Twitchity Hex - Oh boy, here we go again!

narcolepticltd

I unbuild stuff regularly
Got back in town yesterday after a few days in San Diego - my new Brain board was in the mailbox waiting for me :)

But my parents are here until Thursday and I'm under a crazy tight deadline at work...so not sure if I'll have time to get it installed in the next few days. I did update the firmware on it last night and do some initial software setup...can't wait to hook a camera/VTX to it and try the OSD.

My wrist is doing better as well after a few days away from the keyboard. But the more I mouse/type today the worse it's feeling again. Thankfully I've got another treatment this afternoon and one on Friday.

Probably won't fly the hex on the afromini again...soon as I get a few minutes to fire up the soldering iron I'll be swapping the Brain in :D

Lots going on in your world lately, hope your wrist starts feeling better soon! Looking forward to the hex with a new brain :)
 

jipp

Senior Member
i look forward to your input on the brain.. as i see it being a good fc for my overall goal of a bigger slow photo machine.. so i see my self spending a 150.00 for a FC down the road.
chris.
 

jhitesma

Some guy in the desert
Mentor
After another turn at playing human pincushion today the wrist is doing much better. Since it was feeling better overall I was able to describe the pain more specifically today and she put at least twice as many pins in me as a result. Also got a new mouse and gel pad which I hope will help keep it from getting so bad again.

Brain board is in. It took me longer to get it mounted physically than it did for me to wire it up. Wiring it up went fairly easy, hardest part is that the motor numbering in Tau for hexes is totally different than on Naze32. I setup the RX port as PPM+UART+OUTPUTS which makes it:

8 - RX
7 - TX

6 - Output 6
5 - Output 5

4 - N/C

3 - PPM In
2 - V-Bat
1 - Gnd

11064503_10152626459206805_187056815_o.jpg

11067572_10152626459916805_193821873_o (1).jpg

The one thing I don't like about the Brain is having to use the pigtails instead of being able to just solder straight to the board. But with all the I/O this thing supports it's about the only way to go as solder pads would be too big. My plan is to swap over to my openLRS and try using the passthrough telemetry mode on there for wireless telemetry. Not sure how well it will work but I'm going to give it a try. So with this setup I use the first 3 pins to connect my RX, pins 5/6 go to ESC's 5/6 respectively and pins 7/8 for telemetry which will at first go to my BT module but eventually I'll be trying to pass through the openLRS setup.

The ESC wiring is a bit different than on Naze32.

On Naze32 the motor numbering is:
4 2
6 5
3 1
With motors 4/5/3 being CW and 1/2/6 being CCW and 4/2 in the front

On Tau the numbering is:
6 1
5 2
4 3
With 1/5/3 being CW and 6/2/4 being CCW and 6/1 in front

So the CW/CCW relationships are the same. But the numbering is different. Still not 100% sure I got the wires reconnected correctly...but thankfully in Tau it's super easy to remap outputs to different motor positions if I got it wrong.

I did the wiring kind of quickly over lunch and haven't been able to test it yet since my KISS ESC's are jumpered for oneshot and the official Brain firmware doesn't have oneshot added yet. Shred has merged the oneshot code on his git but hasn't done a binary release with it yet. So tonight I've been setting up a build environment for building the Brain version of Tau. I already have the FW built but am awaiting on my ancient notebook to finish building the GCS so I can flash it and set it up.

While I was waiting I finished the physical installation of the Brain board. As I said this took longer than wiring it since I had to take off the screws/nuts for all of the arms to get access to the holes for the two FC mounting posts I hadn't yet installed. I was REALLY tempted to drill some holes in the baseplate so I won't have to do that again....but didn't want to take time to drill the CF tonight. I also found the bag of screws Twitchity gave me with the quad for when I upgrade it to 2204 (or bigger?) motors and since that isn't going to happy for a little bit I stole two of them to replace the two I've lost on the hex. (One that fell out from the motor I forgot to tighten the screws on and one that I broke when tightening them...and probably why I forgot to tighten that last motor.)

Maybe if they called it gentleware I'd have more luck with not breaking aluminum hardware:
11029704_10152626460026805_482383049_o.jpg

10578026_10152626460821805_620570599_o.jpg


So for now I'm only using the RX port and the motor outputs on the brain board. With the 4 motor outputs direct soldered and power fed in on the motor 4 pads again direct soldered. The RX port I did use the provided pigtail but only the motor 5/6 pins and the RX pins are currently being used. The RX wiring is pretty darn ugly...I'm just using my homebrewed FlySky RX for now and it has a female header on it...the Brain harness also has a female header...so I just shoved them together with some pins until I swap over the LRS setup:

11045522_10152626459631805_1085947594_o.jpg

Once I have it flying I'll go ahead and wire up the AV port next for the OSD since I can't wait to play with it. Then add GPS on the flexport. And eventually I hope to pickup a voltage/current sensor to add to this build which will be connected to the SEN (sensors) port.

