I wonder what would be the interest level for an online seminar on how to analyze and interpret flight logs.
I think there are a few people out there who can do crash and pid tuning analysis using the logs, but many are probably in the dark. It would be nice to hear from experts what data they look at and how they diagnose problems using the flight logs. Perhaps two cases (crash and pid turning) could be analyzed live to illustrate the logic behind all.
What do you think? Any volunteer instructors out there? I would for sure be representing the student end…
I’d be happy to run some seminars. If you can get 5 or 10 people interested in attending, and some good example logs to look at, then I’d be happy to setup a zoom call and even live stream it to anyone who is interested.
Maybe 3 example logs of different types of aircraft, and a 2 hour slot? I’m in Canberra, so it would need to be in a friendly time zone.
Note that I would use MAVExplorer for the demo.
Cheers, Tridge
I would certainly love to attend. I have read countless threads about “I crashed, please help me figure out why”. I’d love to attend a Tridge seminar entitled “here’s how to read your logs, identify problems and fix them before you crash”.
I think the issue is that there is not an easy way to create a LOG analysis seminar. At least not one that helps understand issues beyond general configuration, mechanical, user or setting failures.
To fully understand the logs you have to be familiar with the internal workings of the Ardupilot code. Must understand how it’s peculiar EKF implementation is working. How the numerous PID loops are intertwining.
Some parts are only learnable from the code itself, which is also constantly changing.
So you need background knowledge of control theory, sensor fusion, c++ programming and flight mechanics as well. But if you well versed in these, then you can figure out from the code how to analyze a log
I understand that most in-depth log analysis takes some working knowledge of the code and mechanical properties - but I assume this seminar would be more about the base level log analysis that covers 90% of the posts in this forum.
Maybe instead of a seminar this would be better distributed as succinct edited videos that cover the various troubleshooting topics. Some of the following should cover the majority of aircraft problems/failures:
ArduCopter Videos
Flip on Maiden (Motor Directions, Ordering, etc.)
“Bad” Response (PID Analysis)
Motor Failure (Sharp PWM Max to Motor)
Toilet Bowling (Compass Interference)
Underpower Aircraft (PWMs > 1700 in Hovering)
Basically this page but in video form. If we could direct people to videos that cover all of these topics then I think that would potentially solve 90% of the issues that are taken up on this forum. Regardless, maybe the point of a seminar would be to collect a list of topics that the community would deem useful to have videos for and slowly build up this database.
For what it’s worth I would volunteer my time making this documentation but am probably not proficient enough to provide the level of documentation that would be created by the developers.
I think we have the critical mass for a seminar and thank you Tridge for your availability for assuming the seat of the instructor. Now what is missing are a few logs representing diverse aircraft types and situations.
For the aircraft, I suggest
A basic flying wing like AR Wing Pro or X8
A traditional fuselage wing configuration
A VTOL version of either one of the above
As for the situations, we could analyze
a) A crash
b) PID tuning
I do not think it natters if we analyze an old log from some of the previous discussions which there are plenty of on the forum. If we can get a few nominations with links to the log and associated pages , then Tridge could select based on his own preference. Tridge, if you already have your own logs underhand which would serve for a didactic analysis, they should work equivalently well.
I was not aware of this piece of work, I will assist it. Thanks for sharing it.
I still think an additional seminar or two can serve well with increasing exchange of knowledge and experience across the users and developers. I understand that it is no easy task to design the seminar but we should experiment until we find a sweet spot.
@Albcem sounds good. We could make this a regular thing and turn it into a series of videos on the ArduPilot youtube channel, especially if someone is happy to do a bit of video editing.
Can you work out what time suits most people? Would need to be between 8am and 7pm Canberra time. I can do most days, except:
not my Sunday, as I’m always out doing test flights on Sundays
Tuesday morning and Wednesday evening Canberra time is the ArduPilot development calls, so can’t do then
(as a student)