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Radian problems

Discussion in 'Radian' started by egonuel, Sep 21, 2012.

  1. egonuel

    egonuel New Member

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    Hello,

    we just received the radian system and worked through the setup instructions. Unfortunately we did not make it work
    in the last 2 days. Our setup consists of 3 axis, a Jeti PPM receiver and a stabilized power supply. We used the usb programmer to set the specific function for each of the three radians, setted the channel for mode selection and each slew channel.
    What does work: stabilization of roll and tilt.
    Varying problems occur: The pan axis does not work at all. The tool shows that a change in angle is measured, but no action happens. In addition the green light starts being solid after initialization but after a short time starts to blink slow, even though the mode is set to "stabilized slew".
    Next: once in a while the system completely fails. Lights are solid but no stabilization happens at all. After a restart this is fixed. This would be okay, if this failure would be on start up, but this happens out of nowhere in action.
    Next: Controlling the slew of tilt and roll is rather random, if it works at all. If I connect the receiver to the pan radian, it appears that (even though the orange lights of the daisychained others are solid) no control signal is transfered: stabilzation works, but controlling not. If I connect it to the roll radian (and leave the pan radian out of the system) I'm able to control both roll and tilt. Sometimes this does work nicely, but most of the times there are jumps, counterphased movements or the gimbal stops at the far most position even though the stick returned to base. Then there are times, where the control is dead after a while, but the stabilzation continues to work.

    The diagnostics show valid inputs from the remote control, but the servo out does not fit at all (no pattern here). If I only use the stabilzation, I can't see any sense in the serve out values, if it changes at all.
    In addition the received data does flicker and jump very often, but this might have something to do with the serial transfer...

    Right now me and my colleagues are very frustrated and this quote of ripper "I spent the weekend excitedly installing the new Radians but have reached a level of frustration I've never experienced before." quite matches what I'm experiencing. :(

    As we are doing many projects with microcontrollers, we have the experience that sometimes in very dead end situations just reflashing the firmware helps. Maybe you could supply us with the firmware and the flashing tool...

    Help needed!

    Greetings
    Immanuel
     
  2. Adam Paugh

    Adam Paugh Distributor

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    Hello Immanuel,

    Just going through the Radian manual viewing the various receiver compatibility, I do not see Jeti PPM as an option. Do you have a Spectrum/Graupner/Futaba receiver available for this configuration?
    Greetings,
    Adam
     
  3. egonuel

    egonuel New Member

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    Hi Adam,

    thanks for your reply. I'm not fully convinced though. :) The fact that the stick motions on all channels are detected correctly in the software (including the three position switch) makes me believe that those PPM systems are compatible...
    Unfortunately we don't have a standard graupner etc. system to test, but before we will buy an additional RC system, I'd like to get a confirmation from the freefly guys. Anyone?

    Btw some of the strange behaviour also occurs if i don't connect the receiver...

    Greetings
    Immanuel
     
  4. Sedric "Zellevision" Sari

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    Kinda same problem.
    Installed 3XR today.. My system is complicated but when I do 1 man flying this is my setup...
    Graupner, MX16 -> GR24 on cs6 -> MK-FC, and Sencondary bind same radio ->GR16 on 3 ax-cs->Radian Pan->Roll->Tilt.
    All PPM, mode function in use. Powerd thru BEC at 6V from a 3s lipo.
    Sometimes all works fine, but mostly just like yours, all stops, or just jitters very shortly, specially the roll. And then I cant use the mode switch or control the three axes. Have to "reboot" to get control again. Or sometomes the control is just dead after a while, but my stabilzation continues to work too. Sometimes when I boot up and have mode switch at "off" just pan is of, the others are solid green, switching mode to "middle, and full on" and back does not help. Need to take out power and the RX cable, reinsert to get it work, tryed another RX same problem. The things happens random, so its hard to pinpoint the reason... still looking.

    Maybe I shouldnt say this... but I removed Picloc3XPro for the radians.... and wounder if I did the right thing... :(
     
  5. egonuel

    egonuel New Member

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    so nobody has any idea what is going wrong here?
     
  6. kjetil tønnesen

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    hello
    i have the same problem with my radian
    the to radian dont seem to get simular when i use the mode butten ,just roll radian is working with this
    and when i switch mode to green and i shal tilt the the gimble with the second radio it doesn´t work,and some thimes it works???

    shoud the radio be on when i turn on the radian??,and witch mode shoud the radian stand in when i power it up??

    for me it looks like the tilt radian dont get the signal from roll radian??
    sometimes when i look at input channel in radian software on tilt ,that none of the channels works??


    i have the 3x gimble with just roll and tilt radian

    thanks
     
  7. Dave Halton

    Dave Halton Member

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    Just a quick question.. the guys with three axis set up, did you set up each Radion in turn checking each one works correctly before linking them all together?

