Typhoon ARF kit with Aeroquad 32 + missing parts

[MartinL]

I got a Typhoon ARF kit with Aeroquad 32 from my brother (and a DX8 ). I planned everything out and started building and found that te 8 male bullet connectors (and heatshrink) for the power leads on the ESC were not in my kit! DOH!

Are they supposed to come with it? I looked at some other folks assembly pictures and no one seems to have said anything was missing... so either it is not supposed to come in the kit or everyone had the parts so they did not have any issues. The kit unboxing video... I think I see them in the bag with the power harness.

It is ok though! I just went to a local store and got some (they came in packs of three... with the heatshrink too!) so the build will continue! I can't wait!

[p0lar]

Good to know about the parts. Better to know you got the and you can continue. Video when you get it up...

[MartinL]

Everything seems to be assembled and working.

Some issues:

- I had to calibrate the ESC's individually (a question on that below).

- I do not have the propellers on yet. At low throttles the motors do not all turn on at the same time. Is that normal? I saw a thread somewhere f someone complaining about the same thing. As I very slowly increase the throttle, they actually spin up in sequence (1, 2, 3, 4 for the 'new' Quad X config).


My questions about the ESC and calibration:

Does the AQ just pass through the signal from the receiver (with a cutoff for the arm/disarm and such)? Or does it process and resend? Since I calibrated individually, does the AQ play those same ranges of signals to the ESC as the receiver does when I calibrated the ESC individually?


Thanks! Going to try a flight in a few hours.

[wooden]

The flight controller takes in the channel values from the receiver and plugs them into the PID controller along with the sensor data. Throttle is basically passed through (when armed) but the other channels are combined with sensor data to achieve the desired state.

For your motors not all arming at the same time, connect to Configurator, open the miscellaneous configuration menu, and increase MinArmedThrottle until all four motors turn on at the same time when you arm them. This value may be as high as 1250+ depending on your motors. Don't turn this up higher than you need to or it may take off upon arming.

ESCs all expect a range of values between 1000-2000us (PWM signal). Receivers all output within this range (1000 being minimum, 2000 being maximum), as does the flight software when sending values to the ESCs. Any values outside this range most ESCs just clamp to either min or max.

[MartinL]

Thanks for the info! That was a very clear explanation. I played with the MinArmedThrottle and right around 1165 and 1170 was a good setting of 'just on'.

Finishing the assembly went great. There was only one casualty... one of the nylon screw heads poped off (see attached picture)... a little too tight but it is an easy mistake to avoid, so the rest worked out fine. This particular screw is in an annoying place so I'm just leaving it like that.

I'm also attaching a picture of the almost final build. This was after my first flight session. Since the first flight, I have the attached the TM1000 and cleaned up the wiring... and since the second flight session I've attached the top plate that came with the kit (the aeroquad logo one).

First flight session went well. Pretty smooth with some expected close calls. It was in Attitude mode the whole time. I switched briefly into the Rate mode and it was moving too fast. I will stick with Attitude mode. I also may change some of the settings in the DX8 so its not so sensitive near the neutral positions (questions about this below).

Second flight session went a little worse. Lost control for a bit at the end and hit a hard piece of ground (uhh... well... concrete ) pretty hard, breaking a nylon screw holding a landing foot, then somehow flipping the typhoon over and one or two of the arms is now a little 'bent down'. I got them bent back up a little but I suspect it will be fine. I'll find out tomorrow. Also some of the nylon nuts around the motor mount snapped off with the screw tips. All replaceable .

Some more questions:

- When learning, it is recommended to a) make the transmitter a little less sensitive, b) adjust some of the settings on the AQ 32 to try and make it less sensitive, c) don't do anything, just leave defaults, d) other.

- On the PID Tuning page, there is this line: "Hold the AeroQuad securely in your hand, making sure to keep the props away from your eyes and arms." ... To me, this seems like a very bad idea with the Typhoon frame. Those propellers are so close it does not seem like it would be possible to hold and then wiggle around. Is it possible to hold it up from underneath? Or is it best to try and build a stand for this? I should probably wait until I am better at flying to even consider this.


Happy New Year!

[wooden]

1) Adjust the transmitter to be less sensitive. You can adjust Dual Rate (DR) and the exponential curves (EXPO). DR is basically the slope of the line corresponding to movement of the stick. A lower number reduces the slope of the line, a higher number increases the slope. 100 is default and means that if you push the stick all the way forward, it will read 100%. If you set this to 90 and push the stick all the way forward, the output will only be 90% of full forward. I'd set DR to between 80-90 for Roll, Pitch, and Yaw.

