Yet another flyaway

[kilby]

Well as I whinged my Acro Naze32 equipped Teslaquad is gone

It flew really nicely I had just got the accelometers trimmed and I was in horizon mode and I was keeping things nice and close to get to know how it flew.

About 50 feet away from me it decided to start climbing and speed, as it was I  horizon mode I let go of the left stick and reduced throttle to under 50% and it continued to climb and gather speed.

I cut throttle to zero and it continued to climb and head away from me anyway. Stick input made it wobble a bit but nothing useful.

Switching to Acro did no good and eventually lost visual contact with it.

A search yielded nothing apart from impaling myself on barbed wire, escaping from a bull, sinking in mud and having my first asthma attack in about 7 years.

I didn';t bother flying the 450 afterwards.

I';m now unsure if I can be arsed building something else, if I had simply crashed the quad it wouldn';t have mattered too much I don';t mind rebuilding too much.

Am now hugely grumpy

[Ground Engineer]

  Again cant believe it. Sorry to hear that Kilby, I know exactly how you feel.  My naze32 equipped Blackout mini did exactly the same last week.

Now Im wondering if there is an inherent problem with these naze 32 flight controllers.

[teslahed]

Very sorry to hear that Kilby.

When you';ve had time to recover a bit - any details on the radio gear you were using would be greatly appreciated.

I';m hoping it';s not the Naze32 that';s the cause of the fault - I';ve been flying them for over a year now and never had anything even close to a flyaway event.

[kilby]

Spektrum DX7S and an orange 7 channel DSM2 RX (full range)

I had removed the satellite that I had been testing.

It had behaved misbehaved last week (in the same location) where the directional controls didn';t match the behaviour but I put that down to losing orientation as I didn';t have any LEDs fitted at the time (I now know better)

The quad was as I said only 40 or 50 feet away and was in horizon mode, the wind couldn';t be blamed as it was very light (about 6mph) and an altitude of about 10 feet.

There is a very small electrical substation close to where I was but the club had previously checked it out with some hired kit for any EM interference and found nothing.

I was going to Morden one of the new orange DSMX receivers at the weekend.

It was flying nicely and I was hoping to spend Sunday learning how to flip a quad at last.

Anyway stop reading now as a self indulgent winger is about to take place, normal service will resume tomorrow (or later)


Today also included the following, osing my work phone,  no end of hassle with idiot customers after a network upgrade and a damaged read tyre, I';m not too chipper tonight

Mutters far key about the builder that fell through the kitchen roof 3 weeks ago and cost me 1500 quid after he refused to pay for the damage

[kilby]

Oh yeah I did reset the Naze32 and redid everything from scratch after last week';s control strangeness.

[Ground Engineer]

Found this on the fpvlab forum http://fpvlab.com/forums/showthread.php?13873-Naze32-Acro-Multiboot-controller-CC3D-compatible-FC-for-25/page159


"I have a quick question about failsafe and using it with the naze32. First off my failsafe needs to be all motors stop. I am using openlrsng between a hawkeye 1w tx and a 6ch DTF UHF rx. My failsafe recently (motors off) reset somehow and I had a flyaway (didn';t have failsafe set up in naze32). What I want to do is use the failsafe feature in the naze32 so that even if my failsafe fails between my tx rx this will still halt the motors. I think to have this work I have to have stop PPM as my failsafe in openlrsng hopefully you guys can explain exactly how this will work."


Looks like others have had flyaways with the Naze 32.

[ashutchy]

Really sorry to hear that Kilby. I honestly can';t imagine how you must be feeling right now.....pretty sick I imagine. 

I do understand your point about you';d feel better if you';d simply crashed it. That way you would have cause, reason and even a mistake to learn from. As it is, try take comfort in the fact that you are not alone with this. Other users are obviously having very similar incidents as you so at least the plus here is it wasn';t your fault.

If you can take something good from any situation, no matter how small, at least it is not all bad.

Chin up mate.

[kilby]

I';m a little less irritated than I was last night.

I guess I will have to phone the police and report it missing in case it landed in somebodies garden or similar.

