uSpirit Tail Motor Control Bugs

[coolice]

Evening All.

Hope everyone is safe and well?

uSpirit and motor driven tail, has anyone got the feature to work where the tail motor actually stays off until the throttle channel see's and input?
Also that the tail motor indeed starts on appication of throttle and not needing the flier to wiggle the rudder or the cyclic channels?

Basically the tail motor will not start on application of throttle as it should do, requiring me to input some right rudder to do so before I take off. However it will start if the cyclic is moved and has started to run while I am carrying the model out to fly, which leads me to think that the software isn't looking for channel 1 (throttle) but is reacting to input from channel 2 (aileron, or other).
This theory is also reinforced each time I go into the settings to change the Geometry 6 degree tuning value, as the moment I click the check box to add in 6 degrees, the tail rotor goes to full power!

Likewise having just wired in the OpenTX Integration lead today, if I enter the Geometry 6 degree tuning via the Lua script, the tail also goes to full power.
Being new to Spirit I made sure my setup isn't the cause and have seen this already being mentioned on various places, with to my knowledge at least, no fix mentioned or released.

Not only is it a bug, it's also a safety issue with the tail starting even when throttle hold is on.

Appreciate any and all input.

Ian Contessa

P.S. I have a uBrain coming, which if that works better on the direct drive motor tail equipped model, this uSpirit will be for sale as it seems to work well on the traditional tube/belt driven models.

[horneteer]

Hello Ian

Yes you need to remove the tail blade or hold the model before ticking the 6 degree setting. Sure is dangerous and needs fixing. I expect it hasn't been reported in the past.

My tail motor also spins up when throttle hold is on and it shouldn't do that. I've been meaning to redo my rudder end points but haven't got round to it yet. You might want to try this also if you haven't checked your end points, especially after tweaking the 6 degree value. I also nudge the rudder to get it started but don't mind this. I'm sure Tomas will see to these things now he knows about them. Be sure to play with flight styles, feed forward, pitch pump and especially pirouette consistency to dial it in.

Hope this helps!
H

[coolice]

Hello Ian

Yes you need to remove the tail blade or hold the model before ticking the 6 degree setting. Sure is dangerous and needs fixing. I expect it hasn't been reported in the past.

My tail motor also spins up when throttle hold is on and it shouldn't do that. I've been meaning to redo my rudder end points but haven't got round to it yet. You might want to try this also if you haven't checked your end points, especially after tweaking the 6 degree value. I also nudge the rudder to get it started but don't mind this. I'm sure Tomas will see to these things now he knows about them. Be sure to play with flight styles, feed forward, pitch pump and especially pirouette consistency to dial it in.

Hope this helps!
H

Hey Buddy.

Thanks for chiming in.

Yes, this I learnt quickly luckily to either remove the tail blade (easy to do on the OMP M2) or disconnect two of the motor wires. But and here is my gripe if you like, we shouldn't need to as if the motor being commanded to be off is set by the throttle channels positional value, then the tail shouldn't start and is marketed to do this.
Likewise the manual states the tail won't start in throttle hold, but will when you raise the throttle to take off and this it doesn't do either. Trawling back through the Spirit forum there is multiple instances of this being brought up last year and still no fix, I have raised this in there also and apart from the tail limit sliders which I have set to power off and provide full speed on right stick deflection, no other advise or fix has been given.
As you say you can pop some rudder in manually, which I have ben doing, or being with OpenTX I can program it to do so automatically, but again the software is advertised as being able to do all this for you.

Tail limits are set nice, tail stops and goes to full power as expected and seems to hold in the back garden and feel nice and connected.

Originally I was like "ok this is my first Spirit and maybe I am missing something here" but having gone over the setup many times now chasing another unrelated issue, which I'll touch on in a bit, it's all setup as per the manual and simply doesn't work.
The other issue I had and is evident in the video below was a very nasty head wobble the minute the model left the ground and I chased my tail trying to work out what was going on here. In the end it seems that if the geometry 6 degree setup needs to be over a certain value to see 6 degree's on the blades, then the unit simply does not like it and as the manual asked for 6 degree's I set the model up like this.
It was advised to try lower and was I mesuring the pitch right....... sorry but after 40 years in this hobby I know how to measure the pitch right. So out of desperation I dropped the value from the high 170 to 120, which gave 3.4 degrees on the bench and the model finally hovered.
In fact now I am at 90 and had to combine this with removing all the elevator filtering by putting it to zero, but I am observing a bounce on the boom if I quick stab elevator inputs which I am yet to rectify.
My little boy isn't happy in the background, but I was happy to have him stood beside me with it doing this for no apparent reason;

My personal feeling is this unit isn't going to see the tail channel fix it needs, certainly there has been no indication on their forum that it will be and I've made a post in the bug fix section also with no response.

