25AI is a u-blox MAX7 ... same as the one that I got ...

[Mr-Fiero]

> e_lm_70

There are a few vendors that claimed 10Hz was possible, but unless its a MAX7 or better its not real position updates @ 10Hz. My neo6 will send updates at 10Hz, but if you watch them it seems to average at that rate over two position updates, Which is only 5Hz real position update rate. Makes sense as they are spec'd for that.

Yea, I cant believe the prices either for these units either, Its great. I cannot wait till the Ublox 8 is produced onto the daughter boards. When it is manufactured the thing I am most interested in is the RF SAW filter built into the GPS engine.

depending on the build of the RYN25AI , I noticed some of the boards are designed to take either the MAX7 Ublox engine, or the NEO6 engine. They had both sets of solder pads on it. The problem I have with the RYN25AI is that it has the Ublox MAX 7C . Notice the "C" This wont take an external antenna and supply the power. The 7M will do this, therefore I had to go with the GPS listed in the post above.

[e_lm_70]

That's correct, my RYN GPS has MAX7 and the GPS antenna can't be changed.

Still I'm wandering what is the difference from NEO to MAX ... 5, 6, 7 and 8 are the u-blox generations ... each generation has a new set of features and possibly a more advanced cpu inside ... but I can't get the difference between NEO, MAX and LEA, LEA is the most advanced one ... MAX is the most compact one ... but does it also mean it is more simple then a NEO ? MAX7 is sold bit more then the price of NEO6 (1$ difference) while NEO7 is 10$ more expensive that means 100% more in the chip alone ... still 26$ for it does not sound that much.

Ok I'm sorry to dragging a bit off topic ... but I'm exploring if I can better understand these GPS that are looking the key factor for get a proper gps usage out of the control board

[Peterkins]

@mr-fiero: been reading your experience with interest. One thing you might not have tried is looking at the lat /long output of your gps. Does it jitter? I'm guessing it does. They all do.

I might be barking up the wrong tree but you might consider differential gps. Typically it's used for surveying and relies on the lat long of a known location and the gps lat/long reading at that location. The gps lat/long of your bird will experience the same jitter as a gps on the land in your hand. The absolute difference between the two will be constant so use this to provide PH. It's the basis for "follow me".

Now, if you want your bird to move a bit to the left, you simply shift yourself a bit to the left and the bird will follow. No averaging of location is necessary so prompt and accurate PH is assured.

It sounds like you've got enough gps's to test the theory in your back garden

Peter

[brm]

@mr-fiero: been reading your experience with interest. One thing you might not have tried is looking at the lat /long output of your gps. Does it jitter? I'm guessing it does. They all do.

I might be barking up the wrong tree but you might consider differential gps. Typically it's used for surveying and relies on the lat long of a known location and the gps lat/long reading at that location. The gps lat/long of your bird will experience the same jitter as a gps on the land in your hand. The absolute difference between the two will be constant so use this to provide PH. It's the basis for "follow me".

Now, if you want your bird to move a bit to the left, you simply shift yourself a bit to the left and the bird will follow. No averaging of location is necessary so prompt and accurate PH is assured.

It sounds like you've got enough gps's to test the theory in your back garden

Peter

yes barking - but what?
the bird is up in the sky. you may encounter spots where the signal strength gets weak.
you get gps glitches when the constellation the satelites do change.

in the end you wanna look at raw gps meassges - keep an eye on the rtk lib.

[Mr-Fiero]

> e_lm_70

You asked about the differences. This is just my simple way to look at the GPS's. each number is a generation jump which does have processing increases, rf sensitivity increased, and better performances overall. And yes, usually more features.

In each generation there is a low, mid, high tier GPS engine for Ublox. Also each module is a different footprint.

LEA - Flash programmable, better precision.
NEO
MAX - Cheapest/Cost effective

But there are feature differences between generations. But the jump from 6 to 7 is mostly about GLONASS, which you probably should disable GLONASS on all 7 series GPS's. But it did increase the receiver performances. The antenna would have to be upgraded to a wider response, but since I am changing it any ways it wont matter. When they have GLONASS, the RF section will have to filter wider, so it will be more sensitive to noise as well. Thats why I am waiting for a Ublox 8 to come out.

Ublox 8 has RF filtering, and the usual performance gains . This is the one I really want to test but am waiting as i did find a good board, but it was too expensive so i'll wait a bit.

so here is an example of how i think, I would take a MAX7 over NEO6, or LEA7 over NEO7, or a NEO7 over a MAX7. but price considered the MAX series is usually cheapest. LEA series you probably wont notice any performance gains over the NEO series. If you want a slightly better GPS, always go for highest number, and then NEO series if price is reasonable. LEA is only nice if you are going to push firmware updates into the GPS, but its really expensive usually. Some NEO's will update firmwres, but you usually dont see these modules mainstream.

