Freefly Radian Owners' Thread

T

Tabb Firchau

Member
E-Copter said:
He designed the most kick a.. system for helicopters and is the pioneer in some ways...

I used to fly the " Workfly" concept prototype in Paris in.. 2005 , with the Carvec System. The only system that could drive that thing and any helicopter. It had EVERYTHING : logs on sd cards, waypoints, stabilisation of aircraft, gimbal...

Some company ripped off his work ( a well known manufacturer i would even say) and i did not read about John since long time. Glad to know he is behind this stabilisation system, knowing the guy he would never release something that is not proven to work more than prefectly !

Bradley Engineering uses still a Carvec System on their gasser heli, and it operates since 7 years... That says about the reliability of the system..

It only brings me to one conclusion : Radian it will be, with the navigation system i'm testing actually ! :)

Best regards

Fabien
Click to expand...


Fabien, you are 100% right. I was an early adopter of the CARVEC system and it was John's excellent system which allowed me to excel in the Aerial Cinematography industry. He was about 10 years ahead of the nearest competitor! I have flown his systems all over the world from the frozen Arctic to deserts in the middle east all with 100% reliability.

His excellent track record made him the clear choice for Freefly's software engineer. He is also pretty funny ;)
 

E

E-Copter

Member
Hi Tabb,

Yeah he is a very nice man, please say him " Hello" from the French Fry who flew the Workfly in early 2005 if you see or call him :)

To answer questions about drift, here is how things work ( very basicaly) : MEMS gyros can drift. This is why Accelerometers are used to correct that drift. But more than that, you need also to have temperature drift free sensors ( either temperature drift free from fctory of sensors, either perform a temperature calibration once PCb's are manufactured).

The mistake of DJI making their gimbal drift is a common mistake: they use maybe an inertia central " box", but this is located on only one axis and will absorb all vibrations of all axis combined and will have to deal with the 3 axis combined accelerometers data and compute the drift correction for each single axis instead.

On John's stuff, i guess he made one little box with one sensor for each axis, allowing each axis to deal with it's own sh.., making it rock solid ! Maybe also he added a small compass, i just don't know :))))

If you use a closed loop PID then the compass will correct all informations and allow to correct the drift, but in open loop PID, if the software and hardware are not in adequation... will not work for long..

I'm not sponsored by Radian System ( yay i would love to loool !!), but i can say frankly that if John is behind the software, he has much more experience than most of "' professional" designers of autonomous systems all together and i would trust his work 300% !

There is one thing people don't know and that is an interresting fact:


John never knew how to pilot a RC helicopter. So he designed the Carvec System to be able to be assisted in flight all time, even at hover and landing. And he succeeded, if you look at his old website, you will find videos at some heigts that were simply unbelievable at that time. And OSD was stock !

Best regards,

Fabien
 

Bartman

Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
thanks for the background info folks. lots of impressive experience and knowledge at work. :)
 

seattle_helo

seattle_helo

Member
I had the pleasure of meeting and spending a little bit of time with John and it's difficult to overstate how impressed I was. The man is truly brilliant. But even more incredible than his knowledge and skill was his ability to explain things at a very high level so that even an idiot like me could somewhat understand it. A very kind, good man. The dude is solid gold.

Fabien, fascinating breakdown of drift and gyros.

nick
 


Droider

Droider

Drone Enthusiast
Radion Test

The Radion is fitted only to the roll. I will look at fitting one to the tilt after seeing the video from the CX730.

John C hows the wiring!? ;-)

Tabb - hows the gains looking?

It was wind to. check out the GPS hold at 1.52 to see how the ADX3 is leaning into the wind.

Dave

 
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ZAxis

ZAxis

Member
Dave, your video does show the Radian does the job for roll rather nicely. What gain setting ? I'm around 130
When you get the tilt fitted it will be interesting to see what gain you need to set. I'm set around 35. It did seem important to get the CX balanced back to front but that gets compromised a bit by the need to pull the viewfinder back to power up the camera. Also the height you have to drop the camera cradle to means that you have to camera c of g below the pivot line which will put a strain on the servo at extreme tilt. Ours copes well even with these compromises.

andy
 

P

PaNt

Member
Droider said:
Radion Test

The Radion is fitted only to the roll. I will look at fitting one to the tilt after seeing the video from the CX730.

John C hows the wiring!? ;-)

Tabb - hows the gains looking?

It was wind to. check out the GPS hold at 1.52 to see how the ADX3 is leaning into the wind.

Dave

Click to expand...

This thing doest do anything..:( :( :( oups..
 
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Droider

Droider

Drone Enthusiast
PaNt
This thing doest do anything.. oups..
Click to expand...
Ehhhh! What u talking about Willis! Explain further.. U mean my vidoe does not show anything?

Jes
I have to agree - thanks for posting it and all that - but one would need to see the video from the stabilised camera to assess how well it's holding the horizon.
Click to expand...

So u cant see how its holding the horizon?

I posted this to show the gimbal working with a much better response rate than the WKM can manage.

I will post video from the CX730 but this was to show the Radian working.

Andy its just at factory at the moment. I dont know I am going to fit the tilt to this MR yet.. I need to see if the results on the roll

Dave
 

P

PaNt

Member
I ordered the Radian and as i see from your video it doesnt do what is advertised to do....:(:( i wish that its because of bad tuning or slow servos..:(
 


M

Michael64

Member
Just my 2 cents you cannot tell what its doing from the view shown you see the mount working but how well you do not know. You have to show the footage from the camera to be able to judge anything about the Radian and gimbal setup.

Michael64
 

Droider

Droider

Drone Enthusiast
Its the end result that matters.. Am uploading some now. I am on mobile so its only mobile quality.. but its the th dogges jobber for my purposes. I am flying a Y6 AV130 and CX730. for what I want its a huge step forward.

Dave
 
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Droider

Droider

Drone Enthusiast
Video 1

Off to bed but will leave another uploading so check the Youtube channel in an hour or so. I am on mobile BB so is all I can do to upload low res stuff

Dave

 
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