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two malfunctioning radians

Discussion in 'Radian' started by Ville Hyvönen - Helicam, Dec 14, 2012.

  1. Ville Hyvönen - Helicam

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    Hello people,

    I totally love Radians but seems we were able to broke two on our field trip to bangladesh. We were shooting for 3 weeks in the jungle and bay of bengal and most of the logistics were handled with small boats with single piston diesel engines, so my theory is that it was the vibration from the boat that damaged our units.

    First the tilt radian started to misbehave, tilt started to drift mid flight, so we replaced it with backup unit. Then week later roll did the same thing, horizon not keeping straight and stabilising not working so well. Now just tested the units at workshop, and as you can see from this video, if you shake the unit, the "Current-Angle" value displayed by the software keeps shifting the value even when radian is totally level. Tried updating the firmware to the latest on one unit but no help.

    https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1608467/Radian_issue_2012.MOV

    so whats the procedure, should I sent these directly to Tabb or european dealer that we bought these from?
    Also gigs coming up in january so would be cool to get replacement asap.

    Thanks for the great product and too bad we had such a tuff luck this time

    br

    -ville
    PS. few snaps from the journey
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  2. Andy Johnson-Laird

    Andy Johnson-Laird Administrator
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    This may be a silly question, but I'm not sure whether the Radians are supposed to work with the Radian label facing up. All of the ones I have ever seen in operation have the label facing horizontally. Can you try your experiment again with the Radian label facing towards you?

    Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that there's no issue with the two units that you saw behaving strangely, but I'm curious whether the test you're doing on the video is correct as the axis in which your rotating the radian is different from the way they should be mounted.

    Let me see if John Cunningham has time to comment on your posting and video. He's the designer of the Radians.

    Andy.
     
  3. Ville Hyvönen - Helicam

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    Cool, will make test / video tomorrow with unit sideways when back at workshop tomorrow

    -v
     
  4. Andy Johnson-Laird

    Andy Johnson-Laird Administrator
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    Kiitos, Ville.
    I've asked John if he has a moment to advise on your situation.
    I forgot to suggest that you contact your European distributor as I suspect that will be the fastest method to get replacements -- assuming that something really has failed.

    Andy.
     
  5. Ville Hyvönen - Helicam

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    Moi,

    To my understanding Radians are supposed to work label up when you select "Roll-2" or "Tilt-2" mode from the program. At least according to the manual :) But anyways for the tests sake I changed the mode to Tilt-1 and repeated the same test radian sideways getting the same result (see video). BUT when I tried to put the same misbehaving Radian back to camera gimball, seemed to work perfectly. aaarg! So I guess Im doing something wrong when trying to diagnose this. Anyhow here is the new video:

    https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1608467/Radian_issue_2012-2.MOV

    Here is video from camera from location when we had issues with roll. its super slomo as shot in 96fps and because of tide coming up very fast, you see us standing in the water like idiots we are :) What youre supposed to see in this video, is that horizon is perfectly straight during takeoff, but expecially at 00:39 its really tilted (00:10 in realtime) and then it kind of finds it self back at 01:00, but if behaved like this the whole day, and also the roll stabilising in general seemed to work very sluggishly until we changed the radian unit. Go figure. If weather permits will do some flight tests tomorrow.

    https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1608467/radian_roll_issue_C053_C003_0101Y2.mov

    thanks

    -ville
     
  6. John Cunningham

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    Hey Ville,

    From the first video : keep in mind that the Radian gyro has a maximum sensing rate of about 500 deg/sec. If you exceed this then 1) the angles in the Radian become inaccurate and 2) You're going to crash pretty soon so it's doesn't really matter :).

    It seems like you roll Radian in the second video is a little bit out of calibration on one axis of the IMU. When you are panning, what's happening is that the IMU angles transpose themselves so an error in the tilt IMU axis (internally) is fed across into the roll axis as part of the way an IMU has to work.

    It's not something you can do yourself I'm afraid. Some error like this can happen after you have been flying around a bit and the IMU will correct itself once you level out - but it shouldn't do it immediately after takeoff (unless there is a vibration issue on the Radian which I doubt).
     
  7. Ville Hyvönen - Helicam

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    What, you never make loops & flips with your heli while filming?! :)
    I checked the videos we made that day, and actually most of them have horizon not on level even when not panning. Ill send you link to one example video in private message where you can see both tilted horizon while flying straight and overall bad stabilising on the roll axis. Perhaps this could have been caused by vibrations to radian? but it worked perfectly for two weeks for this shoot, had issues on that specific day (4.12.2012) and when replacement unit was mounted excactly same way, it worked flawlessly for another week in same conditions. So I still feel there is something fishy in the unit...
     
