If you are successful completing all the necessary calibrations, at some point you will have exercised the telemetry modems by connecting to M.P. For example, running the motor/compass test requires a remote connection.
I have seen no evidence to support your assertion that the arms of the Tarot vibrate excessively. Perhaps you can steer me to something to substantiate your claim?
Magfit is used for that today.
There has been several posts about excessive vibration levels on those frames, as yours has, from the folding mechanism. The joke is itâs easy to fix by mixing up a big batch of JB WeldâŚ
My point was that by doing the motor/compass test you are exercising the telemetry modem and verifying that you have a connection between the aircraft and Mission Planner.
Iâd prefer some sort of evidence rather than opinions.
In addition to @geofrancisâ answer, you will get telemetry from BLHeli with less-ish effort than you will with TMotor Alphas, which makes your life easier in several ways, and helps contribute to a system that has more meaningful data to analyze when things go wrong.
To get TMotor Alphas to report telemetry, youâll need a datalink module, extra wiring, and a Lua script.
Frankly the best youâre going to get on a community forum is anecdotal evidence, and hopefully enough of it to identify trends and correlations. At the end of the day, the system youâve built is unique in many ways, and not so unique in others. Maybe youâve posted your build in another place, I canât tell, but the best evidence youâll get for what is wrong with your system is to build a shake table and slap IMUs all over the place.
Edit: a word
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If I were to believe Dave that the Tarot design is fundamentally flawed and they all vibrate excessively then I would not have seen lots of Y.T. videos of people who have successfully built and flown them. I myself have built and successfully flown several Tarot 650 quads as well as a 690 hex. While Iâm not willing to assert that vibrations are causing my current problems, I would prefer to get advice based on evidence.
In a previous discourse, Dave had chastised me for flying my multirotor using default PIDS, asserting that it was dumb of me to do so, despite that the Copter documentation states âWith the default PID settings, ArduPilot will fly most RC vehicles safely right out of the box.â Consequently, I am wary of any of Daveâs advice.
As I recall you crashed that vehicle destroying the Flight Controller. Then built another craft and like itâs some Badge of Honor flew it with default PIDâs and what was the result? Massive output oscillation and terrible Attitude Control. And the vibration levels are excessive.
Letâs review.
Who thinks this is acceptable?
But perhaps 3 times a charm (didnât mention your APM FC based craft) when you build this next one.
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That quote comes from plane documentation, most planes are stable ie. will fly straight and level (âlevelâ depending on throttle setting), multirotors arenât.
Copter documentation says:
âThe first takeoff of an untuned multirotor is the most dangerous seconds of the aircraftâs life. This is where the aircraft could be very unstable causing a sudden increase in power when then results in the aircraft jumping into the air, or it may be so poorly tuned that you have insufficient control over the aircraft once it is airborne. The pilot should be extremely diligent during the tuning flights to avoid a situation that could result in injury or damage.â
Initial Tuning Flight â Copter documentation.
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So far itâs only been damage. But a 16" craft can certainly do some serious harm in the wrong hands. Itâs really incomprehensible to me the amount of time this pilot has spent fumbling with these multirotors over basic tuning.
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I think the segment about the frame warrants is own page. Where i would add that this frame is tricky to setup. I also say it could be a good fantastic idea to move to 11" or 14" props then do a little hardware de bugging.
Hardly tricky to set up. I have shortened the arms but will stick with the same motors and propellers.
My post is addressing long arms and big props. Now you say you have reduced the span. Basically, if you canât do this frame in a day or two something is wrong.
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Iâll pitch in that I too gave up on the Methodic Configurator and ended up using it as a supplementary guide to the official documentation rather than my step by step guide.
I didnât post about my experience at the time as I hadnt given the tool a fair shot and couldnât get my words down. But as we have the Devs attention here itâs worth me giving some feedback.
I found that the official documentation is equally methodic, guiding the user thru steps in order and explaining concepts.