    So I have started with the roll first and all is well.
     
  8. Matt White

    Matt White New Member

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    I haven't been able to get PPM working with mine at all... I tried a DIYDrones PPM board as my receiver doesn't have a PPM out, and I got the same results as when I tried to use PWM. The only success I've had is using a Spektrum satellite. That said, I think others have had success with PPM, but I never got it to work.

    I should add that with the Spektrum satellite the thing works brilliantly, the results are like magic :).
     
  9. Andy Johnson-Laird

    Andy Johnson-Laird Administrator
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    The sequence I used was:

    Tilt
    1. No servo connected, no camera mounted. Adjust gain to 100% (ballpark).
    2. Servo connected, no camera mounted. Verify it wasn't going to oscillate to auto-destruct.
    3. Servo connected, camera balanced and mounted. Get serious about finding max. gain without oscillation and, for good measure backed off a couple of percent below that.
    4. Connect up Tilt sensor to Roll sensor.

    Roll
    5. No servo, no camera. Adjust gain to 100% (ballpark)
    6. Servo connected, no camera. Verify self-destruct mode not enabled. ;)
    7. Servo connected, camera balanced, get serious about find sweet spot.
    8. Connect up Roll sensor to Pan sensor.

    Pan
    9. No servo, gimbal free-standing (not attached to C8)
    10. Servo connected, gimbal free standing (four pointed plate happily spins harmlessly).
    11. Servo connected, attached to C8. Initialize on table top, hoist into the air with C8 horizontal (a loose approximation of the way I fly!).
    12. Set pan gain.

    Fine tuning
    13. Power up camera video downlink and point camera at "target" on other side of room. Center it in the FOV.
    14. Displace (a.k.a. waggle) the C8 in each axis and see if the target remains in the center of the FOV. If not tweak gain in that axis again. If all good, proceed to step 15.
    15. Verify RC control of the three modes works correctly.

    16. Find bottle of decent red wine and share with spouse or significant other. Beer may be substituted depending on preference.

    Step 16 can also be used if things go dramatically wrong. ;)

    Hope this helps.
    Andy.
     
    Jonathan Lederer and CPoulsen like this.
  10. egonuel

    egonuel New Member

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    Hello,
    thanks for the tips. We just did another session of testing and configuring and found out 2 things:
    1) our pan servo is half-dead. It's dead in the sense of doing any kind of movements in combination with the radian modules. It's alive if we connect it to an mbed development board running an PWM servo program. It moves just as expected.
    2) our new Jeti PPM receiver is faulty and creates some of the strange behaviour regarding gimbal control. We exchanged it with Jeti PPM receiver from our Mikrokopter and suddenly it works nicely! We did not check the behaviour of the new faulty module on our Mikrokopter, this has to wait for another day.

    So we are just relieved that we made it work for 2/3 of the functionality.
    Has anybody ever experienced such strange servo behaviour?
     
  11. Tabb Firchau

    Tabb Firchau Administrator
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    HI Egonuel,

    1. Are you sure that you are in "stabilized slew mode" when you are trying to activate pan? This is the only mode in which the Pan Radian module will drive a signal to the Pan servo

    2. Excellent! Glad it is working now

    Tabb
     
  12. egonuel

    egonuel New Member

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    Hi Tabb,

    yepp, we are aware of that setting. We exchanged the servo with the one for tilt. That made pan work. We tested the servo with all three radians and none of them made it do anything. Very strange, as it does move with a pwm input, as described above...
     
  13. Tabb Firchau

    Tabb Firchau Administrator
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    Wow! Never heard of that problem before? Maybe John has an idea.
     
  14. egonuel

    egonuel New Member

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    Just a short update from our system: We yesterday updated the firmware of our new/buggy Jeti PPM receiver to the newest firmware. Tadaaa: it does work too. So in case if anybody will experience similar issues: update your firmwares!
    Regarding our servo: we requested an replacement by our dealer.
     
  15. egonuel

    egonuel New Member

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    So yesterday we received our replacement servo and now everything works fine! Problems solved :)
     
  16. Tabb Firchau

    Tabb Firchau Administrator
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    Excellent! Glad it is all sorted out

    Best,

    Tabb
     

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