  8. John Cunningham

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    Ville,

    I agree : the unit seems like the calibration is not accurate in the bad unit : swapping it out for another is the ultimate test.

    I would ask the dealer to exchange the unit - but to keep you flying for the moment, put the best one on roll and the other on tilt. Roll accuracy is much more important : just a couple of degrees out looks like a lot more on the video.
     
  9. Mikko Kosonen

    Mikko Kosonen New Member

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    I had exactly the same issue today with the tilt axis. During the normal flight the tilt axis started to shake and then it rolled fully up smashing the camera lens to the C8's frame and halted. After the reset it worked fine about one minute and then it did the runaway again to fully up position. Later on, I noticed that the Current-Angle value is drifting up and down now and then, and when I moved the tilt axis a little bit, it swing to -170 value. All other modules are working sharply so far but this one seems to be broken. Maybe accelometer, gyro or something is damaged some how. Not a nice feature if you got Scarlet on board..
     
  10. John Cunningham

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    Mikko,

    Can you try the test to verify the correct orientation of the tilt Radian (in the sticky thread).

    You may have the orientation set wrong. When you do the test, the current angle should go to between 0 (when it is level) through to -90 (minus 90) when you tilt it vertically down.
     
  11. Mikko Kosonen

    Mikko Kosonen New Member

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    Yes I did and here's the results . As you can see, the Current Angle value changes when the axis is in the rest and it doesn't return to 0 value if I manually set the axis to it's normal 0 position. If I shake it slightly, the Current Angle change more rapidly causing aggressive tilt axis movement to up leading to scratched lenses..
     
  12. John Cunningham

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    Mikko, it does look like the gyro in that tilt module is not working properly.

    It is strange because it looks like it works OK tilting down, but not back up again.

    I'm afraid the only way forward is to exchange it so that the faulty one can come back for investigation.
     
  13. Mikko Kosonen

    Mikko Kosonen New Member

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    John, can you help me and tell where to I can send this faulty module? Seems that we have some problems in customer service with the original dealer..
     
  14. Andy Johnson-Laird

    Andy Johnson-Laird Administrator
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  15. Ben Platts

    Ben Platts Active Member

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    Hi. Seems like I've had a similar issue to you Mikko. Had Radian all installed and working fine for the last 2-3 month then suddenly today whilst in flight and tilting up I lost all control and it just tilted all the way over so the camera was upside down and kept twitching. When plugged into the radian software the current angle demand keeps rapidly going from 0 to -180 by itself over and over again. Haven't changed anything with Radian at all. I had 2 faultless flights then on the 3rd on I lost all control of Radian.

    Here's the video from the flight:


    Any ideas on solutions would be great
     
  16. Andy Johnson-Laird

    Andy Johnson-Laird Administrator
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    Just a shot in the dark, Ben, but connect up the Radian software to a known good Radian, and to a Read, then change the parameters appropriately for the apparently bad Radian, and then do a Write (effectively re-writing the parameters). See if that helps.
    Failing that, re-upgrade the firmware to 1.03 and see if that helps.

    If nothing helps, then I thinks it's time contact the dealer from whom you got the Radians.

    Cheers
    Andy.
     
  17. Mikko Kosonen

    Mikko Kosonen New Member

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    Yup, thats the same issue what we had. New radian module helped and Tabb will get his hands for this faulty module pretty soon. Our bird is back in business and doing great. Big thanks for tabb, andy and john.
     
  18. Ben Platts

    Ben Platts Active Member

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    Just updated all the firmare and no different. Current angle demand still going from 0 to -180 about 4 times a second even when radian controls disabled on my spectrum. I guess it's return to dealer time for a replacement then? Any idea whats causing this fault as the unit has been fine for several months as I said.
     
  19. Andy Johnson-Laird

    Andy Johnson-Laird Administrator
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    Sorry, Ben. Don't know what might be causing this.
    Andy.
     
  20. Colin

    Colin Member

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    Andy, There would appear to be a very common issue with the units/servos. Would it be possible to ask everyone to check the voltage going to the FF servos. As you are aware we had the same problems. Ben and I purchased from the same dealer and our voltage read 6.2v going to the FF servos. I don't know what Bens output is set at. They are designed to take up to 6v. So at rest and balanced they are working but put them under load especially with a heavy lift unbalanced camera how hard are they now working. Its the only thing I can think of.
     

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