I had an opportunity to try running autotune as it was a calm morning. I fully charged my 6S 10000 mAH lipo, cleared the logs and took it out to the field along with my laptop so that I could monitor things in Mission Planner.
I took off in AltHold mode and climbed to a comfortable altitude and adjusted the throttle so that it hovered in place nicely. When I flipped the switch (ch 7) to engage autotune, nothing happened - no expected twitching, just a stationary hover. I disengaged the autotune function and continued to fly as I also wanted to measure its endurance.
Eventually the voltage failsafe kicked in and it landed safely. Total flight time was 8 minutes for my eight pound quad. The endurance was disappointing as I had hoped for 15 minutes. Still it will be sufficient for short video missions.
But I’m puzzled over the autotune thing. I am sure that the battery and motor parameters are fine and the PID related parts are at their default values. Does anyone have any ideas? Otherwise, I will fly it as is as it seems to fly just fine - responsive to yaw, roll inputs, and motors run smoothly.
Sure, plenty of ideas relative to that. I’ll wager that it was in no condition to run Auto Tune even if it was configured correctly to run. Proof is in the log…
I programmed a switch on the transmitter to CH. 7 and set Ch 7 in Mission Planner to autotune. I confirmed that when toggled, autotune was enabled. After the flight, back home, I replayed the telemetry file and confirmed that autotune was turned on (though the letters appeared in red - is that significant?). Timing the flight by playing the telemetry file, I confirmed that the endurance was about 8 minutes - a disapointment, though it is a heavy quad (8 lbs).
I will upload the telemetry file - it’s on my other computer.
While I generally agree with @dkemxr, the problem is apparent in the tlog in this case. The sticks must be neutralized for autotune to begin its cycle(s). The tlog shows repeated output of “pilot overrides active” while you are almost constantly applying roll and yaw inputs.
Pilot input remains active during autotune, and you can briefly reposition, but doing so will interrupt the current iteration (without losing progress), and a message is displayed via telemetry that you are overriding the sequence.
I missed that “pilot overrides active” message until I replayed it this morning. That had me confused. I have since replayed the tlog file and it’s not appearing, which is a mystery to me, but I won’t bother worrying about it.
You said that the sticks must be neutralized - I get that for the right stick (roll, pitch), but what about the left stick? Do I lower the throttle all the way down or leave it in mid position?
I reread the documentation concerning autotune and previously missed the bit about removing the camera gimbal which I will do on my next try. This morning the air is calm and so while waiting for the temp to warm up I will recharge the lipo and try again.
Whether autotune is started from LOITER or ALTHOLD, both sticks should remain neutral to the max extent practical. Any pilot input (throttle or attitude) will interrupt the current iteration.
It’s also worth reading through the link below. It’s easiest to retrieve .bin logs from the SD card directly, using an SD card reader on your computer.
If you have issues in the future, retrieving the most recent .bin log file and attaching it to your post will expedite the solution significantly (and avoid the inevitable ask for such).
Thank you Yuri_Rage for your post above. I am hoping for good conditions to try again later today. Given the abysmal endurance of this quad, I will have to resort to tuning one or two axes at a time. My other Tarot quad, having a much better endurance, should complete autotune in one session. Anyway, thanks again for your help!
I’m all done - the quad flies really great! I want to thnk all who have helped me during this long development/debug/tune process. I successfully flew a waypoint mission yesterday after completing repairs from a crash back in November - here is the video Click here. Again, thanks all.
I am now charging the lipo to my other Tarot quad so that I can run autotune on it as well.
