I have a simple, hopefully, question setting up “Manual” flight mode on Arduplane.
I understand that in many of the flight modes you do not use the trim tabs on the RC transmitter as the flight controller handles this. And you set the servo travel and direction in the flight controller as well. Does this also hold true for Manual flight mode, or do I have to set up servo travel, servo trim, and servo direction in the transmitter ? In the Docs for Arduplane it says
“Regular RC control, no stabilization. All RC inputs are passed through to the servo outputs set by their SERVOx_FUNCTION.”
So I am thinking I have to set up at least the trims for “Manual” Flight Mode.
Thanks
Rusty
Yes manual is full pass through. The flight controller is not modifying any pwm values from the tx during the flight, just forwarding them to the esc / servos.
As for direction, etc, As soon as you try to fly in any other mode than manual, you need to be sure you have the tx servo reversing and the flight controller channel reversing correct, ie if you arent careful, you can have a situation where it’s all good in manual, but if you choose any stabilised mode the fc will move the control surface the wrong way for corrections, so keep this in mind before you choose any other mode than manual
That is a concern, yes!
I thought there was a step by step procedure for setting up transmitter and FC to get the directions correct.
If I remember correctly it was something like set directions for FC modes first, then change direction in Manual mode if needed… Not sure thought, but I do remember s checklist to work through…
I just hold the model and put in fbw before every flight. Then move sticks to check rc direction is correct. Then move model and watch flight controller servo response to make sure it is correct.
Btw i dont see any yaw loop response, just pitch and roll, so it’s really only two axis to check by airframe movement
If your flying manual only, then it doesnt matter and you can have the tx wrong and the fc wrong and ‘two wrongs will make a right’ and it will fly fine in manual.
Yes, i guess if failsafe is set to rtl or whatever, that will cause the fc to attempt stabilized flight.
Then its best to always set all tx and fc channel reversing properly, and check before every flight.
RC inputs get mapped and scaled to servo outputs such that max RC input results in max servo output PWM. Realize that any input on the RC outside of the deadband results in a command being passed to the autopilot. So if you are in FBWA and your stick centered trim is commanding a negative theta the aircraft will try to achieve that.
There are a few ways to make sure that your aircraft is trimmed correctly. Do an RC calibration, fly in manual only to trim the aircraft out, land, check the stick centered trims servo outputs and copy those over to the servo output parameters. Similar to that option is the TRIM_AUTO parameter. This is dangerous. An updated version of that is SERVO_AUTO_TRIM.