Ublox has good documentation but you have to compare generations yourself by reading each one. This is just my simple breakdown how I think about it.

I am feeling guilty, this thread has been taken over about the GPS's, but if I didnt feel so strong about having a good working GPS before using any GPS functions in Harakiri, I wouldnt of posted any GPS info. Its the groundwork to having GPS functions work well in Harakiri. I just dont have anything wierd with Harakiri to post. Its just working for me very well, each and every time. I am flying within its flight styles and it just works. the only thing I want to solve, is my slight drift (up to 1M) when PH is activated, but I think I now how to fix it. Once it locks though, my accuracies are VERY tight, for the duration of a whole battery. It does not matter if its windy or not, I see the same performance.

Anyways, my multicopters have been performing the same, all this time with allot of hours on each unit. I am really only wearing bearings out as being the only problem. Oh, one tree got in the way.......my fault. minimal damage, and the damage that was done after flight, pulling it down with a pole. It Was a 10 minute fix.

[Peterkins]

yes barking - but what?
the bird is up in the sky. you may encounter spots where the signal strength gets weak.
you get gps glitches when the constellation the satelites do change.

in the end you wanna look at raw gps meassges - keep an eye on the rtk lib.


--- hmmm, guess that's put me in my place.

[Mr-Fiero]

yes barking - but what?
the bird is up in the sky. you may encounter spots where the signal strength gets weak.
you get gps glitches when the constellation the satelites do change.

in the end you wanna look at raw gps meassges - keep an eye on the rtk lib.


--- hmmm, guess that's put me in my place.

I have thought about Differential GPS for sure. I used to play with differential GPS's with commercial units, and using helicopters for dropping drills in the oilfield. It was awesome how well it worked. The Ublox will also do it on the Venus engines so I might try it and feed it via telemetry link on the OpenLRS radios. I think certain models of the Ublox 7 series have it as well. The configs have options in it already. My current GPS's are doing very well for what they are, and with the Harakiri firmware I have been having awesome success. Even tonight i just flew the drone around to find the kids and it performed so well. I am just now feeling comfortable with the firmware and its been a real performer for what I like to do. I dont need more accuracy at this point, but maybe if I have it I can consider other uses of the multicopters.

That being said, I saw a video of a multi-copter using a kinnect from xbox, and it was navigating. Pretty cool.

Starting next winter, I am going to put in my own ground station to cover my home area for maybe 20km for the ground station GPS. I want to do this because I am going to build a mower and use differential GPS. Might as well have it available for all the hobbies.

[Mr-Fiero]

I had something happen with my little quad I built. Its about 250 in size, with 2200kv motors and its overprop'd a bit with 7x5's. (props almost touch with 2mm clearance) It flies very well, even with two 2200mah batteries under it. It hovers at approx 35% throttle. Its got new ESC's, they are witespyquad esc's with simonK @ 30amps. Motors or ESC's are only slightly warm after 15 minutes flight.

Everything is good, really good, it almost stands still by itself! But I have had something happen twice, while testing, hovering, it would just flip and being such low altitude it would land upside down.

I have gone over everything, and there is only one thing that I found on the unit in question. My OpenLRS radio was pushing up against the frame, and I think it pushed the ground pin to the center being positive. Since they share the same power bus as the flight controller, there is the possibility it dropped the voltage for everthing, causing the flip.

One thing this did make me wish for is that the flight controller had a way to detect it was up side down and shut down the motors. They kept trying to run when it was upside down. Is this something that could be considered for Harakiri?

just a thought....

[e_lm_70]

It is not a good idea to stop the motor when the copter is upside down ... unless the copter fly in angle mode and this is a condition that should never happen
Still assuming a big turbulence cause the copter to be upside down in the air, the controller should just try to use differential thrust for recover the proper position. Else if the controller just stop the motor it gave up on the possibility to recover from a certain crash.

Detect that the copter is on the ground and upside down after a crash I guess is not something easy to detect.

In my view, ideally the TX should have a switch for cut out the power at any time .. sort of disarm switch.

[jingej]

...........

Detect that the copter is on the ground and upside down after a crash I guess is not something easy to detect.
....

Maybe detect the impact as a short high g-value... (just an idea)

[e_lm_70]

...........

Detect that the copter is on the ground and upside down after a crash I guess is not something easy to detect.
....

Maybe detect the impact as a short high g-value... (just an idea)

It is a good idea ... actually some commercial products look like to have this (Walkera Y100 for example) ... still I'm not sure how easy is to implement this without bring in possible "bugs" ... these bugs could be fatal for the copter .. think about you it a branch while doing some funny fly near a tree ... and the copter think it did hit the ground

I think a kill switch on the TX for disarm on the spot the copter is the most easy solution ... still it will not work in case of missing radio link.

