Going Full Kiss - Martian 220mm Build Log

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
Sure Psyborg I'll take a screenie. Unfortunately it is raining steadily today so flying will have to wait until tomorrow.
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
I got what changes I wanted done after the last set of videos I put on YT. Got rid of the Pitch wobbles when coming out of a power loop. That cured 99% of the prop wash shakes in free fall. Tweaked the TPA a touch and got the punch out twist at the top of the punch out tuned out. Now for me its a matter of working on a little faster rates. For now I am happy with 900 Degrees per second on pitch and roll since I have balanced them out where I don't consistently over shoot fast pitch moves. Yaw is set to 1000 degrees per second which I may change the balance between RC rate and rate to make it turn tighter at mid stick but keep the 1000 degree twist. Keep in mind I am running 35% expo on my radio for pitch and roll which may get worked out over time where the FC is doing it all.

I was out yesterday in higher then normal winds doing my soccer field race course and it handled it nicely once the nerves settled and I stopped trying to do the gate when I had to hold a 25+ degree roll and a touch of pitch to keep a straight line at the speeds I could handle in those crosswinds where I set the gate up.

Anyway here is where I am at on mine. I am reasonably close to what Steele recently posted on my own so I think I might just be getting how this all works finally. Obviously these are always in flux for better skills or different conditions but might be a good starting point as we have similar set ups other then motors with you on Red bottoms and me on Lumeniers.

Psyborgs RR5 pids.png
 

LitterBug

Techno Nut
Moderator
Been lucky here. Perfect flying weather for the last week. I flew a few packs for you today!

Cheers!
LitterBug
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
No flights for me today. It was bleak and dreary day. days like this I hurt to much to do stuff. Besides that my football team had the early game today so I got to see them win. Might get a set of batteries in tomorrow but will surely get them in the next 3 following days as it says sunny with low winds here.

If its over 45 degrees and not rain and winds are under 15 mph I'm in the air. Sometimes even lower temps if the winds chills are low.
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
Got some tuning and flights in yesterday. I only got four batteries worth of tuning in, but decided to get some clips for you guys. The sun was setting so some parts of the video have low frame rates and there is occasional flashes of light.


With the new firmwares I was able to get my P gains so far about 1.00 higher and my D gains about 2 lower. I also cranked up my I gain. Knock on wood, but the bounce backs after flips appear to have fled the scene for the most part. An occasional quick bounce after a front flip, but that is the hardest bounce to tune out from experience. Some of my flips are a little sloppy because of bad timing and not the tune.
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
Well dam. Maybe I shouldn't have poked and prodded you so much. Now I am way behind again... and yes Pitch bounce is tough to kill off totally. Glad we have the Snarls happy face going again though. Welcome back to the realm of the flying. Your turns and stops are so tight and quick. Ehh gives me something new to shoot for I guess :D
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
Thanks Psyborg. You get out to fly more often than me so that will give you some time to catch up ;)
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
Got to fly this afternoon. Unfortunately I forgot to put a battery in my Yi so no footage. A strong case for me to get some fatsharks with a DVR. Less weight also caused my PIDs to be a little off so I was getting some oscillations at times. Overall things were flying good, at the start at least. I flipped too close to the top of a tree and crashed into it. Luckily I did not get caught so no tree climbing necessary. The impact on the ground did mess up my FPV antenna quite a bit. Some soldering may fix it and I will add one of my 3D printed antenna casings over it in the future.

I was flying the DAL T5040s and only had two new props so I had to go back and use props from my stash of retired props. They are still good, its just some are a little bent and I was concerned that would cause tuning issues. With these 'used' props I ended up having two mid flight prop failures. Some props you can see the plastic yielding near the hub. The quad dealt with it well though and both times I was able to land softly in the grass. With the props getting out of whack my flights got progressively more bumpy and less in tune. Still some fun flying though.

