Mikrokopter Yikes, it has a mind of its own

[MombasaFlash]

After dealing with the errant blob of solder and the replacing the bits that fell of the BL-Ctrl board all seemed to be progressing quite comfortably. I happened upon a vid from good ole Holger that explained the Vario Altitude option and immediately adjusted one setting to include that as it looked good.

Then off to the field this morning. Started off with the previous Height Limitation mode setting and all was normal. Switched over to the Vario Altitude mode and again, everything looked fine. So flew around a bit and then suddenly the Octo went apesh1t in the air with violent pitching and looking like it was going to try upside-down flying. It did not seem to respond to commands very well but eventually I got it down (in the muddy ploughed field next door) without any damage.

After cleaning the mud out of the ends of the arms I tried again and everything was fine.

Huh?

And then it suddenly went A/S again and flipped on its back. WTF

 

[Droider]

You got an SD card in it?

 

[Bartman]

here we go again......
i pulled my SD card out.....i can live without the data if it means a long and healthy life for my equipment.
sorry to hear of the problems M-B-F

 

[RBlax]

Guys... My copter did this today. Took off and I had to fight it to get it back to me. I thought surely it was going out of range. At the time I had GPS position hold on and it sat there for a while then boom it was flying like the ****ens to get away from me. While giving thrust to climb in altitude to avoid telephone polls and trees I finally circled it back to me. Scared the mess out of me and pissed me off thuroughly.

I do not have an SD card in my copter. Wish I would have had one now... I'm wondering if the GPS lost signal?? During it's "mind of it's own" phase of flight I hit the CH toggle and nothing.. just kept flying the direction that it wanted. So with manual control I made a wide circle back to me and finally got it back over safe landing ground.

Strange things are happening. Any ideas?

 

[Droider]

Strange things are happening. Any ideas?

What firmware are you using on FC / Nav?

How long in to the flight did this happen?

What was your battery status?

 

[MombasaFlash]

... pissed me off thoroughly ...

Me too.

It didn't scare me though because I haven't warmed to the stupid insect yet.

How many of you use Macs in this MR PC world? I decided to get a netbook a while back to run the CARVEC and Picloc Windows Only programmes so that I didn't have to take a 17" MacBook Pro into the mud all the time. All these PC programmes are also installed on the Macs as backups using Parallels. KopterTools is now on all the computers. The big joke is that all these Windows programmes run better on the MacBook and the iMac than the PC.



I have no end of hassle getting both PiclocToolz and KopterTool to open properly on the netbook because the bl00dy drivers/COM ports don't get recognised/won't open/ blah,blah etc. There are of course 'workarounds' which have to be painstakingly discovered and, in the case of KoperTool, involve making sure the dongle is connected at bootup, then take it out and put it back, open KopterTool, get error message, call up Terminal, unplug dongle, select COM port, replug MKUSB dongle, hit DeBug .... and SOMETIMES Kopter Tool opens and SOMETIMES it even establishes a connection with the FC.

But if I use either of the Macs, I open Windows, turn on Tx and Octo, connect MKUSB to FC, open KotperTool and voila ... everything is ready. Every time.

Now I can willingly enter into a PC v Mac bash but that isn't the point. Do any of you Windows users know what the hell I am doing wrong.

Or is this all just ... er ... normal?

Cor, really had fun with the smileys there

 

[MombasaFlash]

UPDATE

Just got back from the field. All parameters had been reset to the defaults in 'Setting 3 Beginner' with two Altitude options enabled in two separate Settings.


First flight was uneventful with Height Limitation mode and everything worked. GPS Hold, RTH, Carefree and Altitude Hold after a fashion. Flight was kept deliberately boring and at close range.

Second flight was with Vario Altitude mode and it was the same (boring at close range), except that the Vario Altitude Hold works better - most of the time. It has a tendency to start bobbing sometimes and cannot seem to settle down. It needs to be turned off and put back on again.

Third flight it was allowed to venture out a bit and do a few figure of eights. Again, nothing untoward. Flight was steady, smooth and predictable.

Fourth flight it was allowed to go further out, to beyond where it went wild yesterday, and everything was smooth with no hiccups whatsoever.


So, somewhere in the flight parameters of the Setting yesterday there was an 'orrid number. Dunno wot because they were just default Setting 4 with camera mount end-points, gain and speeds adjusted only.

Whatever, I'm happy to stay a Beginner because I don't need fancy flight capabilities. I need a reliable, stable camera platform backup and nothing else.

Of interest is that (without camera or mount) all four flights lasted within a few seconds of each other before the LiPo alarm sounded ...
1. 13:14
2. 13:13
3. 13:12
4. 13:08

And just to illustrate how far back to the beginning I went ...

View attachment 842

 

[Bartman]

great flight times. for all the criticism people through at MK, they're very efficient.

 

[RBlax]

What firmware are you using on FC / Nav?

How long in to the flight did this happen?

What was your battery status?

FC = HW: V2.1 SW: V0.84a
Navi = HW: V2.0 SW V0.24e

I was about two minutes into flight. I was in a hover with GPS Hold and Altitude Hold. Out of now where it was like it got a new gps coordinate and took off. I turned off altitude hold and gained altitude to clear obstacles in it's path. I toggled CH and nada just kept going. I manually fought it making a wide circle back around to my field. Everytime I'd let off the control it would continue heading off. I literally had to fight to bring it back. Almost like fishing!! lol