DucktileMedia
Drone Enthusiast
Expo is exponential. Its a curve setting on your radio that will make any channel more or less responsive at certain points on the curve making for better control. It's critical on throttle, at least on Hoverfly.
XAircraft SuperX
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DucktileMedia
Drone Enthusiast
And I totally agree on the yaw/3rd axis. Not needed IMHO at all. On a 2 person rig you really dont want that as the cam op controls yaw and pitch. On a single operator I dont like the way the footage I see looks as there is always a spot where it glitches to change to the new path. same problem with the CX760 or any stabilized cameras, they lock onto a certain point and at some point have to correct, which is normally not buttery smooth.
XAircraft America
Member
I set up a switch on my transmitter that changes the sensitivity of the inputs close to the center of the stick for my yaw. An exponential curve on your inputs means that close to the middle the input will be very tame and as you move farther away the input gives exponentially more output for each increase in input. Think of an exponential function where when you are at the beginning it slowly rises and then grows very rapidly. The idea is to have your controls be very tame when making slight movements while still allowing you the full range of input if you need to make a correction in a pinch. This video should help you understand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skU51E5ilG0. You will also need to understand dual rates (basically they just mean that you have two different sets of rates for your inputs changeable by a switch on your transmitter). Typically you will have one that is fairly linear for fun flying and getting into place and another with fairly heavy expo for nice slow and controlled movement.
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XAircraft America
Member
I strongly recommend not using exponential with the throttle channel on the SuperX. Adjusting the throttle gain is a much better way to make those adjustments.
This is what i did i have pictures,View attachment 15095View attachment 15096View attachment 15097 About the gimbal by using the sbus for futaba radio i usually put chan 5 for tilt and chan 8 for roll for the gimbal with the naza but could not do it or there is a way but i don't know how so i try channel 7 for the tilt it works with the VR KNOB but the gain is still on so both working together. So i decided to wire fly it no sbus and now i got the tilt to work with channel 7 and the roll Chanel 8 but i still can not use some of the switch like the g & h switch to make it tilt go down or half way to get those fast shots. I can only use the vr middle knob switch to tilt but i will try again. Thank again for you help before i join this forum did not know there was a XAIRCRAFT AMERICA i thought only china.
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XAircraft America
Member
OK now I understand. It doesn't matter because once you enable the fail safe and go into safe mode the throttle input doesn't do anything. The SuperX will fly back home regardless of the inputs from the controls.
XAircraft America
Member
We are on the same team. I am a distributor for XAircraft in the US (And I speak a little better english). They are a great company and really do a great job on their engineering and with their technical support. Any time I have an issue with anything they respond within 24 hours in most cases and by now I am pretty confident I have dealt with just about everything haha (I know once I say that something will happen today that will stump me now...)
X650Mouse
Take no prisoners
As a Videographer I'm trying to get near perfect, the 3rd axis will remove or reduce yaw from lateral movement produced from atmospheric conditions and or vehicle vibration no matter how well set up, according to black box my vibration on X650 is averaging 0.1, produced by prop balancing and motor levelling, but there is still vibration and always will be.
Still each to his own! Stella will cost more than my 3 Axis so I think a good choice for my needs
Here is a nice example by another member here using the same 3 axis gimbal
David
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jfro
Aerial Fun
Expo is exponential. Thanks for the answer.
Duh, I hate to admit this, but I have set up exponential curves before on my Futaba 8fg for my HoverFlly Pro. Set it a switch to turn it on and off. Tried it for a while, but quit using it as I relied on subtle stick movements instead. Might be worth trying again, but just on yaw.
Thanks for the explanations..... sorry for my brain lapse....
Duh, I hate to admit this, but I have set up exponential curves before on my Futaba 8fg for my HoverFlly Pro. Set it a switch to turn it on and off. Tried it for a while, but quit using it as I relied on subtle stick movements instead. Might be worth trying again, but just on yaw.
Thanks for the explanations..... sorry for my brain lapse....
Av8Chuck
Member
When you shoot professionally its all about improving the odds of getting usable and "repeatable" footage and the 3rd axis improves both.
How much you value the 3rd axis depends on what type of footage your shooting, you probably don't need a second camera operator and the 3rd axis for some real estate, event POV dirt bike races, weddings, etc., but even those types of projects are starting to use NEX, GH3, 60D level camera's and would benefit from the 3rd axis.
A 3rd axis and camera person are almost always required if you want to shoot live action for commercials or movies and typically they will use a Canon C100-300, Red, BMPC etc..
The barriers to using these are obviously expense, but I think more importantly is setup time, ease of use and repeatability. If I can unpack and setup in less than half an hour, fly the mission for how ever long it takes and pack up so I can be on my way in less than a half hour that would be great. Its quite easy to accomplish this with a two axis gimbal and GoPro, adding a 3rd axis with a better camera potentially adds to the setup time and slightly complicates getting the right shot and adding a camera person with a camera that will in all likelihood be fully manual will certainly add to the complexity of the shoot which means it will probably take longer.
