CranialRectosis' Twitchity Mini-Tricopter build

cranialrectosis

Faster than a speeding face plant!
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I now have a cable that works and I can see the OSD.

Any ideas how to make it so this camera isn't overwhelmed by light??
 

LitterBug

Techno Nut
Moderator
start by dropping contrast to 110-115.

Sharpness 10-15
Exposure auto
AGC low or off
DWDR on 63


If that doesn't get it in the ballpark, start by resetting the camera to defaults and reapply those suggestions.
 
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cranialrectosis

Faster than a speeding face plant!
Mentor
I followed FGAs instructions here.


Contrast is down to 104. I think the lens setting to auto may have helped the most. It's not completely green outside unless the camera is in direct sunlight. In the shade it's almost total whiteout in the center of the picture with some resolution on the edges.

I am considering a different lens setting.
 

LitterBug

Techno Nut
Moderator
Yeah, that vid is a good starting point. Every camera is different and everyone's taste is slightly different. Changing to a better lens can help too.
 

cranialrectosis

Faster than a speeding face plant!
Mentor
It seems to be a lens setting in the OSD. I am setting it manually.

Almost there....

EDIT:
That got it! The camera now works and no green dot indoors either.

Wife just got home so out of time for now.

Maybe I can get in a lipo after dinner though.
 
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cranialrectosis

Faster than a speeding face plant!
Mentor
Here is dvr video of my FPV maiden with the Twitchity Tricopter on 4S. Note, this is really just a run to test signal and video.

It also doesn't rotate (flip) quite as quickly as I am used to. :black_eyed:

This is the default tune from triflight WITHOUT a tail tune.

I learned a TON on this build. I replaced everything except the motors and the frame. I can't use the landing legs I have for it as I am using the Baby Tricopter tail tilt mechanism. I had to modify that to get it to work on this frame but it seems to be holding up nicely.

The copter is a bit sluggish in the first 10% of throttle but it picks up nicely. Most of this was flown 25% - 30% of throttle. These motors are ancient SunnySky 2204 2300s from my first build of this copter and nothing got hot although I didn't push it.

I also manually tilted the camera to about 25* which is a bit faster than I am used to.

To build this I had to learn BlHeli Suite. I also tried the app but with all the problems I had I used the suite because there are more tutorials online. I had to tinker with BetaFlight because Triflight doesn't work well on Cleanflight. I used Zadig for the first time to get my Taranis to connect to Windows 10 and again for the F3FC USB driver. I also made my first ever CCTV OSD cable and learned how to tune a camera. All the others I have had just worked out of the box.



HUGE thank you to all the folks who helped me troubleshoot bad drivers, bad ESC, and Cleanflight problems, particularly LitterBug.

Also a shout out to Twitchity. Wherever you are man, you made a heck of a frame.
 

cranialrectosis

Faster than a speeding face plant!
Mentor
I updated the front page with all the electronics updates, current PIDs AUW and recent photo. It's hard to believe this machine originally took flight in Dec 2014!

Some pics.
P6150002.JPG

P6150001.JPG

P6150003.JPG
 
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makattack

Winter is coming
Moderator
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Nice! Glad to see you sorted out all of the gremlins and had a successful flight! Looks to me like getting up to speed with all the changes has been worth all the trouble. As a software professional, I have to say that software that doesn't change is dead software. Heck, I had what I thought was a nice flying Electrohub tricopter running MultiWii 2.4. It wasn't until I upgraded to a SPF3 board and betaflight did I realize how much nicer it would fly with no other hardware/software changes.

Oh wait, I forgot, same ESC's but replaced SimonK with BLHeli and I think that also gave it new life with the damped light braking. Heh, I was almost like "whoa, is this a collective pitch heli now? It seems like it's descending with much more authority at low throttle!"

Sorry I couldn't help further. I did finish my taxes, though! Just now... both state and fed. Yay! More hobby money is coming! :D
 

makattack

Winter is coming
Moderator
Mentor
Yeah but I gotta work on that flip... :)

BTW, I still haven't had a chance to install the latest triflight, but I believe the default "super rate" (rate and expo) in betaflight isn't very aggressive. Might try upping it a bit for better flips and rolls! If I recall the default is about .7 -- I use .9 for a higher roll/pitch rate at the stick ends. I'm not good enough for anything higher, heehee!
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
Nice Run mate. I feel for you with the camera settings. Took me a good portion of a month last summer to dial mine in to do well in most cases. You HAVE to remember to default the goggoles or monitor to centr values for brightness and contrast EVERY time you do an adjustment. Other wise you will chase your tail (tail being eyeballs in this case)

Glad you are up and in the air again. I got out for a few packs myself and will be posting a vid to my rant thread soon as I am done here.