Expo, on the other hand, applies an exponential curve to the line. Basically, this can be used to make it more or less sensitive right around the center. A negative expo makes the line sort of flat around center, so small movements of the stick don't affect the output as much. Positive expo increases sensitivity around center. Default is 0, meaning there is no exponential curve. Set this to -10 or maybe even -20 when learning to further decrease sensitivity. I'd adjust both DR and expo if I were you, and if you find it's too dull/unresponsive, set the DR back to default and use only negative expo. Eventually you won't need either, and then even longer after that you'll probably want to make things more sensitive by increasing DR and expo!

2) It means to hold it from underneath. I wouldn't recommend holding any craft from above regardless of how well you think you're holding it. Hand tuning really isn't necessary, I tend to just skip that step with my crafts. The Typhoon ARF kit should fly pretty dang well with default PIDs, I wouldn't expect you to have to muck with them much. I'm guessing you think it needs to be tuned better, though - how is it flying now? Is it twitchy? Does it tend to drift over time? When you flick the pitch/roll stick (literally, flick it so it bounces around), how does it react?

[MartinL]

Thanks again for the excellent suggestions and explanation! After two more flights today, I think I am going to leave the defaults. I'm getting the hang of it and can keep it stable and very slowly get it to do what I want.

After your comment and reading some more, I do not think I need the PID tuning. It is really stable. Even when I flip for a bit into rate mode and jerk the stick around some... no oscillation and really responsive. However, there are some drifting issues... please read on!

I did two flights today. The first I had a nice flip out on take off. I guess I did not have a propeller on tight enough and I jerked the throttle to get a fast takeoff and a propeller flew off and flipping ensued. I made an animated gif... the forum upload did not like it, so I'll try to embed it from somewhere else. I hope it works.

The result of that flip was a broken rotor. Attached a picture (note the chip in the other propeller was from yesterday as was the bent landing foot). Also, somehow the #1 (in Quad X) motor shaft got bent and the orange part part wobbles just a bit too. This is the motor that had the propeller broken (not the one that flung off). I attached another picture of the motor.

I replaced all the chipped and broken propellers and did a second flight later which had no crashes. It flew stable even with the bend motor shaft. The altitude hold seems to be fairly stable... it goes up and down in about a 2 meter distance.


1. Should I try to replace the motor shaft and bearings... I can get the parts online. Will I gain any good experience trying to do that? I can also just get a new motor. What is recommended?

2. During both the first and second flight there were the following drifting issues:

- How do I know if the heading hold is working? It is always on, right? The yaw/heading was drifting in two cases. Right after takeoff in the first two feet it was yaw-ing left by almost 90 degrees by the time I was at 1 or 2 feet. I was able to keep get it back most of the time. Then once I am up and I try moving there is some yaw-ing (I forgot if left or right). It is not holding the heading, but it was yesterday.

- I have lots of constant little adjustments a bunch to keep it from moving around (separate from the yaw-ing). From reading I suspect this is fairly normal and due somewhat to calibration.

Are the above issues to do the one or two slightly bend down arms as a result of the crash yesterday (possibly compounded by the bent motor shaft? Are they a result of me re-doing the accelerometer calibration?

Thanks again! I'm going to be ordering a second battery and some helicopter landing gear later this week.

[wooden]

1) either one really. You definitely want to at least replace the shaft, the bearings are probably fine. It's up to you, replacing the shaft may or may not be easier (I've never owned those motors) than replacing the whole motor. Pick up some spare motors while you're at it, though.

2) gyro heading hold is always enabled. I don't trust the magnetometer heading hold - I've never had good experiences with it. Gyros are more than enough to keep it in place. Mag heading hold is really only useful for GPS/FPV flying when you want to know your absolute heading. It's not necessary for LOS flying.

Straightening everything out definitely would help stability but these crafts drift around a bit no matter what - the air is never perfectly still, the crafts are never perfectly balanced, there will always be vibration noise in the sensor data, etc. Constant adjustment is necessary most of the time. Once you figure out PID tuning and how to balance your crafts well you can go 30+ seconds without touching the sticks but it takes time and practice. Smaller crafts generally drift around more than larger ones, too, so don't be discouraged if you can't get the typhoon as solid as some of the larger crafts you see in videos.

[Airwolf]

2) gyro heading hold is always enabled.

That's not entirely true. The feature Heading Hold itself (either via gyro or mag) can be disabled, but it's enabled by default. You probably meant that if mag heading hold is not explicitly defined in the software gyro heading hold is used instead.

To verify whether Heading Hold is enabled or not, using the Configurator you can open the sub panel "Yaw Configuration" and check the "Heading Hold Config" value. A value of 0 means disabled, a value of 1 enabled.

[MartinL]

Thanks again for all the excellent information! I checked and the heading hold config is enabled.

If I upload new firmware/flight software do I have to redo the gyroscope/accelerometer/magentometer calibration? Or is that stored in the eeprom? I want to try to disable the magnetometer to see if that will fix my yaw issue (it was off on my first two flights, and then on during my second two flights).

I also was unaware that the battery monitor worked so I want to turn that on and see how the automatic descent on low battery works.