I would love to be able to get good footage without a gimbal but that's just not realistic.
How much you value the 3rd axis depends on what type of footage your shooting, you probably don't need a second camera operator and the 3rd axis for some real estate, event POV dirt bike races, weddings, etc., but even those types of projects are starting to use NEX, GH3, 60D level camera's and would benefit from the 3rd axis.
A 3rd axis and camera person are almost always required if you want to shoot live action for commercials or movies and typically they will use a Canon C100-300, Red, BMPC etc..
The barriers to using these are obviously expense, but I think more importantly is setup time, ease of use and repeatability. If I can unpack and setup in less than half an hour, fly the mission for how ever long it takes and pack up so I can be on my way in less than a half hour that would be great. Its quite easy to accomplish this with a two axis gimbal and GoPro, adding a 3rd axis with a better camera potentially adds to the setup time and slightly complicates getting the right shot and adding a camera person with a camera that will in all likelihood be fully manual will certainly add to the complexity of the shoot which means it will probably take longer.
I would love to be able to get good footage without a gimbal but that's just not realistic.
jfro
Aerial Fun
I agree with wanting the ease and quickness to setup. I love flying my 550 quad w/ gopro/tarot gimbal. Easy to carry around, pretty quiet flying, and stays in the air a long time on 1 battery. when GoPro or a competitor gives me manual exposure or better auto exposure, I think it will be my most used MR for video. Not to say I won't want to go up with a better camera on occasion, or bigger unit when windy, but for much of the stuff, the only thing holding me back wanting to use the GoPro & my quad more is the frigging crappy exposure.
I get lots of enjoyment and way more air time with my smaller quad which is partly due to it's ease of carrying around and size...
I have one more question can i use my 3 s battery and leave the setting as is i still have some 5000mah 3s ? thanks again
DucktileMedia
Drone Enthusiast
Since Hoverfly doesnt have a useable AH, it is next to impossible to stay at any height without using massive throttle curves. Technically they are different things as expo modifies the existing linear ramp and curve(which is generally only an option for throttle) gives you full control of the shape. So having said that, are you saying to not use any throttle curve on the SuperX?
VIQuad
Member
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No. Non-linear throttle on the TX for SuperX is not needed or desired. I posted this on another thread regarding such: With the SX, you don't fly "throttle", per se, you fly altitude rate. The left stick, (assuming Mode 2), is only slightly connected to the motor speed. The altitude correction loop is always on and it's all about rate-of-climb or rate-of-decent. Even a slight bump up will accelerate the motor speed markedly until it reaches a given rate of climb. Obviously, there's a "sling" in the mid-stick region for hold. If you're not used to high-end FCs that do this, it's quite disconcerting on take off as your expecting a more or less linear wind-up with a slow rise. This is not what happens. There's little increase in motor speed until the bottom edge of the capture window of the altitude loop is approached. Then, whammo, motor speeds rise radically and up she goes to a fixed altitude. It takes some getting used to. Very predictable and useable, just not what I'm used to doing. Turns out it's touchy on CG during this operation, too. A slightly high CG, like no gimbal, a small batt pack, or high-side batt packs, can upset the apple cart. I dumped my 1000 on the first 3 takeoffs until I sussed this out. Lower the CG below well the boom plane with the most recent firmware onboard, and all is well.
Yep, and it's very important to remember that it will do so at *any time* the motors are armed and running. If the radio throws a loss-of-carrier fail-safe while the motors are running, but aircraft is *still on the ground*, it will attempt to "fly home" regardless of the fact that the aircraft is *not actually flying*. Can produce some eye opening results. (Don't ask me how I know this.)
But in manual mode you still control the altitude with the throttle correct? I imagine using this mode the most with GPS modes as failsafes. I like to fly low and fast
Yes, true. In manual mode the only sensors used are the rate gyros. Not even the accelerometers, (level), are active. I have no luck trying to fly this way. You may. No accels simply doesn't work for me. I think this is for the hot-dog, "I want to flip it", crowd. Not even remotely suitable for AP to my way of thinking.
The "mode/sensor stack" is like so:
Manual = Rate gyros only
Attitude = Gyros, accels, and baro
GPS Attitude = Gyros, accels, baro, mag (yaw), and GPS position. (Full house)
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Only way to do this that I can think of is to set up the radio end-point so that the 3 position switch you have assigned to flight mode would effectively function as a two position switch. Position one, (normally manual), would be a mid-stick setting, position two, (normally attitude), would also be mid-stick, and postion three would be high-stick for GPS attitude. Or, you could use a two position switch with the end-points set for a mid-stick or high-stick. I leave it as is just in case the FC gets a case of the stupid for no good reason and I am forced to "go there" and deal with it.