Hoverfly Altitude Hold - best I can get is slowly dropping

[Benjamin Rowland]

I'm having trouble getting altitude hold to work effectively. I've tried several settings, but the best I can get it to do is to drop slowly. I've got a piece of foam covering the altitude sensor right now to block it from light. Any recommendations? Thanks!
-Benjamin Rowland

 

[Bartman]

ben
how is the foam held in place? is it open cell foam? if it's open cell then you can put it against your mouth and blow air through it. it shouldn't be mashed too tightly against the little hole in the pressure sensor.
bart

 

[Benjamin Rowland]

Bartman,

We're thinking along the same lines. I don't think the foam I'm using is right. I'll try some different foam and get this straightened out.

Are you having good success with altitude hold? I'm betting I'll get this straightened out. The HFP flies awesome in manual mode - it is rock solid.

thanks,
Benjamin Rowland

 

[Tahoe Ed]

Benjamin you don't need anything over the Altitude Sensor. It is fine the way it was designed.

 

[Stacky]

Ben the sensor is affected by light so the only thing you need to do is make sure its shaded from the sun, other than that it doesnt need to be covered.

 

[Bartman]

Bartman,

We're thinking along the same lines. I don't think the foam I'm using is right. I'll try some different foam and get this straightened out.

Are you having good success with altitude hold? I'm betting I'll get this straightened out. The HFP flies awesome in manual mode - it is rock solid.

thanks,
Benjamin Rowland

Ben,
I haven't really tried the altitude hold yet as I've been working on getting a handle on the camera mount settings and I think I"m close to having it dialed in.
I agree that it flies really well! Yesterday I cranked the travel for auto-level to 39 and it's now what I"d like it to be. It let's me fly and just gives a hint of help to keep it trending back to level when I'm reversing control inputs. Another day of tweaking then I'm going to add the GPS stuff and work through getting that tweaked.
Bart

 

[dalbert02]

Did you fix this yet? I have the same issue, she just slowly drops.

 

[Benjamin Rowland]

Did you fix this yet? I have the same issue, she just slowly drops.

About to do some more testing...

 

[PaNt]

what about the alt hold???!!

 

[Benjamin Rowland]

I got altitude hold working fine, but I haven't used it on a shoot. I'm a bit of a control freak, so I like to keep everything in manual. All of my shoots have been shot 100% manual flying mode, which works awesome with the Hoverfly / Cinestar combo.

 

[PaNt]

I got altitude hold working fine, but I haven't used it on a shoot. I'm a bit of a control freak, so I like to keep everything in manual. All of my shoots have been shot 100% manual flying mode, which works awesome with the Hoverfly / Cinestar combo.

Great... thats what i want to hear Because my CS8 and HFP are on its way..

 

[mbsteed]

I have had trouble getting altitude hold to work as well - it seems to either slowly come down or slowly go up - depending on the gain setting. It seems difficult to get it dialled in correctly.

 

[Stacky]

Are you hovering relatively steady when enabling AH?. I used mine for the first time in a real life situation a few days ago. A battery alarm went off on my gorund station while flying fpv so I got my Hexa steady put on AL and then AH and then took off my goggles to deal with the alarm. I could see my Hexa in the distance and on a small video screen i have on my ground station. It held steady for me for about 20 seconds while I dealt with the alarm however I was too far away to know what sort of rise and climb was taking place. I was about 50 meters up. I dont have the OSD hooked up on this hexa yet so couldnt check with that for altitude. Its not a feature I have tried out much but was nice to have it work as the situation required. I know from experience that the NAZA I used to have had a very accurate AH.

I just wonder if we enable AH while climbing or descending if on the HFP it still has some ability to climb or descend depending on the amount of throttle when first enabled?.

 

[DucktileMedia]

Bart, how did you get your AL at 39 to not be so aggressive? I'm missing something here. Yes the manual mode flies extremely well, in fact so well I may learn to just forget about ever using AL. BUT WTF is the point in buying all this fancy computer controlled multirotor equipment over a single rotor heli if you HAVE to fly it in manual to get a decent shot??? I am going to be really pissed if this is the case as i would have never bought this. The idea is to add piece of mind with having some assistance in a stressful environment. I think this is a reality that hoverfly needs to quickly address. I cant see 1 gain being able to adjust enough parameters to satisfy the variety of configurations out there.

 

[PaNt]

What did you change to work fine in AH mode?? EEe Benjamin??!

 

[Bartman]

Bart, how did you get your AL at 39 to not be so aggressive? I'm missing something here. Yes the manual mode flies extremely well, in fact so well I may learn to just forget about ever using AL. BUT WTF is the point in buying all this fancy computer controlled multirotor equipment over a single rotor heli if you HAVE to fly it in manual to get a decent shot??? I am going to be really pissed if this is the case as i would have never bought this. The idea is to add piece of mind with having some assistance in a stressful environment. I think this is a reality that hoverfly needs to quickly address. I cant see 1 gain being able to adjust enough parameters to satisfy the variety of configurations out there.

yuri,

at some point you have to chill out a little bit and work through things. nothing works perfectly out of the box and your experience with dji is working against you in that you expect everything to be like dji and it isn't.

did you ever try adding exponential to pitch and roll like i suggested?

from hanging around this site i've learned that 90% of the time our problems are self inflicted. are you using your radio in Acro mode? did you double check to make sure all of the mixes are off or clear? where are your batteries? if they're both hanging on the legs then maybe they're what is causing your helicopter to snap back to level. my batteries are laterally placed about the plane of the fc (or thereabouts)

 

[StormRU]

Bart, how did you get your AL at 39 to not be so aggressive? I'm missing something here. Yes the manual mode flies extremely well, in fact so well I may learn to just forget about ever using AL. BUT WTF is the point in buying all this fancy computer controlled multirotor equipment over a single rotor heli if you HAVE to fly it in manual to get a decent shot??? I am going to be really pissed if this is the case as i would have never bought this. The idea is to add piece of mind with having some assistance in a stressful environment. I think this is a reality that hoverfly needs to quickly address. I cant see 1 gain being able to adjust enough parameters to satisfy the variety of configurations out there.

Be careful in your critics about hoverfly from now. There are some blind lovers moving here from RCG who cant stand of critics to HF )
Totally agree with you. There a lot of issues hoverfly should quickly fix. A lot!

As for AH, I have 4.3.802 on cinestar 6. it jumps within 1 meter. this is the best i could achieve playing with AH gain.

 

[Photronix]

We don't need comments like this here.

Be careful in your critics about hoverfly from now. There are some blind lovers moving here from RCG who cant stand of critics to HF )
Totally agree with you. There a lot of issues hoverfly should quickly fix. A lot!

As for AH, I have 4.3.802 on cinestar 6. it jumps within 1 meter. this is the best i could achieve playing with AH gain.

 

[StormRU]

We don't need comments like this here.

Here they come

Photornix, do not take it tooooooo serious. I will try to be a nice-tone-attitude customer, but do not expect me not to tell about problems your products have when I own them..

 

[Benjamin Rowland]

Here they come

Photornix, do not take it tooooooo serious. I will try to be a nice-tone-attitude customer, but do not expect me not to tell about problems your products have when I own them.

It's his business. Of course he's going to take it serious. He and the rest of his team have worked really hard and continue to do so.
They're more than willing to listen to constructive feedback, just present it with the respect that you would like people to give you.