Saturday, October 03, 2009

Testing again...

All tested and ready to go. Were on the way to FAR once more.

In reviewing the video of the last flight I was not really happy with it,
it was stable, but did wallow around more than I'd like. So I did a through review of the code and the adjustable variable settings. I found an error in my integral position gain. In my loop code I'd transitioned from having the displayed integral constant be the proper value or a percent value.
I'd set the value like a percent and used it as a normal so the itnegral gain was 100x too high.
This makes me much happier as the flight visually looked like an earlier blue ball flight that had the same problem. The code set started on the helicopter and transitioned to the blue ball and from there to the silver. I've tried to put all the vehicle specific stuff in a separate compilation modules, but the code has now drifted so I have three similar but not identical code sets.

I Started out with everything under CVS on my main computer with updates from the laptop. Then the laptop died and code was moved to the backup laptop in the field and the CVS stuff has not caught up. The project always has the dilemma, stop and fix a systematic problem where it effects your productivity, but not the actual flight vehicle. 6 months ago these decisions were easier, now it's will the time taken to fix "This" have a payback in the next 27 days.

I'ts pretty clear that the "2nd" gneration is better than the first. The Blue ball is our 2nd gen vehicle, the silver is gen 2.5. We have lots of things we know we would do different on gen 3, yet the current plans for gen 3 add the whole aerodynamics aspect that is missing from the LLC vehicles.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Paul, try Araxis Merge if you need to find how the code drifted and bring the various changes back into focus. They have a 60 day free trial for Windows.

Paul Breed said...

I use Araxis Merge all the time.

Anonymous said...

The 3 pane interface really is great.

David said...

Its great your finding the causes of the behaviour your seeing. Great stuff. Good flying.

High Power Rocketry said...

: ) `

Steve said...

So... Do you still recommend Crisp?

Paul Breed said...

I Switched from Crisp to Visual Slick edit about 3 yrs ago.
Finger still programed to do
"brief" key bindings.

Paul Breed said...

I Switched from Crisp to Visual Slick edit about 3 yrs ago.
Finger still programed to do
"brief" key bindings.