HOpe you can help me. I've been getting ready to do some gigs and I've done some upgrades to my MX20 and various other tweeky things... and I am getting the wrong voltage coming from my CS8 running MK. I've just gotten my Hyperion charger hooked up to my laptop and I'm' going through all my 4 cell 8k batteries to check their health, and the charger is showing them finished charging at 16.8 volts, cell gaps of only .001. So they look good and I trust that reading. When I plug the battery in, the telemetry is telling me I have 18.6 volts. I'm worried that I'm not going to get the correct minimum voltage warning and fly the thing till it falls. Any help I'd be so grateful. Here are my details,,, just wondering if I have some firmware thing not right. I ran grstudio version 3.0 yesterday. Do i have a firmware thing wrong in my reciever? Aircraft Type: CS8 Mikrokopter Gimbal Type: 3 axis radian Camera/Lens Being Flown: NA MK Stack: FC Navi GPS : HW v2.1 - SW .90j - Flight Radio/Recv Type: Graupner MX 20- Graupner GR 24 - MX 20 running v1.141 - GR 24 running installed from grstudio 3.0 Software version installed: Symptoms: Wrong reading on voltage.
Hi Steve: Was the telemetry telling you the correct voltage before you started the "tweeky things?" I'd certainly set the min. voltage in MK tools to 14.4 (3.6 per cell), just to give you some lee-way. Do you have a voltmeter so that you can independently test the voltage on the battery? Also, what happens if you start up the motors (props off if indoors)? Does the voltage sag a volt or two, or does it stay inappropriately high? The voltage reporting by the MK boards is pretty direct -- there's a pin on the flight control board that "sees" the actual battery voltage. Do you happen to have either a spare MX-20 or GR-24 that you can substitute? Hope this helps Andy.
Andy you are quick. I spent 8 hours trouble shooting this before I posted, I posted and decided to reinstall my flight and nav software and it seems to have cleared the problem and i'm getting 16.8 on the telemetry. Can you direct me to any "presets" recommended on the flight settings as I'm trying to get mine back to a recommended default... or maybe there isn't such a list. Thanks for being so quick. I'll follow up when I get it all up again.
I just use the default settings for Parameter Set 3 in MK Tool. Look for the number 3 to the right of the exclamation mark at the bottom of the screen. Use the arrows to scroll up and down settings if it's not set to 3. The only other change: 1. GPS Gain, which I have at 85%. 2. On the Misc screen check the following (most are just the defaults) Min Gas : 8 Max Gas : 230 Compass effect: 64 Teachable carefree: unchecked Carefree control: nothing selected. (Does it show 0?) Undervoltage: 14.4 (you can enter it as a total voltage) Emergency time: 247 Nio beep without active sender (transmitter) : UNCHECKED! You want it to beep! Emergency gas: 95% (double check you have Use vario control for failsafe altitude) Failsafe CH time: 60 Compass error: UNchecked. SD card missing: checked. GPX fix missing: checked Those are the main ones that come to mind. Then write it back out to the MK boards and save a copy to your local disk with a suitable file name. Andy.
Andy what version of software are you referencing? .91 is a bit different than .90 especially for the emergency descent and whether the new ACC sensor is installed. Steven you indicated you are are .90j. Have you installed the new altitude ACC? If so then you should upgrade the firmware, which isn't a bad idea anyways.
Oops. You're right -- I was going from memory and referencing an earlier version (and the Failsafe Wiki's page at http://www.mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/en/FailSafe is not updated. I'm not in a place where I can check the settings for .90j and the release notes don't show it. http://mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/en/Firmware-0.90#A0.90j_.2827th_may_2013.29 The Altitude settings are shown on this thread: http://forum.freeflysystems.com/ind...auto-land-in-new-mktools-hmm.1869/#post-23076 (Gary's posting #2). The full description of 0.91 is at http://www.mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/en/Firmware-0.91 Andy.
Just wait until the FAA gets into the loop and every part of a copter has to have a serial number. Andy.
