Testing the new/old MK Hexa

[RTRyder]

Despite nearly chopping off the top left corner of a middle finger with wire strippers (very painfull and bloody!) I was able to finally button up the new/old MK Hexa last night. This morning I did a test fly in position hold using vario altitude hold while slowly climbing straight up to roughly 200 feet, panning as it went up with the Canon SX 200 shooting stills at 2 second intervals. I'm really happy with the way the whole setup performed, GPS held position quite nicely and vario worked exactly as it should, I had forgotten how well a box stock MK Hexa flys when its setup right.

Here's some of the shots the Canon grabbed on the way up, the last is a crop of the previous pic where you can just see the Boston skyline near the center of the shot. As the crow flys it's probably about 20 miles from my house to the city and I definitely cannot see that view from the ground...

Ken

 

[Droider]

Nice ken.. are you using vario altitude rather than the standard Alt hold?

 

[RTRyder]

Nice ken.. are you using vario altitude rather than the standard Alt hold?

I use both, depends on what I plan to do on a flight. If I want to pan from a location at different altitudes I do what I did this morning, lock the position with P/H then let it just climb straight up in vario while I hold a bit of yaw to do the pan, worked flawlessly today. If I want to keep below a max altitude and just shoot as I go, then I have the netbook talking to the MK to see what the height is and use fixed A/H, that way I can climb to whatever altitude I want and lock it in there. I also usually use the fixed A/H when flying waypoints to keep from dropping altitude as the MK travels from one to the next and hopefully keep a relatively stable constant altitude though it doesn't always work out that way.

Ken

 

[Droider]

So how does the vario work then..? Guessing when you stop climbing it stops there and does not descend, then when you give it more altitude it goes up and just stis there.. correct?

 

[RTRyder]

So how does the vario work then..? Guessing when you stop climbing it stops there and does not descend, then when you give it more altitude it goes up and just stis there.. correct?

That's pretty much it. The hold point is mid stick on the throttle, as you increase throttle the MK will climb progressively faster and as you decrease from midstick it will descend increasingly faster. If you add a lot of weight to a stock MK you will have to tinker with the settings to get it to hold steady at midstick.

If you have a firmware version prior to .82 I would strongly recommend upgrading to .82 or higher before using vario and using the the motor safety switch feature because it is very possible to SHUTDOWN the motors if you yaw to the left when descending in vario A/H thereby putting the MK into brick mode. I have the safety switch function tied to the switch for A/H so as long as A/H is engaged the motors will not turn off on throttle all the way down and to the left.

Ken

 

[Droider]

Where do you learn all this stuff Ken!!.. Trial and error or what!

So you climb switch initiate Variohold on the switch you would normally use for alt hold and go to mid stick?

 

[RTRyder]

Where do you learn all this stuff Ken!!.. Trial and error or what!

So you climb switch initiate Variohold on the switch you would normally use for alt hold and go to mid stick?

I just take off and then click it on, without hearing the beeps it makes as it climbs or descends you would just think you're flying a well trimmed MK as it works pretty much the same as regular throttle. The difference is it will hold altitude at midstick regardless of the conditions which a well trimmed multi won't do.

I was just out in the front yard with it, took off, set P/H, clicked on A/H, set the stick to mid point and leaned back against the truck and watched it just sit there with minor movement as it compensated for being pushed off station by the breeze. Amazing how well an MK works compared to everything else on the market, the Hoverfly will not hold altitude like that and there aren't many flight controllers that have both working A/H and position hold to the point they will stay level at set altitude within a 10 foot circle until the battery goes dead.

Even my heavy lifter won't stay as steady as the stock Hexa and they have exactly the same electronics stack and firmware versions. If I had the chance to get a day at the field with the AD-6 and the netbook I know I can dial it in to get pretty close but the AD-6 H/L weighs in at roughly 2X plus some odd ounces what the stock kit does so it has to work a lot harder at maintaining position both horizontally and vertically.

