Temporarily disable rangefinder from RC switch?

Using AC3.4.6 with SF/11C rangefinder and Optical Flow.

I was doing some filming the other day, requiring constant altitude flying between two points.

In the flight path between these points, there were some small buildings which caused the copter to keep adjusting its altitude, so I ended up using stabilize mode.

In other situations, (e.g. maintaining constant height above ground flying over a sloping hill) the rangefinder is incredibly useful.

It would be great if I could enable / disable the rangefinder from an RC channel depending on the situtation.

Is this possible somehow?

Justin, yes, you can configure channel 8 to enable/disable the rangefinder. Check drop down menu in Config/Tuning | Extended Tuning on Mission planner for instance.

2 Likes

Thanks for your reply Olivier, I found the setting you mention (Sonar) from Ch7 /Ch8 options.

I’m wondering what impact disabling the rangefinder via RC switch has on Optical Flow (which requires a range finder)… I presume Optical Flow is also switched off in this case?

Hi Justin,

I’m not 100% sure, but I think optical flow will continue to work. It’s a little hard to explain, but it will stop using the rangefinder in Copter functions (like following terrain) but not affect the position estimate from our library (as it will use the information directly from the rangefinder).

1 Like

Thanks Francisco.

I think I understand… Disabling Sonar via RC switch means that Pos hold / alt hold etc will not use the rangefinder data for Altitude, but the rangefinder distance is still used with optical flow data to estimate the horizontal position only?

I will try anyway and see what happens!

Justin