Hello Steven, For "Undervoltage" in the MISC tab use volts/cell in that field (ie: 3.5=14.0v) instead of cumulative voltage (ie: 140). This way if you move to a different cell count lipo it will always calculate undervoltage per cell calculation. Please verify that you are running the latest version of SW for the Graupner MX20 and GR24. All the other settings you need to get you safely off the ground will be default from the okto2.mkm file in the MIXER tab. From there most guys are adjusting the PID in the GYRO tab for additional fine tuning. Check the CHANNELS tab to see that "Graupner HOTT" is still selected and that Alt control and GPS controls are still active from the MX20 on your assigned channels. Please be aware that SW version .91 is still BETA and is awaiting final documentation. Greetings, Adam
I've been getting bogus receiver strength voice telemetry back to me thats been a bit stressful. I've gotten a few "receiver strength is 0%" from our favorite German lady when I was no more than 200 feet from the copter and I never lost command of the bird so I believe its a bogus report. I've verfied that when I actually do lose my radio signal by turning the radio off it goes into come home. It just happened to me again this past weekend when I was flying over water, a bit unnerving. I'm running all the latest Graupner voice files and firmware and I'm running 90J.
Hello Dave, Do you see a corresponding drop in "RCQuality" in MK_GPX_Tool during these flights when "receiver strength" indicates 0%? Greetings, Adam
I've also noticed that Fraulein Graupner (aka "Jeff's Girlfriend") will report "zero point zero volts" for the main flight battery occasionally -- it certainly gets one's attention. I think it's a bug in the firmware -- or she does it just to see if anyone's paying attention. Andy.
HI Adam No I don't ever see RC quality going low no matter what my signal strength is or how far I'm out. Attached is the GPX file of the first time this happened to me. I flew out as far as 384 meters and you don't see the RC Quallity changing much no matter how far I'm out rather it be 5 meters or 384 meters. It's always around 190-210 in quality. The receiver strength 0% has happened to me about 5 times out of the last 50 flights. Never a problem until I went to 90J from 88.
Dave: Check out row 868 -- looks like you got an isolated Low Battery warning and a GPS_FIX speak code -- not sure what that's about? Doesn't appear to be related to the RCQuality issue but I was a bit surprised to see it. Bear in mind that the GPX file you have is configured (by the SETTINGS.INI file on the microSD card) to sample once every 500 milliseconds. If some transient event happens between samples, it will not be recorded in the GPX file. So if you have a sudden RC signal "drop out" and it happens before or after a sample time, you'll never see it in the GPX file. However, I'm not sure when Fraulein Graupner speaks her mind -- if it's interrupt driven, she might speak even in between GPX file samples. Andy.
I think the change to 200 milli is only in 0.91? I'm still on 90J. I undertand what you are saying though, I think if I ever lost signal and it was truly 0 percent it would have gone into Come home mode. BTW: What does Jeff's girlfriend look like? She sounds pretty sexy when she talks back the telemetry.
The change is from 1000 milliseconds to 500 milliseconds, I believe, Dave. You need to lose signal for "Emergency CH" seconds before it will go into Emergency Come Home, if I recall correctly. You better ask Jeff about the lady in question! Andy.
My copter goes into come home immediately as soon as I switch off the radio. I'm using the default settings.
thanks for all the input everyone, I have another question. When setting voltage reference, should I be in 3.0V CRxx (standard), or the 3.3V CSxx? I've found lately that I'm getting voltage warnings pretty early... Please advise... I bought my cs8 in April of 2013... so it's not an old version.
Steven us the 3.0 standard. You can get full information on all of the screens in MKTool at http://www.mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/en/MK-Parameter Voltage reference Normally you do not have to change this!! This setting is only for a few FlightCtrl2.1 at the beginning who get's a other voltage regulator. With this you see in the KopterTool a lower voltage then it realy is. Here you can adjust this. More informations about this you can find here: UndervoltageSettings