Tau Labs RX wiring harnes

Kilby

Active Member
So my CC showed up today. I've been able to get it installed & firmware loaded and have worked my way through some of the configuration, but I'm hitting a stumbling block and I'm hoping someone can help me diagnose the problem. For some reason after I run the rc input calibration and then check the stick positions on the tx compared to the ones on the screen it's no where near the same. I'm not sure what's going on, but I can push the left stick up and it will effect both of the sticks on the screen. Could I have my rx wiring harness out of wack? I didn't see any documentation on how it should be hooked up, so I just matched what I had with my Flymentor previously (same color scheme).

I'm using a spektrum 6110 rx and I have it wired up like this:

organge = Throttle
white = aile
yellow = elev
dark grey = rud
blue = gear
green = aux1

Any help would be appreciated.
 



Kilby

Active Member
Thanks for the quick reply, I may not have explained this properly though. I have loaded the pwm firmware and can connect the board and see the everything interacting, I just don't get the proper response from the sticks when I compare it to the ones on the screen. I push right stick seems close, left stick is way off.
 

dankers

Member
I'm using a spektrum 6110 rx and I have it wired up like this:

organge = Throttle
white = aile
yellow = elev
dark grey = rud
blue = gear
green = aux1

Any help would be appreciated.

Never heard of flymentor and I did the color scheme, the chances of it being the same are not high. You can only get cables in so many colors, so I suspect this is why they are the same.

I have mine like this:

View attachment 374

Throttle = Black, Red, while
Aileron = Blue
Elevator = Yellow
Rudder = Green
Gear = Orange
Aux 1 = Purple
 

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berkely

Member
... but I can push the left stick up and it will effect both of the sticks on the screen. ... so I just matched what I had with my Flymentor previously (same color scheme).

Just my first idea..

Since you have 2 channels moving on 1 stick input, do you have any mixing active in the transmitter.. (Since you mention a flymentor, but that's for helis right?)

Regards.
B.
 

Kilby

Active Member
Dankers had it... sorted me right out.

Now I have something else acting up though. The yaw channel in my tricopter is not working as expected. The GCS can see the movement of the stick, and it allows me to arm the copter with the Yaw Right action, but it doesn't actually send a signal to move the servo once it's armed and ready. The raw mixer settings look to be right on for the channel that I set (channel 4). I do notice that if I hit "Get Current" that everything returns except the yaw channel assignment. That seems a little odd, but not sure if it does exactly what I think it does.

Any ideas on what I should be looking at?
 


dankers

Member
Just checking, I actually think you have. I have seen a bug before where the mixer does not get saved correctly, one work around is to selected a Quad +, hit save and then select tricopter again and save it again, then set up output channels including the yaw channel and then save it.

I thought we had all the mixer stuff solved, if this is what you are seeing I need to know as I will ask Edouard to look to it.
 

Kilby

Active Member
I have set it, but I think you are correct. It doesn't appear to save it correctly. I can get nothing but a little bit of servo chatter. No stick response. I tried channels 5&6 as well and same thing.
 


You're right there is a bug in the config gadget. After you do you're normal configuration and save it you'll have to tweak things. Go to the UAVObjectBrowser, go down to MixerSettings and expand it. Find Mixer4Type and click on it. Click Request. In my case in came back disabled, but should be Servo. Select Servo in dropbown box, click Send and Save.

I uploaded a quick video of this:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6645063/TricopterConfigWorkaround.mp4
I started with a wiped board and the servo moved at the end.

Also uploaded to YouTube but I don't know if it will transcode and I'm going to the pool :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf0_ArnKjKE
 

dankers

Member
So basically what happened there is there is a bug where even if selected in config and saved, the GCS is not assigning any output channel to the tail servo for a tricopter.

What James does as a workaround is go to the UAVObject browser and select the right output (in the video channel 4) and tell it to be a servo. This is what the Config gadget in the GCS is meant to do behind the scenes.
 



I'm not sure - it seems like the setting goes at first but then ends up wrong. I don't think it's in the flight firmware side because I had no problems through the object browser, but we did a lot of behind-the-scenes changes to make this more robust. However, I think the Mixer doesn't work perfectly yet because it's saving two objects sequentially and there is no feedback when the save fails (or automatic repeat).

It's these little bugs which are why we aren't willing to call the software V1.
 

Kilby

Active Member
I'm going to give it another try today, but I had mixed results yesterday with the recommended solution. While I was able to get some signal sent to the yaw servo, it was the wrong signal. It just tied to the throttle channel. Every time I would give throttle up, the yaw would rotate on direction, throttle down sends it in the opposite direction. Yaw stick movement didn't move it at all. I tried other channels and I had the same result.
 

That sounds like a combination of misconfigurations. I'm not convinced your input configuration is correct then. One thing to do (props off) is what I showed in that video. Click GCS Control in that controller gadget and move the yaw there and see what happens. That isolates any Input config issues.

Also go back to the input configuration panel and click run calibration, as you move the sticks make sure that the properly labeled row is moving.

(Oh also one of the guys pushed a patch for your bug, when it's tested later today on hardware we'll merge it into the main tree and make some new packages).
 

Kilby

Active Member
You were half right. After looking over some of the other mixer settings, I did find that I had previously set another channel to servo (channel 5) and had it set up for yaw and roll I think. After resetting all those the yaw did stop moving with the throttle, but still no control from the actual stick either on screen or real. I have ran the calibration several times and as far as I can tell, everything looks fine.

I wanted to say thanks btw for all the help on this. It floors me to see so much effort by an open source community, seriously. I'm tied up with my wedding next month, but as soon as some of that dust settles I'm looking forward to pitching in and helping in any way possible.
 

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