My 450 apm machine has been flown in the same area many times without issue (on a smaller orange rx and in Acro mode)

Partially annoyed as the 4 minutes I got flying the teslaquad was really enjoyable.

Well this month I won';t have the money to build anything unless I can turn £250 quids worth of Amazon vouchers into a proper quad (ie something not available on amazon)

[kilby]

Btw thanks for the condolences, and I have to admit to reading a couple of similar tales

[Hands0n]

Is there a theme with Orange RX on the go here - rather than Naze32 specifically?

Kilby - did you set up the programmable failsafe in the RX?  Or were you relying on the RX to fail to no PWM (I don';t think it does that by default).

[teslahed]

Yeah the Naze32 failsafe isn';t enabled by default. If you have a receiver which also has a failsafe which can be set and hasn';t been (or hasn';t been set properly) then when you lose signal you wont get a nice straight forward result. You';ll get your aircraft spinning out of control or going to 100% or 0% (or whatever settings happened to be set when you accidentally pressed the ';setup failsafe settings'; button on the back of your radio transmitter module).

I discovered this the hard way with my openLRSng radio modules. I thought i had a failsafe set right via the naze32 but i also had a failsafe set wrong via the openLRSng modules. As soon as i lost signal the openLRSng failsafe made the aircraft go into a flipspin of death and land in some grass without much damage. If i happened to have different settings on my transmitter i could easily have cut all power or else gone to 100% with auto-level on for who knows what result.

My conclusion - set your failsafes. Then test them to make sure they work. Testing should be done indoors with the props off just to see what the motors etc do. You should be able to feel them go to about 35% power and auto-level will also come on (try tipping the quad off level and see if the correct motors spin up to compensate).

For testing outdoors try doing a low hover under a high tree canopy. Turn off your transmitter and your quad will either land gently or else get caught up by the tree when it tries to fly away.

Of course your issue may be something else entirely kilby. I am just guessing here 

[n506]

Have to agree with Teslahed... sounds like a classic failsafe failure.

[teslahed]

Here';s my crash caused by me setting the failsafe on my transmitter wrong when i thought i had set failsafe via the Naze32 right;

http://youtu.be/pMY0ckSeKOg

With different failsafe settings loaded i could have had a classic flyaway rather than a tumbleintotheground. I think i prefer the tumbleintotheground result - at least i found it in the end.

[Hands0n]

This is the classic problem with "layered" FailSafes, they either work collaboratively to bring about a success or create a random result that takes the aircraft to some random place.  But how do you get it exactly right?

I find the information on the Naze32';s built-in failsafe ambiguous - right now I could not recite to anyone exactly what it does and what triggers it.

Conversely, the I completely understand what the Orange RX "programmable" FailSafe does - the trick being to set the sticks and switches to what you want them to be when binding. Not so easy with the self-return sticks, where you need a third hand to hold things in place while you perform the bind.

As Teslahed says - there is absolutely no substitute for testing whatever it is that you';ve set up. First on the bench with the props off, and then cautiously outside and somewhat for real.  And that latter is the really scary bit ::)

[barneyg]

I find the information on the Naze32';s built-in failsafe ambiguous - right now I could not recite to anyone exactly what it does and what triggers it.

it is the same as multiwii as far as I can tell and pretty rudimentary ...
if any of the first 4 channels drop below the detect threshold (defaults to 985) for the delay period (default 1 second)  then it does the following :

• sets those channels to the configured midpoint (default 1500)
  
• sets the throttle to the configured failsafe throttle value (default 1200) for a set time (default 20 seconds)
• then it disarms.

#1 is interesting since if you have a powerful quad this could result in about a second of quite major altitude gain.   And unless you change the value in #2 you may still end up with a quad that goes straight up for 20 seconds.

[Hands0n]

Thanks for that detail. I didn';t think to search MultiWii ::)

I agree, #1 may not be desirable - and implies that the person setting up has to become quite familiar with the PWM values applicable to that specific model. How many builders do that?