GCS has been building for about an hour so it should be done soon I hope....then the real fun can start :D

And yes, once this is fully wired with the final RX and video and everything I will clean the wiring up on this one. Just can't bring myself to cut the brain harness wires shorter just yet ;)
 

Balu

Lurker
Staff member
Admin
Moderator
What kind of external sensors does the Brain need / support? GPS ok, but what kind of voltage/current sensor?

Does it support all Taulabs features? I have to say I fell in love with its autotune.
 

narcolepticltd

I unbuild stuff regularly
You should send the photos of those fasteners to fastener express and see if they'll sponsor you as an official stress tester :)
 

jipp

Senior Member
its good to hear the pins are helping your wrist. i tried that years ago with no luck. but my legs damage is much more than wear and tear unfortunaly or it may of worked. when the femur popped through the skin who knows how many nervs were damage in the process. oh yeah the femur is much bigger than you would imagine. i was suprised. heh.

yeah, it is pretty spendy at 150.00 what other options do we have for FC at the 150.00 range.. at this price point i guess we are getting into the cream of the crop. much more suited to purpose tasks id think.

instead of a 30.00 naze32.

chris.
 

jhitesma

Some guy in the desert
Mentor
What kind of external sensors does the Brain need / support? GPS ok, but what kind of voltage/current sensor?

Does it support all Taulabs features? I have to say I fell in love with its autotune.

It has 3 analog DAC ports which can be used for voltage/current sensors - they're only 3.3v not 5v though so you have to be sure to use a sensor setup which is designed for 3.3v instead of 5v.

It also has SDA/SDL available on the FLX port so you can run external mag or other I2C sensors.

All of the digital inputs except for the serial RX on the main port are 5v tolerant - but that and the analog inputs are only 3.3v.

It supports all of the Taulabs features plus the OSD which is integrated into the TauLabs GCS. Once I start setting that up I'll try and do a screencast/video showing how it works.

It pretty much has the best I/O of any FC I've used - the number of ports and processing power / memory available blows away anything else I've seen. Pixhawk may match (or beat) it...but I'm just not a big APM fan so I haven't looked into Pixhawk too much.

I can't wait to try autotune on this setup - really curious to see how it does on a overpowered light setup like this and haven't seen too many people try autotune on hexes yet.
 

jhitesma

Some guy in the desert
Mentor
Very cool, jhitesma. Can't wait to see this fly.

Neither can I :D

It ended up taking almost 2 hours for my little notebook to build GCS but I did get it done last night, reflashed the board with the new firmware and did a full setup on it - including enabling oneshot.

But....

There must be something about setting up oneshot on Tau that I'm doing wrong. I thought at first it may be an issue with the timers due to me using PPM input (and most other testers doing oneshot using a serial input for their RX) but looking at the code it looks like I should be safe.

The problem is I can't get it to calibrate the motors and the KISS don't respond until I turn the motor output up over 1565 and are barely running above idle when I get to 2000. I had the same problem with blheli on my knuckle so at least I'm seeing the same issue consistently.

I may swap over to my spektrum sat for testing tonight to rule out the PPM input as the problem. I just hate to take that off my twitchity quad.

And once it's flying I really can't wait to add the camera and VTX and try the OSD on this setup!
 

jhitesma

Some guy in the desert
Mentor
Nice looking board you have there. You'll have to let us know if its worth the price.

Well, for someone as cheap as me to spend this much I had to be pretty impressed before putting my money down. So far it's met my expectations. If I wan't dealing with oneshot which is still experimental and not in the official firmware it would probably be flying already. But I'd rather work out the software issues around oneshot than take the silicone tape off my ESC's and remove those solder jumpers ;)

Shred has a nice spreadsheet up comparing all FC's here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JGvoUEqOkxTeYvRP5wrXzLDiz8jZgbYN0nFLFYJI6Zg/edit?usp=sharing

Guess that answers my question about pixhawk...PH does have more outputs (14!) and 2 additional serial ports (5 vs. the Brain's 3) but the brain has the built in OSD which is one of the big things that usually ties up a serial port. And the Brain is cheaper as well as 30g lighter (that's a Mobius!)

Quanton still wins out for most serial ports and outputs...but it's also bigger - though not a giant as the pixhawk :D


If you're just looking to fly acro...then no it's probably not worth it.

But if you want to fly acro and fly assisted and have OSD...then I can't think of anything better out there so for what I want in a controller for a FPV setup the Brain wins hands down.
 

jhitesma

Some guy in the desert
Mentor
You should send the photos of those fasteners to fastener express and see if they'll sponsor you as an official stress tester :)

I must be too good of a stress tester - Twitchity is the only one brave enough to take me up on my offer to torture test things so far. And I think he regrets that decision sometimes :D

In my defense, the melted screw and nut were due to the V2 quad PDB issues. The one stripped nut was bad right out of the bag. So I've only managed to break one all by myself which is the one motor screw that snapped before I finished tightening it.
 

jhitesma

Some guy in the desert
Mentor
its good to hear the pins are helping your wrist. i tried that years ago with no luck. but my legs damage is much more than wear and tear unfortunaly or it may of worked. when the femur popped through the skin who knows how many nervs were damage in the process. oh yeah the femur is much bigger than you would imagine. i was suprised. heh.