Anyhow, any feature to be added or no in Harakiri, the last word is in the hand of Rob

[Mr-Fiero]

> e_lm_70

Your right about not cutting motors will give a chance of recovery. I have had this happen myself and was very happy the unit was so quick to recover each time when I had a defective connector to the motor. My unit would flip each time, and sometimes the cut out would be up to 2 seconds max. But I was able to continue flying this machine by giving it some altitude.

I was thinking maybe a crash detection with better logic. Say, if inverted, and barometer is not changing with a threshold/crash setting, and possibly the acc not changing with large values also a threshold, then unit is crashed. Even if the logic was long, say a 5 second delay, it still would be better.

The reason why, is because I envision this. Flying FPY and unit crashes a fair distance away. Say you loose radio contact because it broke an antenna, or otherwise. You cannot hear it running upside down due to distance, and your disarm would not work even if you tried. What if you did not find it or could get to it for a period of time. I have seen motors burn when they are loaded too much, so what if it started a fire because of this? Best case is always equipment damage, because it can always be repaired. But as another safety feature if it was done right not to interfere with inverted flight or stalls, I think crash detection would be an asset.

[DIE_KUH]

> e_lm_70
I was thinking maybe a crash detection with better logic. Say, if inverted, and barometer is not changing with a threshold/crash setting, and possibly the acc not changing with large values also a threshold, then unit is crashed. Even if the logic was long, say a 5 second delay, it still would be better.

I think you don't even need a baro. When the acc constantly measures ~1g and the normal vector points roughly upwards in the same direction (or downwards, depending on the pov) for a set amount of time, you know the copter is belly-up on the ground. Or hanging in a tree. You could also check if and how long it didn't react correctly to pitch/roll inputs.

[e_lm_70]

Yes in theory all look nice

Code wise and real case wise it can be quite different

If the motor are still trying to move, I would not bet that these cause some vibrations movement, so .. hard to check a still 1g vector in this case

Most easy solution is the fail safe logic ... assuming the radio is lost due to the crash ... then fail safe should kick in

Fail safe should try a rth, this will fail ... and the rth failure detection should bring on autolandong and disarming.

I think some bits of it are already implemented by Rob ... anyhow ... we are really trying to implement some advanced safety functions that will be needed only by quite rare situations

[Bamfax]

I am thinking about doing Telemetry using the Mavlink out from Harakiri, do a convert to FrSky using the jD-IOBoard Solution, to send it over to the FRSky RX and then get down on my taranis.

As I currently only have the jD-IO on the Naze telemetry port. Since the jD-IOBoard is Mavlink passive, it does not generate Mavlink requests (as far as I know) and therefore does not trigger Mavlink exchange. How does Harakiri behave here, is it possible to have Harakiri autosend Mavlink packets? The statement below seems to be exactly the answer to that. Do I understand that correctly? - Just wanting to doublecheck. Do I have to configure that, or is that the default behaviour of Harakiri?

The stock minimosd software has the ability to just listen to the datastream and pick the needed values - that is supported in Harakiri, meaning it will send (unrequested) a datastream with osd relevant data. That means for you, you don't need to wire up the naza rx pad, since no datarequest is needed.

[Varis]

Hi, new user, coming from the KK2 world previously. I recently decided to jump the Baseflight bandwagon as the software + FC has received very favourable comments, and is all the craze around here right now. I'm building two quads ATM, one for proximity (will run Baseflight) and a Discovery Pro more for aerial video (was planning Harakiri + GPS on this one). Trying to get an overview of the Harakiri project and assess the risk in using it.

Is GS something like a stable/official release? While Testcode being a beta build (with compiled binaries I presume)?
How much has the codebase changed over original Baseflight and how much has it been tested and used?

[strips]

I wonder if 18Hz GPS-updates would do anything:
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/UBLOX-NEO-M8N-GPS-GLONASS-Galileo-BeiDou-QZSS-and-SBAS-receiver-Compass-/261494864047?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3ce24ef8af&_uhb=1
or
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/UBLOX-MAX-M8Q-GPS-QZSS-GLONASS-BeiDou-18Hz-receiver-Board-active-antenna-/261473726135?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3ce10c6eb7

[e_lm_70]

Nice ... so soon NEO 8 and MAX 8 will be available at cheap price, so far these modules are made in Germany.

I like this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ublox-MAX-M8Q-G ... 1489476543

Still way to expensive for my taste.

Anyhow 18Hz will not change a bit ... in the very short time frame the stability is due to the 6050 sensed acceleration ... so even a 4Hz is more then enough

More then the frequency, what it is important is the absolute accuracy

[strips]

I do not know how the PH code works. But tuning in MW / Baseflight enables you to tune GPS versus acc effect.

So depending on how often the code reads / processes the GPS updates you could turn down dependence on accelerometer and rely more on GPS. Tempted to try the Ublox 8 with compass. To test on Harakiri, Baseflight and APM.