Idea for flightmode switch

[ziisco]

Hi,

As you might know I've tested out arducopter2 a bit the last days. They have quite a lot of flight modes and the flightmodes setup menu in their "configurator" to let the user select which flightmode is used on which switch position.

Once we have GPS hold, waypoint nav, etc. working we'll also need something like this. using an R/C channel for each mode won't work.

I think we should also go for 3-way switches on the transmitter (most transmitter have some) and let the user choose what mode is used on which switch and position. example:

Switch 1 (the one we currently use for rate / attitude mode)
1000-1250 mode 1 -> attitude mode
1251-1500 mode 2 -> rate mode
1501-2000 mode 3 -> altholde

Switch 2 (the one we use for althold)
1000-1250 mode 1 -> GPS position hold
1251-1500 mode 2 -> GPS waypoint nav
1501-2000 mode 3 -> GPS postion and althold (loiter)

the good thing is, if you have just 2-way switches you can still control 2 modes per switch and we don't need separate handling for that because the 1251-1500us position is just not there then.

what do you think? more than 3 modes per switch is not practicable in my opinion, also more than 2 switches for mode selections are complicated. if you're concentrated on flying and need to think about 6 modes on one switch or 6 modes on 3 switch it has to end badly in a crash

[Honk]

Question is really how often you wanna switch modes on your craft while in-field/flight. I always fly with attitude mode on AQ and always in dynamic GPS mode with DJI and never switch them. Maybe that's because I only am trying to make AP/AV and no real flying. But if you're a real flyer I think you'd always stay in rate mode anyways.

Personally I like having one mode selected (in EEPROM or something) only all the time and use the radio for other fun things like camera angle offset, shutter triggering, zoom, focus etc. Even landing gear extractor would be funny. Or controlling a gripper... Or controlling gains when it gets windy!

For flight I like everything as automated as possible, if I don't do anything on the transmitter I'd ultimately want the craft to stay where it is and for the craft to move at a constant speed if the sticks were constantly off-center. Maybe that's only me.

Another possibility if you although would wanna switch between thousands of flight modes in-flight would be to just use a proportional channel (pot/slider) and assign like 10 flight modes to it with some kind of user feedback to indicate what mode you are in. Alternatively do it all from an Xbee if you're hooked up to a ground station.

[Kenny9999]

I'm the first one to look into others code/idea, but, for now, I adopt a simplistic way

Position hold is mixed with altitude hold, so, when enable, alt hold and position hold are enabled together, I wanted to have something like a position bump, but, not for now, and I use the 7e channel for navigation..., navigation need alt hold anyway and override position hold switch.

[Derfla]

somebody has done this? http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/...switch-for-apm
seems pretty good to me and frees up the other channels for other things! but do you really need 6 different flying modes haha?
how is the APM 2.0? i was considering one for my next flying machine it's got soo many awesome features!

[ziisco]

somebody has done this? http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/...switch-for-apm
seems pretty good to me and frees up the other channels for other things! but do you really need 6 different flying modes haha?
how is the APM 2.0? i was considering one for my next flying machine it's got soo many awesome features!

that's cool that's why they have 6 switch positions in their configurator to setup. you can choose freely which mode is on what switch position.

I agree that 6 flight modes will never be needed and as honk described you normally fly just in one mode. but we are not yet there where DJI wookong is. we'll have a long way experimenting with GPS hold / nav, althold, etc... because like attitude and rate PIDs it will be different on different mutlirotors. so you'll at least need to switch between attitude mode, GPS hold (maybe combined with althold) or just althold.

arducopter does also have the ability to choose a channel with a pot to change gains in flight. I agree with honk that this could be really useful.

anyways It's nothing we need now, there are a lot of higher priority things of course.

how is the APM 2.0? i was considering one for my next flying machine it's got soo many awesome features!

I did order one but seems out of stock. as far I read in forums it's not doing better / more than APM/IMU does atm. I read DCM will work a bit better, but I doubt it'll be better than our attitude mode. The arducopter2 on my APM I tried some days ago was not really fun to fly and PID tuning was a pain).

the digital gyro / accels are the same as the baloo board has in the current version. I think it's not worth buying it once baloo is released. but adapting AQ to it should not be a big problem once we have the code (and I guess honk / ala / kenny allready have in AQ32) for the sensors.