I will fly the T5045BNs next, but that will probably require more tuning.
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
Well that's a bummer all the way around. I have gone out on several occasions with all my gear and the sim cards sitting on top of my computer. Luckily my cheapie Wal-Mart hd cam has its battery built in. I wont reuse props if any sign of white coloring is near the hub or if there is any bend at all. I will keep using dinged and dented props for a while as long as I can roll the edges flat again with a socket or the side of my baby ratchet.

I have been lucky the last few days and the weather could not have been better for flying. Got a lot done practice wise. My problem is doing I think its called a Split S where you flip over and turn around really fast like I have seen you do. I spent over 4 + hours in Free rider trying to figure it out. I finally nearly pulled them off live twice. I was initially just blipping the throttle rolling over upside down and then trying to level off before I hit the ground. Took forever to figure its much easier with a little opposite yaw at the same time as the roll to flip over. I am going back on the sim here after this to do some more practice. That one move seems to be key to several other maneuvers with the coordinated yaw and roll.
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
If the split S is what I think it is, I don't use any yaw. I just quickly do half a roll then pull up with the elevator. I cut the throttle right before the roll and don't bring it back on until the quad is almost level again. Yea once you get that move down you will be more comfortable flying upside down and turning around without yaw.
 

Ocean

Member
Well that's a bummer all the way around. I have gone out on several occasions with all my gear and the sim cards sitting on top of my computer. Luckily my cheapie Wal-Mart hd cam has its battery built in. I wont reuse props if any sign of white coloring is near the hub or if there is any bend at all. I will keep using dinged and dented props for a while as long as I can roll the edges flat again with a socket or the side of my baby ratchet.

I have been lucky the last few days and the weather could not have been better for flying. Got a lot done practice wise. My problem is doing I think its called a Split S where you flip over and turn around really fast like I have seen you do. I spent over 4 + hours in Free rider trying to figure it out. I finally nearly pulled them off live twice. I was initially just blipping the throttle rolling over upside down and then trying to level off before I hit the ground. Took forever to figure its much easier with a little opposite yaw at the same time as the roll to flip over. I am going back on the sim here after this to do some more practice. That one move seems to be key to several other maneuvers with the coordinated yaw and roll.

Have you seen this video? May be useful

 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
Have you seen this video? May be useful


Actually yes I did see that a long time ago when I was first starting to do flips n rolls on my Versa Copter. I had forgotten about it though. Thanks for the reminder. I did a few last time I flew and did Ok except for one I didn't get back on throttle fast enough and made another crop circle and bent a prop.

More practice in Free rider I am sure will get me over the hump.
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
The martian 5" has been flying great except I have never been able to fully eliminate bounce backs after fast flips and rolls. In the past there have been issues with emax redbottoms and DAL T5045BN props, but I was hoping they would have fixed it by now. I guess people moved on to different motors/props so that issue was never fully solved. It's not like I can't fly with this setup, but I am very hard to please with my PID tuning. After enough frustrating tuning getting good control with poor flips or poor control with good flips, I've decided it is time to abandon these props.

I was able to try a friends DAL cyclone T5046c props and within half a battery was able to get a tune with decent control and no bounce backs after flips. Now I just received an order from GetFPV with some T5046c and T5040c cyclones, and some HQ durables 6045 biblades for the 6" martian. I've heard the 5040s are better for freestyle so I might tune to them and then use the 5046s when I want more speed.
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
My every day prop for all my five inchers is the DAL 5046x3. Then on Taz when I want to go fast AND be agile I go to DAL 5050 bi blade and will be testing the 5050 bi blade Avans soon as weather is better and the cow poo melts into the filed a bit better. For now though I am rocking the snot outta the Gremlin out back when the grass is dry enough to not splash when it goes down hehe.

I never could get behind the 5040 thing. Too wimpy for my lack of skills back in the day and once I found the Cyclone 5046's I never looked back.
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
It's time to bring this bad boy back into the light! The Rooster 6" has been a blast to fly, but why have two quads if you only fly one? Actually my recent freestyle video was filmed a majority with the KISS build because the 6" lost its arms... This KISS build remains the hardest I've had to tune. I am flying HQ V1S props on it now and it has the best tune I've been able to get.

