Bendyruler issues with 4.5 - and Circle - Dijkstra fine

ArduRover Rover 4.5
1

I’m having some trouble with both Circle and Bendy Ruler.

I have a rover I built some time ago, and eventually was pretty happy with a Pixhawk 2.4.8 and Rover 4.2.3. I tried to upgrade to 4.4 a few times, but there was always something off/wrong/bothersome about it so I held off.

I finally upgraded to an H7 FC. I moved my previously working tune parameters over, and have a working rover again.

I went to run a mission, and found that the rover would chase the first way point and never get to it, nor even near it. It would run back and forth a few times, then stop.

I thought I’d try the new LUA auto-tune, so the first time ever I tried to run a CIRCLE.

In CIRCLE, the rover drives forward a certain distance, then stops and that’s the end of it.

No attempt to turn left or right or actually execute the circle.

I went back to my Missions, and found that if I switch to Dijkstra, the rover makes a pretty crisp path to the first waypoint, and continues on from there, much like I previously experienced.

If I turn back to Bendyruler, it doesn’t work.

If I switch to Dijkstra+BendyRuler, I’m back to never getting to WP 1.

Back to Dijkstra, and I ran a 90 WP mission three times in a row, doing fine.

Suggestions on which step(s) I missed? Is there a relationship between CIRCLE failing and BendyRuler?

BendyRuler Failure

Circle Failure

I also need to get better at “reading” the BIN logs for the root causes.

2

These sound like fundamental tuning issues. How does it drive in acro mode? If the answer is “I don’t know,” then you skipped a number of steps.

Use Rover 4.5.4.

3

That was my first assumption - that I needed to retune after upgrading - so I know it seemed to handle just fine in acro, and works fine in auto when I don’t choose Bendyruler.

I did purposefully lower the turn rate for skid steer turns from the measured almost-360deg rotation to 180 - the vehicle made the 360 turns just fine, but when pulling a trailer it tended to bend the tongue when it would pivot so fast.

I intended to try out the auto tune script to see how close or far I was from what it would recommend, but that’s when I found it won’t turn into the circle.

I’ll see what I can do about more refined tuning.

It seems odd that it does fine on the mission as long as I don’t enable Bendyruler and this with .02m WP radius (on the old config I was using .01m successfully with Bendyruler before the navigation upgrades in 4.4+)

Currently on 4.5.4 on the Zealot H7 FC.