Never been one to complain about anything in the RC world, but this unit is a let down for me on the smallest of details, especially as most seem to hold the Spirit units in quite high regard and quick action to rectify issues.

Ian Contessa

[horneteer]

Hi Ian

I experienced all of this when I first put a μSpirit in my Trex 150. If you search for 'μSpirit on a Trex 150 - some observations and suggestions' you'll find the thread I made before I got the heli sorted. The thing flies like a Swiss watch now and I've been loving it for the last 3 years. The tail start-up problems are dangerous as you say and you're right to highlight them. In the Spirit forum I suggested removing the tail blade before selecting the 6 degree setting but I should have added the reason! Sorry about that.

Sounds like it hasn't been a great start and Tomas may need a reminder but he'll fix this eventually I expect. Aside form these bugs the flight performance is outstanding especially with Geolinks on larger models. That said pretty much all flight controllers fly great these days. I also really like Brain including the micro Brain 2. Both fly amazing when dialled in and I can't decide which one I prefer. They're both fantastic products in my book. Only thing I don't like is the casing and sockets on the micro Brain.

Not sure if default settings for the M2 are available in the Spirit settings but if not the recently updated default settings for the Trex 150 are well suited to ~190mm blades, and they might be a good match for the M2. Otherwise you could try reducing the cyclic gain to get rid of any remaining wobbles. Another thing I've found to help on small nodding helis is a spot on CG.

Good luck with it! I'll bump the other thread on Monday if its falling down the page.

[Grumpy]

Ian, I guess you have tried reducing cyclic gain?.. It certainly looks like cyclic gain that's too high.

[coolice]

Hi Ian

I experienced all of this when I first put a μSpirit in my Trex 150. If you search for 'μSpirit on a Trex 150 - some observations and suggestions' you'll find the thread I made before I got the heli sorted. The thing flies like a Swiss watch now and I've been loving it for the last 3 years. The tail start-up problems are dangerous as you say and you're right to highlight them. In the Spirit forum I suggested removing the tail blade before selecting the 6 degree setting but I should have added the reason! Sorry about that.

Sounds like it hasn't been a great start and Tomas may need a reminder but he'll fix this eventually I expect. Aside form these bugs the flight performance is outstanding especially with Geolinks on larger models. That said pretty much all flight controllers fly great these days. I also really like Brain including the micro Brain 2. Both fly amazing when dialled in and I can't decide which one I prefer. They're both fantastic products in my book. Only thing I don't like is the casing and sockets on the micro Brain.

Not sure if default settings for the M2 are available in the Spirit settings but if not the recently updated default settings for the Trex 150 are well suited to ~190mm blades, and they might be a good match for the M2. Otherwise you could try reducing the cyclic gain to get rid of any remaining wobbles. Another thing I've found to help on small nodding helis is a spot on CG.

Good luck with it! I'll bump the other thread on Monday if its falling down the page.

Morning Mate.

Ah it was probably your posts I saw on the Spirit forum along with the others with the same issues.
I will say now the model is flying it does feel locked in and that's before I've really done any major tuning, likewise the tail which is where I was more concerned if you like, it to seems very well planted. So on the outside it's a reltaviely happy experience, it's just the minor gripes that are spoiling the overall product and as the tail seems to have been an issue fo the past year or more that doesn't bode well on the development front.

Originally I did try go with the 230S base settings and tailored them for the M2 with the tail motor setup, as this wobbled despite any gain changes etc I swapped to the 150 and then simply ran with no base settings to start from a clean slate.
No there isn't an M2 specific base template, which I'm not fused about as I can create my own to my taste, it just helps if the manuals setup steps provide you with a flying model and in my case they didn't.

Thanks, gonna need it I think. I will keep you all posted, the main thing is it's flying now but it took some messing around and simply going out on a limb to do so.

Ian Contessa

[coolice]

Ian, I guess you have tried reducing cyclic gain?.. It certainly looks like cyclic gain that's too high.