It's almost there, but one major issue is with inverted yaw spins. Slower inverted yaw spins are fine and dandy, but the faster spins tend to end with the quad doing a twitch. I'm not sure if KISS has problems with excessive yaw rates, or if my tune is off, or if my motors are not powerful enough to recover the quad smoothly. And up until now I've been pretty blind as to what is going on, only relying on DVR and HD footage to replay the behavior to me. Now I have an external blackbox on the way. Hopefully it will allow me to see what the PID loop and motors are doing during these yaw spins, and I'll be able to get answers for the hardest build to tune.

I also have some Emax Avan Flow 5" triblades on the way. I like the Emax Avan Longrange 6" biblades on my Rooster so much that I hope the performance carries over to these triblades.
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
How much soft mounting are you using on this build? KISS doesnt play well with a lot of it. Those yaw twitches are usually a good sign your fc is flopping around.

Flyduino recomends only using a rubber O ring under each corner and not super tightening them. Just til you see them start to compress.

Thats all I have ever used. Any time I tried any thing else I struggled with that last bit of fine tuning. Even one layer of electric tape between the arms and the frame produces changes.

For the longest time I was chasing my tune because the stoopid fpv camera had worn the little plastic shelfs that hold the board tight in the case from all the crashing.

Then after that was my motor bearings loosened up after 15+ months of abuse.

Once the motors were replaced it was fine again until I separated the magnet band on the bell of one of the motors and it would slop down and bind on the base of the motor after full throttle punch outs.

I will go to the new ls emax motors or try a set of hypetrains once I get caught back up from the FFO trip. Have not been happy with the quality on the new batch of lumeniers from the original build out.
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
How much soft mounting are you using on this build? KISS doesnt play well with a lot of it. Those yaw twitches are usually a good sign your fc is flopping around.

That's a good point. I am using soft rubber standoffs with o-rings as well. I made those changes sometime last winter. I don't think I had the yaw spin issues before then, but I can't say I did many aggressive yaw spins then either. I'll keep this in mind and put the plastic standoffs back on if needed.
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
I now have an external blackbox working on my KISS FC v1. I want to share the steps I went through to get it working because the documentation is here and there.

I picked up an Openlogger from FliteTest, but I believe ReadyMadeRC and Amazon have models that will work as well. First I needed to flash a Cleanflight/Betaflight/KISS friendly version of the Openlogger firmware onto the logger. I did this with an FTDI usb to TTL adapter. Connecting all the corresponding pins between the adapter and the logger, and swapping RX and TX lines. Also important is that DTR goes to GRN, and CTS goes to BLK. A similar connection can be made if you use an Arduino Uno as the programmer. I downloaded the correct firmware from here and followed the directions to move the given libraries to where Arduino can find them. I opened the Arduino sketch file and set the board to 'Arduino Uno', and the port to the port of my FTDI adapter. The programmer was left as the default. I pressed the upload button and it successfully flashed the logger. I then wired up the logger for use with the KISS FC using the diagrams found here on the Flyduino site, and plugged it into port 2 of the FC. Finally, I plugged the FC into my computer, and in the advanced tab of the KISS configurator, I set the Serial Device to 'Logger 30%'. Initially I had it set to 100%, but I was getting gaps in the data when viewed in the Cleanflight Blackbox explorer (Betaflight Explorer didn't work). I run a loop time of 4khz so 30% is 1.2khz. A logging rate of 1khz is good enough, so that's what you should aim for when setting the logging percent.

IMG_20180809_173222Resize.jpg


IMG_20180809_181032Resize.jpg
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
I tried doing the minim osd flashing back in the day with an ftdi interface. Never was able to get a successful flash.

I see something that requires ftdi and I run the other way.

If I remember right J Bardwell used a black box logger that came plug n play. Did he not mention it had to be flashed like yours or is there one like that for dummies like myself?