I also worry a bit about #2 - for the same reasons, 1200 PWM may equate to fly on not descend.  20 seconds may or may not be sufficient to land.  So yes, a constant climb followed by a stone-like plummet seems to be a reasonable expectation.

The Naze32 builder needs to study the performance of the aircraft using Baseflight GUI, watching what specific PWM causes hover, and what causes gradual descent (ie. just below hover).

[kilby]

I hadn';t set up failsafe as this was the machines first flight beyond showing that it lifts off the ground and turns mostly in the right direction when instructed and was going to be very close to the machine (kicking myself now though)

I had just trimmed the accelerometers for horizon/angle mode and had just done a circuit around myself, put it in a hover in readiness to bring it back to a cleared patch of ground to land, when it buggered off.

I was planning to rebind it with a low throttle setting when I got home, annoying that is in my notebook right after the entry, "read battery voltage after landing" (I had intended to put the tesla in my backpack as soon as I landed it and then continue my night on the 450 apm machine)

Unfortunately I didn';t get that far, as it was (considerably) less than 50 feet away and several feet above grass, as I was about to bring it back to land it on the all weather pitch it headed for the fjords.

I have used the failsafe feature on orange receivers before without issue on my 450, but from experience have found that it';s best to make single changes when getting something running otherwise you have difficulty getting back to the last working state.

I would say yes it was probably a failsafe issue, but why a signal failure occurred at such a short distance is a bit of a concern. I wouldn';t have considered flying it any distance from me simply because it wasn';t bound to suitable default values.

Sorry I had to edit this from a proper keyboard as my reply via the phone was a complete mess and somewhat unclear.

[andythilo]

You need to set the throttle failsafe manually for a gentle descent. I hovered spanky in the garden and then lowered the throttle till it';s rate of descent was ok, once it was on the floor I took note of the throttle percentage. Then back at the PC, I used that position and it';s corresponding PWM figure to set the failsafe value.

[Hands0n]

@kilby - I can only think that if your Orange RX was DSM2 rather than DSMX that one or both radio channels were subject to interference from another source and it had nowhere to hop to.  DSMX is more robust in that it will hunt a greater number of channels to find one it can operate across.  But even that is not foolproof to wideband interference in the 2.4GHz area.

With these smart FCs it seems to me that setting some kind of FailSafe - even one that drops it to the ground like a rock - is preferable to a fly away.

[barneyg]

Thanks for that detail. I didn';t think to search MultiWii ::)

I didn';t search either one ... I just read the source code  ::)

[Ground Engineer]

I had just trimmed the accelerometers for horizon/angle mode

Just out of interest, did you have horizon and angle mode on the same switch.  That is the way I configured it when mine flew off.

[barneyg]

I agree, #1 may not be desirable - and implies that the person setting up has to become quite familiar with the PWM values applicable to that specific model. How many builders do that?

I also worry a bit about #2 - for the same reasons, 1200 PWM may equate to fly on not descend.  20 seconds may or may not be sufficient to land.  So yes, a constant climb followed by a stone-like plummet seems to be a reasonable expectation.

The Naze32 builder needs to study the performance of the aircraft using Baseflight GUI, watching what specific PWM causes hover, and what causes gradual descent (ie. just below hover).

This is just one of the joys of MultiWii and its derivatives.  Its failsafe is truly awful it makes me want to try and modify it to activate RTH or POS Hold if GPS is enabled.  That said I just leave the failsafe off the FC and use the one on my FrSky kit and set that to RTH.

[Hands0n]

Just out of interest, did you have horizon and angle mode on the same switch.  That is the way I configured it when mine flew off.

Didn';t you also have both GPS modes enabled also?

The big problem with Baseflight and MultiWii seems to be that multiple flight modes can be enabled for a single/common switch position - there being no apparent/evident deadlock resolution between them. So the behaviour of the FC can then become totally unpredictable.  Given its abundant 32-bit power Baseflight should be made robust against such misconfiguration that is far too easy to do. Either the FC code or the GUI should protect against "illegal" mode assignments to Aux switch positions.

