Craziest of Crazyflies - Spinning out of control

[DonRex69]

Hi Guys,

So excited i got my CF through the other day.

I set it all up as per the assembly video, no connection problems with crazy radio and accepts input from my PS3 and xbox controller, only problem i have is that it can't sustain flight ! The flie just spins constantly out of control until it smacks into the nearest wall when all i do is increase the thrust!

Is this something to do with the Yaw/pitch/roll controls or am i doing something stupid? Does the CF not have built in stabilisation controls?

Cheers for any help!

[marcus]

Hi,

Did you alternate the wires for each motor when soldering them? Are M1/M3 spinning the opposite direction as M2/M4? See this page for more info

When powering up the Crazyflie did you set it down on a flat stable surface? When powering it on it's important to have the Crazyflie on a flat surface so the sensors can be calibrated otherwise you might run into this bug. If you set the Crazyflie down on a stable surface once it's connected then the artificial horizon as well as the text values in the UI should be stable. If they are still moving then the sensor calibration did't go well.

/Marcus

[DonRex69]

Thanks for the reply!

Yeah I alternated the motors and have checked that m1/m3 rotate in the opposite direction from m2/m4. Please see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBJ0Q1mICN0 for a video of the problem!

[skube]

Did you verify the actual blades are correct too? They should alternate appropriately with the motors.

[DonRex69]

Yup! The blades alternate with the motors, I even switched them to check and it wouldn't even take off...

[tobias]

It sounds like either the motor wires are connected wrong or the propellers.

[skube]

Can you take a couple of close up photos of the connections and props?

[allynbauer]

I have an identical issue. I do not think having the wires flipped xor an incorrect prop would cause this issue. Perhaps if you managed to filp both the wires AND the prop for the same motor it would cause uncontrolled spin. It seems more likely we have an issue with the balance of the battery, or perhaps one or more prop retains a manufacturing artifact.

[allynbauer]

I found a few things were causing my spin problems. One was crappy joysticks on the controller (Proex PS3 clone) I was using. I have switched to a different one (Logitech Dual Action) which has less jitter while the sticks are in their 'neutral' position. I am going to swap out the Proex sticks with some PS1 controller ones I've got and see what that does to it.

Next, I double checked the input config settings. I found that I had swapped yaw and roll. I am not a clever man. I now have it mapped in arguably the 'standard' way: Thrust==left y-axis, yaw==left-x-axis, pitch==right y-axis, roll==right x-axis.

I then switched the UI to 'advanced' mode so I could modify the max thrust (99.99%), min thrust (35%), max angle/rate (40) and max yaw angle/rate (350). This increased the sensitivity enough to allow me to correct any inherent spin and maintain a stable hover.

I am now able to get fairly stable flights. It is an agile little craft.

[marcus]

Great that you got it fixed! It looked a bit hard to fly in the video