RCExplorer BiCopter Thread

[LitterBug]

Post soldering bench testing revealed that I had the servo PWMs 3&4 reversed. D'OH! Bench testing was a good thing! Removed props and used my switched smoke stopper for the testing. :-D

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[LitterBug]

Did some flight testing today... Not so good. No damage, but seems to behave exactly like my EZbiCopters did with swinging oscillations on the pitch axis. Played a bit with P/I on the pitch axis, but didn't really seem to be getting anywhere.

SO... Today I crossed over to the dark side and have put BetaFlight on EZBi #1 and am attempting to get that to fly. Looks like everything is configured right and everything moves correctly. Things behave slightly different with the leveling strength being much higher, and there appears to be some back pitch mixed in as you add throttle in the BetaFlight leveling modes too. All ready to test fly it in the back yard, lift off, and the motors stop about a foot off the ground.... Every time.... <sigh> WT#... It's like it disarms for no reason at all. <sigh> Time for a break... and a bicycle ride....

At least it is all buttoned up and looks cool! :-D

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[kpixels]

SO... Today I crossed over to the dark side and have put BetaFlight on EZBi #1 and am attempting to get that to fly.

OMG Betaflight! LB what's happening to you?

Looks like everything is configured right and everything moves correctly. Things behave slightly different with the leveling strength being much higher, and there appears to be some back pitch mixed in as you add throttle in the BetaFlight leveling modes too. All ready to test fly it in the back yard, lift off, and the motors stop about a foot off the ground.... Every time.... <sigh> WT#... It's like it disarms for no reason at all. <sigh>

I'm sure you did, but you compensated in BetaFlight for your FC being on sideways? Come on, it should be half as hard as a quad to figure out...

 

[jac]

: eek:: eek:: eek:: eek:: eek:: eeky)

 

[LitterBug]

Playing with some ducts that someone on the RCExplorer forums sent to me for testing. Weather is wetter than wet here again, so haven't done any more flight testing. Going to add a tail to EZbi #1 before next flights too.

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[LitterBug]

Working on an oblique mount for the ducts while the weather here is pathetically wet. Close to 4" of rain in the last three days...

I've printed a sample out to check dimensions, and need to lengthen the mount by about 17mm (and shift it over a bit) since the duct motor holder is wider than the standard RCExplorer tilt.

Cheers!
LitterBug

PS: 3D printer prototyping ROCKS!

 

[LitterBug]

OK Y'ALL!
I have successfully hovered this puppy at an indoor fly this past weekend!

Video, or it didn't happen you say:

Slow mo tour around the bicopter hovering shot by my buddy:

Picked up where I left off several months ago and it initially had the nasty "YAW" oscillations. Hindsight, a tip from some others, and much time off paid off cuz after dropping YAW P/I, I was able to hover and get a successful autotune. This was at the end of the indoor fly and didn't get a chance to do much else. Should be hitting it again this coming weekend.

Many Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[kpixels]

AWESOME!!!
If I remember right, I had to do the same with the YAW on my tricopter. dRonin had it set way too hi for some reason.

 

[jhitesma]

Having to drop P/I on a tri makes sense. Defaults on most firmwares (including dRonin) are setup for quads - which really don't have very much yaw authority at all. While tri's have tons of yaw authority.

I'm not sure about bi's...but since it's physically tilting the motors for yaw I'd assume that much like a tri they're much more authoratitave on yaw than quads.

 

[LitterBug]

I've had some revelations while working on the EZTricopter for how I should be doing the motor and servo mixes in the flight controller. Expect to see more on this puppy soon!

Cheers!
LitterBug