Can Baseflight logic get tripped up on Acro board ?

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tungsten2k
Posts: 62
Joined: Sat Jun 21, 2014 10:49 pm

Can Baseflight logic get tripped up on Acro board ?

Post by tungsten2k »

I had a bad crash yesterday while running the latest Baseflight on a Flip32 in Horizon mode. It was a fresh pack and I started with a full-throttle ascent to about 200' feet with an aggressive flip at the top. I let it spin/tumble with zero throttle and no cyclic input, then gave full throttle approx 100' from the ground. I've done this countless times without issue: the Blackout Mini-H normally will stablize within 20 or 30 feet in a right-side-up fashion. This time, it headed perfectly upside-down at full-throttle directly towards the ground.

My confort level with the normal behavior was obviously a false sense of security. I should have attempted to give agressive cyclic to try and right it, but it all happened so fast and I was mentally unpreparred (I won't make the same mistake again) so my only recourse it seemed was to hit throttle-hold at about 30' feet up. It slowed a little bit toward terminal velocity and hit the dirt upside down in about 3" of gravel (which is the only thing that saved it from being a complete write-off) smashing the battery, breaking the top plate, all the M3 connecting bolts, and bending/breaking the SMA connector off the pads of my ImmersionRC 600MW transmitter (sad face). I was flying LOS at the time, not FPV.

My question: when running on an Acro board like this, and given the nature of the maneuver I described, is this an expected outcome ? Is it at all possible for the flight controller logic to get tripped up to where it can think horizon is 180-degress from where it actually is if it comes out of a fast spin at full throttle with no cyclic input ? I thought that with Horizon mode, with no stick input, it would act as in "Angle" mode and self-right to level flight (or at least attempt to).

Is this expected under certain conditions, or should this never happen under any circumstances (and something went drastically wrong) ?

Thanks,

-=dave

crazyal
Posts: 84
Joined: Tue Sep 04, 2012 11:25 pm

Re: Can Baseflight logic get tripped up on Acro board ?

Post by crazyal »

usually this shouldn't happen, except if you quad rotates faster than 2000dps, that's about 5.5 flips per second.
At that rate the gyroscope can't keep up anymore and the attitude estimation of the FC will be flawed.
Are you sure, that you definetly were in horizon mode and not in acro ?

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tungsten2k
Posts: 62
Joined: Sat Jun 21, 2014 10:49 pm

Re: Can Baseflight logic get tripped up on Acro board ?

Post by tungsten2k »

Thank you for your reply crazyal. I connected the flight controller via UART and found that none of the flight modes were programmed. I dug deeper and that's when I realized that the system was in a different "Profile" than what I had setup.

I am very used to controlling flight modes via a 3-position switch on the transmitter, and had those done, but Baseflight apparently has the ability to store 3 completely separate board programming profiles, and I had somehow switched to "Profile 3" which had not been programmed at all. I will work to get it ingrained to visually verify the FC "Profile" via soft stick switches and observing the LED flashes every flight from now on.

I'm glad to find this issue was user error as I was very concerned over the capabilities of the flight controller.

Sorry for the newbie question.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction.

-=dave

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