Morning Mate.

Yeah after seeing that if was the first thing I and any of use would go to, so I dropped the stock 55 by 10 points, which didn't help, then 20 an finally all but switched off the gain by placing it at the lowest setting of 20% and it still wobbled.

Essentially these wobbles stemmed from the need to have the geometry 6 degree slider so high in it's range to get the required 6 degrees on the blades. Why this high value gave these issues I do not know and the Spirit guys haven't been able to offer an explanation either, only that it is very high and might be the cause.
As you saw I ordered some OMP balls Thursday so have fitted the longer ones to the inner ring of the swashplate in an effort to bring this geometry slider down as much as I can and I'm still considering trying to move the blade grip balls in as well, because the collective travel slider is quite high also to achieve a +-12.5 degree range.

I even went up and down on the head speed, thinking as I have changed the ESC(s) I may be in the RPM band where the M2 wobbles, but this simply increased or decreased the wobble frequency.

Strange one, within reason I was expecting to be able to follow the manual and then hover. Follow this with the usual fine tuning and be happy, but there is some gotcha's in the parameters it seems whereby if they are too high they cause other issues. At least this is my thoughts so far.

Ian Contessa

[coolice]

Evening All.

Seems we may have a fix, a new firmware revision has been posted for me to try. Will do this tomorrow

"Hi,

thank you for the message.

The tail itself will start to rotate once a sufficient vibration level is detected (and also stick movements).
It look like in your case it does not work properly.

So we have made some improvements.

If you wish you can try our testing release:
http://spirit-system.com/dl/fw//spirit-fw-3.1.10.4df

Once throttle hold is disengaged tail rotor will start to spin at the Low RPM that is configured in the Servos/Subtrim menu - CH4.

I believe everything you mentioned will work properly now."

Ian Contessa

[coolice]

Hey All.

Seems we are making some real improvements now, so pleased I posted this in the various places as it looks to have had the desired effect.
Flashed the new firmware about 30 minutes ago and had a hover around in the back graden and all seems to be much better, the modle did start to wobble like in the above video after a few minutes, but I had changed some settings so did expect I might see this. So reverted then back to the previous value and all seemed good other than an elevator bounce following sharp stab cyclic inputs which will most likely tune out.
Here is what I put on the Spirit forum a few moments ago with my observations to the changes made;

"Afternoon ZeXx86.

Once again thank you for this new firmware and I think we have fixed things so far very nicely, which is good to see.

I'm only in my back garden so far, so only hovering around, but have found out the major changes and improvements;

1. So far the tail motor is staying off when I am in throttle hold, or with the throttle stick simply at zero, which is great.

2. The tail motor now starts when I increase the throttle/collective stick to take off, without the need for me to move the tail or cyclic control to make it start, so this is great to. I have put the subtrim CH4 slider to 40.
I have some throttle channel delay (10s) up set in OpenTX to replicate a slow spoolup which I am lacking on the current main ESC choice, so I am seeing the tail start when it get's to a certain throttle out value which is great.

3. When entering the settings, either via the wired PC interface or using the OpenTX integration, the tail motor is staying off for me in the geometry 6 degree and cyclic ring setup parameters, so this is great to and makes it easier now for me to make changes from my TX in the garden safely.
Out of curiosity I did flick out of throttle hold when I am in either of the above settings and moved the throttle and rudder sticks and didn't see the tail starting, so that is another bonus.

4. Totally unrelated to the tail/throttle connection, but I am still having to keep the geometry 6 degree value at around 80 which measures at 3.2 degree's on the blades to avoid the elevator wobble. Not sure if something could be done there maybe to de-sensitise this value a bit more?
I have swapped out the middle swashplate control balls to raise the mechanical travel input to the grips in cyclic inputs, this has helped a bit with the overall value needed, but a bit more would be better I think. It's not easy to move the blade grip control ball inwards sadly, so not been able to try that which would also help with the high collective range slider position also which is up in at the 200 point.

Overall now much happier so thanks for your time and effort making these changes.
If I see anything worth mentioning I will post it, only thing I need to do now is still remove an elevaotr bounce following quick stab elevator inputs.

Ian Contessa"

Perhaps I shouldn't have ordered a uBrain after all, which arrives tomorrow, but I have another M2 it could go on :-)

Keep you posted.

Ian