Mission Planner AutoTune

Hello there,

I’m a newbie and I have a Pixhawk 1, so far is working fine, so I decided to see if it’s possible to have it fly better by following some tutorials on the internet by Auto tunning the parameters of the Pixhawk and Mission Planner. I will not go deep into how I did it but more into the results and how the Mission planner works with the process. After landing and connecting the Pixhawk to the Mission planner I can see the values have successfully changed in the Extended Tunning tab, based on the tutorial I follow the process takes 15 min to complete, so with my 3S battery, it will get close to flying for that time but not enough for the process to be completed. I have been repeating the process but my battery will drain down before it gets completed, so my question is:

*.- Is there a way for me to save what I have done so far and continue with the auto-tunning process on the next battery fly?

*.- In the auto-tune, it’s possible to lock some parameters skipping them to be changed when I’m running the auto-tune process, or pre-select only those I would like to be changed o modified by the auto-tune?

*.- It’s possible to export/import these parameters once I’m happy with the results?

I really appreciate all your help and I’m looking forward to seeing your replies regarding this topic. If it’s there any question please feel free to contact me back I’ll be more than happy assisting you.

Regards,

I’m going to assume you are talking about Copter, and not plane.

You can select what axis to tune. So if you don’t have enough battery life for all three axis, you can individually tune pitch, roll, and yaw. Check: AUTOTUNE_AXES

To have autotune save the parameters the autotune routine must finish all the axis you have selected. Then land and disarm in autotune mode. This is very important, if you switch out of autotune and disarm in another mode your parameters will not be saved.

When you connect to mission planner again your new parameters will be visible on the tuning pages. You can export the parameter file to use do what ever with. MP saves parameters as text files so they are easy to read outside of MP. MP also has a compare function so if you save the parameters pre-tuning, you can see what’s changed after tuning. I use this feature a lot.

If the tuning doesn’t finish, or you need to abort it, you can go through the flight log and read the values that were obtained in different stages of the tune. It’s not straight forward and takes some time to decipher. I haven’t done it AC4.1.x yet so maybe the messages have changed, but in 4.0.x you need to pick your way through.

But before you do any of this make sure you’ve set up the initial parameters using the Alt-A plug-in in Mission Planner. And follow every step of the tuning guide. Tuning Process Instructions — Copter documentation

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If you are not achieving tuning at least an axis in 15min, then you are doing something wrong.
Sometimes I can autotune 3 axes in less than 5min when there is absolutely no wind.
Most common error is to tuning at a bad weather.
Wait for some time to calm wind.
Might be a good idea to send *.bin logs after the next time.

Hello Allister,

Thanks for your reply, Yes!, is Copter sorry I didn’t identify the craft. So I read all the links and follow your instructions, based on their documentation compared with the results and the numbers showing in the parameters my drones look like it has completed the auto-tune process. after that I fly the drone, and yes! feels better and stable and responsible than before, I am very happy with the results, for now, I will continue with others things I’m trying to get them to solve.

Thanks for all your support and Happy flying.

Regards,

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Hell Mustafa,

Thanks for your reply. I followed the instructions and I was able to see the values change in the MP menu, but because I was not sure how long the auto-tune will take to complete I was wondering if I was doing something wrong, however I flew the drone after the changes and I’m very happy with the results now it’s better than before.

I really appreciate all your help.

Regards,