What swashplate option does ardupilot currently have?

ArduCopter Traditional Helicopter
1

I am looking to see if ardupilot would be a good system for me to use on a few projects i am working on.
I was looking through the online manual found on the site and it was very specific about the swashplate setup, that makes me think that only 120* eCCPM is supported. Am I correct? can the system output to a standard mechanical 4 servo setup? 4 servo eCCPM? can it run a tandem helicopter? any help would be appreciated.

BTW I did try searching for this stuff, got no search results on most of it.

Thank you.

2

Hi Robbert,

… that makes me think that only 120* eCCPM is supported. Am I correct?

No, you have 3 swash plate servo outputs, which can be arranged by typing in degrees (i.e. 120° → -60°, 60°, 180°)

can the system output to a standard mechanical 4 servo setup? 4 servo eCCPM?

No, only 3 servos till today, but yes you can disable swash mixing etc.

can it run a tandem helicopter?

Maybe, I think somebody wrote code for it, search in the pull requests and diydrones.com. No in terms of plug and pray in the current version. Yes, if you provide the FBL-unit (3SX manual [tandem mixer]) and you need stabilization and waypoint flying (autopilot functionality) and before you ask, no I didn’t try it and have no experience with it.

3

Thank you for the quick reply.
I was really hoping that I could get regular non-swash mixing outputs from these units. So that is good.
Can you point me in the direction of somebody that has tried adding the external FLB units? tandem or otherwise.
I am just wondering how the workload is divided between the 2 units, since the 3SX unit also has gyros providing stabilization does the Ardupilot get disabled and used for GPS and altitude only?

4

BTW I did try searching for this stuff, got no search results on most of it.

Are you sure ?

Can you point me in the direction of somebody that has tried adding the external FLB units? tandem or otherwise.

Tridge (developer), Zhangsir, etc.

I am just wondering how the workload is divided between the 2 units, since the 3SX unit also has gyros providing stabilization does the Ardupilot get disabled and used for GPS and altitude only?

Yes

5

@reaper64D Support for 4-servo was rejected but is available here. Support for tandem and transverse helicopters is available as a pull-request here.

6

thank you for the update.
I am new to this forum, could explain what the “pull-requests” are?
are they programming options in progress or ready for use?

7

Tridge made more possible: Chinook heli support in ArduPilot

8

@fhedberg I think we should revive the patch that supports 4-servo swash.