As to how I know all this stuff, well it's not all that different from what I do for a day job these days in terms of knowing hardware and firmware revisions and the features of each so it comes fairly easy to me once I've read the docs though sometimes it takes a couple reads to truly dechiper the Germanglish translations...

Ken

 

[Droider]

Just watched Holgars new video of the latest firmware with the MK camera following him as a POI and then chasing him around the field in come home mode as it was tracking him as a mobile waypoint.. flamin Harold as the title of a TV programme over here "how do they do that"

I have to get to that stage as that is exactly what I want, not so much the following like a dog but the POI camera tracking... Looks like I am going to have to take the plunge into upgrading my firmware.. I am shuddering with the thought!

 

[RTRyder]

A full half dozen flights on the new firmware so far and it appears to be working just as well as it did before the upgrade. Far to windy to try the new features out yet, I hope to get a chance sometime this week though it probably won't happen until the weekend that I'll have a chance to get someplace big enough to test POI waypoints. I think I'll be able to try autolanding here at the house though I want to do that when its calm air since flying space without immovable obstacles is at a premium here in the 'hood.

Ken

P.S. I may borrow the GPS and Navi out of the AD-6 to try the follow me bit, have to check out what's involved first since the boards will have to go back in and I don't want to make any permanent mods that would prevent that.

 

[Bartman]

wouldn't mission cockpit be involved in getting the POI feature to work? how hard is it to set up mission cockpit?
i have trouble climbing with P/H on. it's as if it wants to also do altitude hold but i don't have any mixes programmed in the transmitter. any ideas?
thanks,
bart

 

[RTRyder]

wouldn't mission cockpit be involved in getting the POI feature to work? how hard is it to set up mission cockpit?
i have trouble climbing with P/H on. it's as if it wants to also do altitude hold but i don't have any mixes programmed in the transmitter. any ideas?
thanks,
bart

No, Mission Cockpit isn't needed for POI with the new MK firmware. M/C was an entirely different code base that paralleled OSD in MKTool and I never did get POI to work in it although I didn't really try all that hard. There are some neat features in M/C though, I especially like the audio output that will call out things like altitude and battery voltage while in flight so you can just concentrate on flying.

Check Poti settings for A/H and P/H and make sure you don't have the same one set for both, that would prevent climbing when you go to P/H. Outside of that I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't climb in P/H, never had a problem like that with either of mine.

Ken

 

[Bartman]

Ken,
I've checked the POTI's already and they're set correctly. It's just weird but I'll check everything again.
Bart

 

[Droider]

Have I read somewhere that alt hold should always be on when using position hold? I must admit that I just use position hold so I can do slow climbs while taking photos and not had a problem.

Not sure why your bird wont climb with just PH on though Bart.. wweird

 

[RTRyder]

Try this, turn off A/H completely in MKtool and see how it responds then. If it works right turn it back on and see if it stops working again. Why it would do that is anyones guess at this point, but what I would do from there is reload the firmware, reinitialize the eprom and reset anything you changed from the base configuration settings. If that doesn't fix it then it has to be something hardware related.

Dave, it is recommended to use fixed A/H when flying waypoints as the Mk has a tendency to drop altitude when moving from one waypoint to another. If you're low enough it could wind up on the ground in windy conditions so use A/H with enough throttle to keep it up against the max ceiling and it won't drop much at all as it moves.

Ken

 

[Droider]

Dave, it is recommended to use fixed A/H when flying waypoints as the Mk has a tendency to drop altitude when moving from one waypoint to another. If you're low enough it could wind up on the ground in windy conditions so use A/H with enough throttle to keep it up against the max ceiling and it won't drop much at all as it moves.

Ok Thanks Ken.. its not always clear. I did get up high this weekend to do some ariels of the business park we have a showroom on it hit alt hold at 100m and gave it some gas to hold it there while I panned the camera, or should I say yawed the copter! It did slowly climb though to about 120m while i was panning. I was watching the altitude on the jeti box so that how I knew it was climbing. It was quite windy though so I put it down to the wind