Yeah, I was a total skeptic and can't believe how much it's helped. I'm actually thinking about asking her for a few extra pins for my leg. I managed to keep my femur inside but my tibia has tasted freedom outside my skin and the stainless bar and screws holding it together still bug me from time to time even though that was 19 years ago (wow, time flies!)

yeah, it is pretty spendy at 150.00 what other options do we have for FC at the 150.00 range.. at this price point i guess we are getting into the cream of the crop. much more suited to purpose tasks id think.

instead of a 30.00 naze32.

chris.

See my last few posts :D

Also...sounds like Peabody is going to take a look at freshening up the Naze32 port of Tau (since Naze32 and CC3D are fairly similar it's not a huge project) so that may be another budget option soon. Though like the CC3D port Tau will be fairly limited on the Naze32 due to the F1 processor and the naze's goofy pin assignments. But they've been working on resorting the memory layout to bring back autotune on CC3D so it may work on Naze as well. I'm anxiously watching how that goes as I'd love to put Tau on the Naze in my emax 250 FPV quad but don't want to have to spend another $130 for another Brain to do it ;)
 

jipp

Senior Member
cool thanks for the input. yeah time flys my accident was a long time ago to now. haha i moved here to AZ in 1999 doctor told me good for my leg. i too s till have metal in my leg, and a artificial knee ( i was 26 or 28 when i got it, July 5th 9am, 2004.. i remember that day like it was the birth of a kid or something. LOL ), so i know that cold feeling you get when its really cold. its kind of amazing to think we both would of been dead if this happen just 100 years ago, heck maybe even 50? i dunno, i did die and they brought me back to life. so i dunno if they could of done that 50 years ago or not. heh.

yeah, the kit i order should be here by the 17th. it comes with CC3d. so im hoping i can try auto tune with it. i also bought the kit with that FC because i saw the brain was based off the same stuff. so i figure if i have to learn at least it will bleed over to a more expensive FC.
but i have a feeling, ill try the other FC the cheaper ones anyhow to see how they work.

today has been a good day for flying the nano.. no wind! its a blast to fly multirotors. will be nice when i build one with a little bit of weight so i can fly in the wind. 12g of the nano qx in anything but dead calm day is a lot of work to fly.

chris.
 

jhitesma

Some guy in the desert
Mentor
cool thanks for the input. yeah time flys my accident was a long time ago to now. haha i moved here to AZ in 1999 doctor told me good for my leg. i too s till have metal in my leg, and a artificial knee ( i was 26 or 28 when i got it, July 5th 9am, 2004.. i remember that day like it was the birth of a kid or something. LOL ), so i know that cold feeling you get when its really cold. its kind of amazing to think we both would of been dead if this happen just 100 years ago, heck maybe even 50? i dunno, i did die and they brought me back to life. so i dunno if they could of done that 50 years ago or not. heh.

Yep, those dates stick with ya. Oct 9th 1996 for me :D (Photos are here and while they aren't horrible they're definitely not for the squeamish!)

yeah, the kit i order should be here by the 17th. it comes with CC3d. so im hoping i can try auto tune with it. i also bought the kit with that FC because i saw the brain was based off the same stuff. so i figure if i have to learn at least it will bleed over to a more expensive FC.
but i have a feeling, ill try the other FC the cheaper ones anyhow to see how they work.

Installing Tau on the CC3D is pretty easy and I would recommend it over OP personally. But the current release doesn't include autotune on CC3D - you'd have to go back one release to get it as the new one memory was too tight to keep it included. What some people are doing is going back a release to run autotune - then loading the newer release and just copying over the PID values since the PID loops stayed the same.

today has been a good day for flying the nano.. no wind! its a blast to fly multirotors. will be nice when i build one with a little bit of weight so i can fly in the wind. 12g of the nano qx in anything but dead calm day is a lot of work to fly.

chris.

Yeah, been great flying weather here all week...and I've had no time to fly of course :(
 

jhitesma

Some guy in the desert
Mentor
Check your PM's in a minute (I don't type as fast as you sir)

I'm typing slower now that my wrist isn't at 100% :D

Looks like I found the problem with oneshot though. The guy who authored oneshot for Tau replied to my question on the Tau forums saying the min/max values need to be shifted to 1500/3000 instead of 1000/2000 which totally explains what I'm seeing on both setups. So I should have both going once I can make those quick easy adjustments!
 

narcolepticltd

I unbuild stuff regularly
I'm typing slower now that my wrist isn't at 100% :D

Looks like I found the problem with oneshot though. The guy who authored oneshot for Tau replied to my question on the Tau forums saying the min/max values need to be shifted to 1500/3000 instead of 1000/2000 which totally explains what I'm seeing on both setups. So I should have both going once I can make those quick easy adjustments!

That's pretty wacky... sounds like a work around but glad you got it sorted. I'd assume they'll adjust those values once some polish is put in and it's something that's being sold to the general public anyways.