As the title says, are the compass and/or barometer utilized when in Stabilzed mode?
If so is it possible for them to affect copter performance or even cause a crash?
Thanks,
Steve
The “simple” mode modifier (a checkbox in Mission Planner) determines whether the compass is used for heading. In Stabilize non-Simple mode, the compass is not used. The barometer is not used in stabilize, only in Alt Hold, Loiter, Auto et al.
Thank you!
That’s not correct.
The compass is always used in all modes. It plays a simple role to eliminate gyro drift on the Z axis. That’s really all that it does. Simple mode or not. Simple mode does not really look at the compass directly for any sort of control either. It’s the same thing, the compass just eliminates yaw gyro drift. The yaw control is still done primarily by the gyros.
It’s pretty hard to figure how the compass could cause a crash. The only way I could see, is a complicated mechanism whereby, say the compass was completely backwards. And you were flying highly dynamically. The AHRS uses GPS data to determine accelerations. If the compass was backwards, these accelerations would be backwards, and it would cause an AHRS error. But even that would likely be a fairly small effect, and it’s hard to see how it would cause a crash. It would have to be extreme circumstances.
The baro has even less effect. It’s really only used to stabilize the inertial altitude reference in Alt Hold and Loiter mode.
The one scenario where the compass can screw you up, is if it’s mounted wrong, or you’ve chosen the wrong orientation in the configuration. Roll-180, Yaw-90, something other than it really is. While this doesn’t hurt you in stabilized mode, as soon as you switch to something else Loiter or Auto, or invoke RTL and your copter takes off in an unexpected direction, over your head head and you lose orientation.
Yeah, that can crash you. BTDT.
While it’s not a direct cause, the miss-configuration is, and one can argue that “You shouldn’t have done that”, and “If you didn’t suck as a pilot you’d a saved that”.
It can all come down pretty quickly. 