Arduplane ? Finally a waste of time

I have spent hundred of hours with Arduplane and simply it is unable to perform even simple tasks , Lidar use is not allowed and TECS has a lot of flaws .

Deep stall landing is useless since there is any information about how to configure the deep stall parameters, and that since a while, evidently it is not a priority .

My goal was to perform a very short landing, no way…

Finally I think that the only solution to obtain professional results is to modify the code and keep for itself the work done , I have the feeling that very few people share his knowledge and developers usually just do not answer to requests.
A lot of energy of developpers went into quadplanes, totally inefficient solution since no variable pitch props are available while there are huge problems and bugs on ordinary things such Ek2 or Tecs.

Debugging is a nightmare since if you repeat 4 times the same mission you probably obtain three different behaviors.

Having said that there is nothing to be expected since you are not paying anything and you can only thank those who have dedicated time and energy to the project but unfortunately it is certainly not at the level of Arducopter.

I’m tired, disappointed and quite pissed off so I will take a break since I have the feeling to just loosing time and money with Arduplane.

Being someone who has to get deeper into plane control I would be very interested to hear about the problems and issues you have encountered on your journey.
You no doubt have posted questions and comments on Arduplane systems while encountering these issues, so even a list of links to the issues.

I think it would be handy and informative to have, in one place, a collection of issues and aggravations for those of us about to commit to the same path.

As you know, the forum is full of information, but it is scattered over so many pages.

Yes, if stuck, post logs for one issue at a time, it’s a very advanced autopilot, supposed to fly almost anything, so with all this power, it’s a lot of ways to mess it up.
As for time waste: What Ardupilot and the Cube can Do!

That tells something. :slight_smile:

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Did any of you look into INAV? it seems to be getting a lot of development lately.
How does the code compare?

Ardu* anything, is developed for the mass user, if you have a special use case, bring that to the devs directly. Lidar is in use, short landings would certainly be a special use case. Far more people are interested in quad plane, then you’d think, so while to you, may seem inefficient, again, the mass audience is what Arupilot is geared to.

Using ArduPilot for hobby, research or recreational use is one thing, but building a business based on it needs special skills, just like any other businesses. In this case this skill is programming or at least being able to read and understand code. If you want to use ArduPilot as a black box and build systems based on it, then you will eventually fail at the first non-mainstream feature request (just like the case you described in your post). It is an open source project, and indeed documentation is often lacking, falling behind new features and functions. What you have instead is a complete visibility of the internal workings of your flight controller and a freedom to modify it as you wish, which is the best thing ever, compared to other professional grade solutions (Piccolo, Micropilot, Kestrel or others).
The problem is that as a business you cannot rely on the opensource community to eventually fix problems or create the necessary documentations for you for free. If your business plan is based on this, then it will fail. If you are not able to read the code and/or make modifications for your special needs, then get a professional who can do it and pay for it. There are many ArduPilot partners out there who are happy to work for you.
If you move to another autopilot solution, you will find out that even a smallest modification and a shortest consultation will cost money, lots of money.

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Like a stone axe to a laser cutter…

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I have done hundreds of missions both with quadplanes and planes and i didn’t observe this different “behavior” each of the time you are reporting. Actually I think Arduplane is bit more complicate than Arducopter to fine tune, but this is far away from defining it as a “waste of time” ( which might be considered offensive).
“VTOL are totally inefficient”, this is completely wrong, of course the efficiency relies on who designed the plane/engine setup. Tail sitters or tilting engine Vtol might be not optimized for forward flight, but pure quadplanes are performing really well. Our VTOL is capable of 30 mins pure hover flight or 1:15 hrs plane flight included vertical take off/landing plus a total of 5 mins hover during the mission. These are quite good numbers for a machine weighing less than 4kg and carrying a thermal/Visible (zoom) payload.
As i said, you need to work on the airframe , you can’t expect perfect stall landings if your plane is not aeromechanically capable of performing it.

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Andras’s post I think defines the issue and perfectly addresses it. If you have not budgeted Development into your commercial application you will fall at the first hurdle.

That being said your post is really little more than a vent. Why not be more specific? I do not doubt that you hit some real hurdles but why not actually share what they are?

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We are using Arduplane on our platform and have very successfully done numerous missions. The last being mapping a gas pipeline in Thailand with a total length of 1800km. 4 missions a day, each mission 60 km, (30 go and 30 come back) at 300 meter altitude. It took us 6 weeks to complete. Our VTOL weighs in at 8kg, 2 meter wingspan and we have 2 separate batteries for forward flight and hover. We use lidar for landing.

Other than human mistakes, we had absolutely no problems with Arduplane. It performed flawless the whole time. Not 1 glitch, not 1 error.

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Did you do a blog post for that? Sounds like a good case study.

I agree I should. I think we gathered a lot of experience and information I should share. As usual, time is my enemy. But as soon as I have some spare moments, I will do. Thanks for reminding me.

In this particular case, I wanted to make clear this whole thing is absolutely not “a waste of time”. If you just connect the right things in the right way and set it up as it is supposed to be, it works flawlessly.

Great work! …

Not an arduplane user… Yet, still finishing up my first plane, but a long time user of arducopter. I built an S1000+ with a pixhawk 1 and then upgraded to a cube with 2 here gnss. I work as a surveyor and we have had multirotors from DJI, Skycatch and a few others. Arducopter has always been the most realiable. I had one crash on landing, battery gave out and it fell 200 feet on to concrete… In front of our local county surveyor. SD card and camera we’re fine so as far as I was concerned the job was finished we had the pictures. Here is a very old news artical that shows the Skycatch on the left (never got a successful flight) and the s1000+ on the right. The artical briefly describes how we use them for mapping but not to the fault of the reporter as I think a lot of it was over his head it is not written the best. Anyways here’s the link.

Hello, I’ve been using APM for 2 years. I feel that many details are not popular products. I think this is a product developed for programmers. :laughing:

The only thing comes free in life is the love of our mother :slight_smile: and I am only 2 years late…just bored.

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I am brand new to flight controllers in general, but within a few weeks from day one, I have now had fixed wing flights over hr, have flown successfully via lte link with potentially unlimited range, and have found i could get things working once i worked out how, the default tuning is amazing and holds altitude and track very nicely. I haven’t yet ventured into any coding or mods, the existing docs are extensive and once i work out how to read the code i will be able to answer all my own questions by looking first hand at how it works.
I love arduplane
As for the deep stall auto landings, whats you objective? If you’re landing near your takoff point and you can fly, then just manually fly the deep stall landing!

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