I’m trying to understand how Loiter_Turns works. I set it as index/WP 7, and am a little confused about how exactly the code is intended to work. Any help or thoughts on this would be appreciated!
I did another test today, just added one more turn (from 1 to 2), to help see what was happening. I’ll post the image later, but what I can tell, at least initially, is that a loiter turn waypoint is the place where the turn(s) should end, but the “orbit” happens with a clockwise rotation that is more or less on a tangent with the flight path. Waypoint 7 is where the turn is called.
Here’s the image.
Brit,
I think it sets the center of the circle depending upon the the direction that the copter is pointing in. So the waypoint doesn’t become the center of the circle but rather some point on the circle. The center of the circle will be CIRCLE_RADIUS ahead of the copter.
We should probably change this behaviour in a future version so the waypoint is the center of the circle, the reason we didn't do it this way originally is that it makes the transition messy and more complicated.Thanks, Randy, I think I can imagine that.
It’s odd, also, that despite the LOITER_TURNS defining a full interger for the command, if I choose 1 or 2, it only does 0.75 or 1.75 “turns”. For as clean as the regular “circle mode” has been for me (predictable, fairly consistent), it’s surprising that the tranition to the circle would have to be so messy and/or hard to (re)implement in a simlar fashion.
I appreciate your work and the other devs, I’m just giving feedback in hopes that it might help further the Nav code or help others along.