Mission planner has some graphical sections that are more interactive than the methodic configurator.
I found that the tool takes the user down a fairly fixed route. Unfortunately I donât recall exactly what they were and why they didnât suit me.
Saying that, the methodic configurator adds a lot of extra info that isnât in the official guide, so I did use it as an extra source of knowledge. I would have struggled even more if the methodic configurator didnât exist, so thank you for that.
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Without that information, the software can not be improved.
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I tried to use AMC with a copter which is already flying quite ok. Motivation: Learning the tool. There are maybe things where the tool can help to improve and if satisfied use it from scratch for the next project.
The copter (S500V2 Pixhawk 6c) was originally configured following accurately the Arducopter documentation with some tuning efforts around voltage and current monitoring. The maiden flights were ok and now it got a HD cam and a GM3 gimbal.
Recently tried to connect to AMC, flagged several errors in topics which are actually out of discussion, consuming unnecessary effort (error in power monitor protocoll, hä??) Further I had the suspecion, while trying to make the tool happy, I am changing also the configuration of the aircraft, whithout notice . That was the point where I stopped using it.
Generally I have following question:
Is AMC an official Ardupilot tool or not ?
It tries to perform some configuration tasks like the Mission Planner, but is far behind of that.
In my projects I do follow the Ardu documentation. Because this is the official and most reliable procedure.
What is then the sense of using AMC ?
Yes that is a good idea and is also a documented usecase of the software
If you do not provide details, how can I fix them??
No, It will not do that. It clearly shows every single parameter it plans to change, you only change them if you want.
Yes, the official ArduCopter wiki recommends it and here.
The tool is part of the ArduPilot project developed in the same github account
No it is not, it is the other way around, here is a comparison:
| Feature | Mission Planner, QGroundControl, ⌠etc | ArduPilot Methodic Configurator |
|---|---|---|
| full automatic configuration | No | No |
| configuration type | manual [1] | semi-automated [2] |
| explains what to do | No | Yes |
| explains when to do something | No | Yes, explains the path |
| explains why do something | No | Yes |
| configuration method | a different menu for each task, some tasks have no menu, so you need to dig into the 1200 parameters | each task only presents you a relevant subset of parameters |
| parameter documentation | Yes, only on the full-parameter tree view | Yes |
| displays relevant documentation | No | Yes |
| makes sure you do not forget a step | No | Yes |
| checks that parameters get correctly uploaded | No (MP), unsure (QGCS), yes (MAVProxy) | Yes |
| reuse params in other vehicles | No, unless you hand edit files | Yes, out-of-the-box |
| documents why you changed each parameter | No | Yes |
| tutorials and learning resources | No, scattered and not integrated | Yes, context-aware help integrated |
| auto. install lua scripts on the FC | No | Yes |
| auto. backup of parameters before changing them | No | Yes |
Take a look at the YouTube videos explaining the sense of it
Thanks for the answers. At the next attept to use it I will report the error cases in a separate thread.
Well, yesterday, I tried to use AMC after having some oscillations. The community helped me with notch filters and later on it was suggested that I go for AMC. Since new to AMC, and was trying for quick fix, I literally messed up every thing. Now I have no clue what to do.
The developer developed it in a way so that if you configure using AMC and save it, it will make a template for others to copy and work on it and so the product gets matured with time.
But for people like me who have already done everything on ardupilot Mission planner, and then in the end phase switching to a new tool like AMC gave me a big demoralizing hit.
Now, my RC receiver wonât connect with the FC and the HUD on mission planner is tilted(not aligned). I had already installed the FC on frame and now doing the accel calibration would force me to remove FC from frame. But as I have messed up everything, I will start with AMC and try to figure things out. Letâs see. The developer is confident and promotes it and of course has done a very hard work has brought AMC to this stage, so I would definitely give respect to that.
Not advised for quick fix but yeah need to be explored more. Letâs see.