Drone drifts to right - pixracer F450!

PX4 Autopilot Flight Controllers đź’»
1

I am a new quad flier and trying to get my first successful flight. Unfortunately, when I take off the copter is always drifting to the right. I’ve been reading threads and trying various things.

  1. Checked balance - battery is centered, nothing else seems to be assymetrical
  2. Recalibrated sensors (many times)
  3. Tried to trim out

I can get it to somewhat stay straight by countering to the left, but something seems off. I tried to see if I turned on “Hold” mode while in the air if it would help. It made it worse and drifted hard right and into a snowbank (drying out now!)

I don’t have my GPS elevated (yet - I still need to get a GPS stand). What other debug items should I look at? The horizon on the QGroundcontrol does show level when on level surface.

Would their be useful information on the SD card? Not sure if the flights are logged there with sensor data or if I could even understand what it was thinking?

thanks,
Austin

2

hi use Qgrouncontrol to download log from controler, log upload to this site http://logs.uaventure.com/ and post link to it.

3

What version of software is loaded? Does the attitude indicator in QGroundController appear level?

4

Sorry for delayed response. I’ve been traveling and just got some time to try some things. Below is a download of a recent flight.

http://logs.uaventure.com/view/ETrRWSgHCLxeBKEWm3UryK

Observations:

  1. My horizon level needs to be reset quite often. When power up and reset it is fine for that flight, but might show unlevel when powered up the next day on same surface. In this flight I was able to fly in stabilized mode pretty well.

  2. In this flight data it shows that I flew the drone a wide area (i.e. over a major road, many houses, etc). I was only in my cul de sac - the gps data seems not accurate.

  3. You’ll notice there was one section where I tried to enable Position flight mode. The drone shot straight up in the air for some unknown reason. I let it go for a few seconds, but got spooked and put it back into stablized - I have no idea why it shot up? My understanding is that position should not have a minimum altitude?

  4. I don’t have my GPS chip elevated (yet), it is mounted with double sided tape on the rear of the top of the 450 frame (not sure if not having a elevated mount is causing interference for observation #2). I do not have my integrated compass from my gps plugged in yet.

  5. I am using stable version 1.5.5 Firmware (open to using other version)

Thoughts?

5

Hi
main problem is you have high level of vibration on your frame
http://logs.uaventure.com/view/ETrRWSgHCLxeBKEWm3UryK#IMU_Acc_PLOT
you have to balance your props and motors, or use new props if old-ones are damaged after crash

GPS signal is not optimal too, and there is some interference to magnetometer so MAG build in compass and elevate it on mount is good idea.

try to change this things and send log from flight

6

Thanks David! I’ll do some research on how to balance my props/motor. Also, I have my Pixracer attached to my frame with doublesided servo tape - is that a good way to mount?

What would have caused the drone to zip straight up when I enabled “Position” mode?

thanks,
Austin

7

Made some good progress! I picked up a prop balancer and did some prop balancing. I was amazed on how out of balanced the props were. Once I took off I could tell a huge difference (control and sound).

http://logs.uaventure.com/view/kNmMCrcqNhfZnij28f7gPn

I haven’t balanced the motors yet, but its on my todo list.

Is there anything that documents what the metrics are in the log? For example on the altitude, it shows 300-350. I don’t think that is ASL, but not sure. If I plan a mission where can I get the relative altitude it is referring to?

thanks!