This morning I did an auto-tune with my new carbon fiber gps antenna mast.
The process went much much faster than it ever had before.
Any suggestions on why auto-tune may go faster or slower? I’d like to opt for “faster” in the future.
If anyone is curious - I’ve uploaded the BIN file.
Autotune did run through all 3 axis in about 10 minutes but then you hit RTL mode via transmitter switch (channel 5, flight mode 6) and arducopter forgot all about the autotune it did.
You’ll need to run the Autotune again, but this time do not switch out of autotune mode. Just reposition, disarm and land, wait a few seconds then switch modes. now arm and fly with the new PIDs!
You can shorten Autotune by selecting just pitch and roll together (3) and doing yaw later (4), or even one axis at a time - but you seem to have battery capacity available.
AUTOTUNE_AXES,3
Thank you Shawn -
Maybe I mis-read the docs about auto-tune. I had auto-tune tied to an aux-switch and channel-7. I thought as long as the channel-7 activated auto-tune was kept on, the auto-tune values would stay until the final disarm - even if I used another flight mode after auto-tune completed such as RTL.
I looked at my PID’s afterwards, and there were just a few that had small changes in their values - maybe my records were wrong. But the copter was in pretty good tune to start with - so I assumed the auto-tune completed normally and only needed to make minor changes.
I’ll go back and run it again tomorrow - and just land after completion. I do have about 20 minutes of flight time available. Even more because I deactivated my GoPro’s power and VTX to conserve power even more.
But it was pretty curious - usually it takes a minute or two to start twitching. Today it started twitching immediately. And then the twitches went through their rotation pretty quickly compared to previous runs. I read the notes about being sure the sticks were calibrated so the FC doesn’t think there are pilot overrides by mistake. I didn’t do a new radio calibration - so there were no changes in that. The only change was the new carbon fiber gps antenna mast - which although taller, is much more ridged and perhaps causes less/different frame vibration.
Over all - especially since I have the FFT dynamic notch filter working - the copter is considerably better behaved. But I’d like to get it as finely tuned as possible - if for no other reason than to educate myself.
Thanks for the note about the partial auto-tune - I hadn’t noticed that option.
Regards
No. It’s overridden by any flight mode change. This confusion has caused many, many futile Auto Tune attempts. It doesn’t matter if Auto Tune is assigned a RC chan option or one of the 6 flight modes, same thing will happen.
Autotune does always try to start immediately and the typical thing that prevents it is sticks not centered.
Best to start from AltHold (or Loiter) then hit your Autotune switch.