[tony]

unless I can turn £250 quids worth of Amazon vouchers into a proper quad (ie something not available on amazon)

amazon sell sunnysky motors
http://www.amazon.co.uk/SunnySky-X2212-Outrunner-Brushless-Aircraft/dp/B00ID5152G/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1400775626&sr=8-5&keywords=sunnysky+motors

and simonk esc
http://www.amazon.co.uk/30A-SimonK-Multirotor-Speed-Controller/dp/B00JDRF63M/ref=sr_1_sc_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1400775712&sr=8-3-spell&keywords=smionk+esc

more quad frames than you can shake a stick at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=quadcopter+frame&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aquadcopter+frame

flight contorls ( get a naze lite off phil)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=+multiwii+flight+contorler&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3A+multiwii+flight+contorler
couple of battery job done
http://www.amazon.co.uk/FLOUREON%C2%AE-3000mAh-Battery-Helicopter-Airplane/dp/B00HTZGJWC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400776094&sr=8-1&keywords=lipo+3000

amazon not as bad as you think

p.s sorry to here about your trouble its allways the darkest before the sun rises

[kilby]

Just out of interest, did you have horizon and angle mode on the same switch.  That is the way I configured it when mine flew off.

Had the acro/angle/horizon modes on my 3 way flap switch

Low = Acro
Med = Angle
High = Horizon

From memory (admittedly poor hence I always carry a notebook) I think you may have had multiple modes on a toggle so when it went high several things where enabled at once

Tony, yeah I know there is quad stuff over on amazon and if I was building a 450 or similar then my vouchers wouldn';t be sitting around too long. Problem is that I already have 450 that I';m very happy with.

After learning to fly tolerably I found myself slaloming trees and getting into very low level flying, but the 450 while great has too much inertia and is a bit lardy for some of the places I have access to.

Essentially I';m looking for a small quad to move from my current flying to something a bit more acrobatic and in smaller areas (woods etc) and for that the Tesla was perfect, as the likes of the Blackout is a bit too expensive for me. I';m also still considering an Armattan VTail as I like the yaw performance of VTails.

Regrettably Amazon doesn';t have what I want <sulk>

[Doug]

This is just one of the joys of MultiWii and its derivatives.  Its failsafe is truly awful it makes me want to try and modify it to activate RTH or POS Hold if GPS is enabled.  That said I just leave the failsafe off the FC and use the one on my FrSky kit and set that to RTH.

Barney

Do you have a idiots guide to setting that up on the taranis for the NAZE would be most appreciated (Or some tips on setting it up) still getting to grips with and its intricacies

Doug.

[barneyg]

Barney

Do you have a idiots guide to setting that up on the taranis for the NAZE would be most appreciated (Or some tips on setting it up) still getting to grips with and its intricacies

Doug.

I don';t have a taranis, just the frsky modules in a turnigy 9xr and I';ve not used them with my Naze32 yet ... just multiwii :)
that said :
http://www.frsky-rc.com/download/down.php?id=102 is the manual for the x8r rx unit which has instructions for failsafe setting

and then there is :
http://www.multi-rotor.co.uk/index.php?topic=7412.msg61101#msg61101 which is a way of setting failsafe using the radio itself.

[tony]

teslahed do you except amozon vouchers as payment for the awesome tesla quad

any birthdays coming up xmass just round the corrner 

[kilby]

Just priced the building another Teslaquad and of course it';s not helped by HK having too many things on backorder (as usual)

Trying to decide whether to throw £130+ at it (again) as it flew really nicely or to put it towards an Armattan VTail <sigh>

[Fletch]

Having just moved from a full naze32 to a multiwii with GPS I can sympathise with anybody trying to setup switches and modes!!

On my taranis I now have multiple actions on the TX on each channel. 
So ch5 has three actions from Switch A, one from SF my RTL and one from SE which is position hold...

This is kind of replicated throughout...  It may not be tidy but I have checked and double check what happens and what the combinations all do... Took me a good few hours to be happy.

This is the first time I';ve set it up and it may not be the most efficient way of doing it but it appears to be working!