Highly erratic IMU
Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2015 4:55 pm
Hey Community
Got a crazyflie 2.0 for Christmas and have been playing with it for a few days. All firmware/code is up to date for the radio, client, copter, etc.
I've gotten a couple good stable flight sessions out of it, but the vast majority of the time, the IMU goes way out of whack. Here's a typical flow of operation:
1) Power on the crazyflie, ensuring the copter is sitting flat on a level surface (for the initial IMU calibration)
2) Connect via the client in the VM.
3) Observe the pitch/etc in the graphical display to be pretty level. Slightly off, but nothing abnormal.
4) Take off, fly for a short while (I've gone as long as 45 seconds)
5) Usually, crash land. Sometimes I've set it down moderately gently and seen the same effect. On a few rare occasions, I've seen this seem to materialize mid flight for no apparent reason.
6) IMU is now way out of whack. The GUI shows a pretty consistent drift along all axes, even when the copter is sitting stationary. The speed of the drift is proportional to the degree of impact the copter saw on the landing.
7) Copter is totally unflyable until I power it off and return to step 1.
I understand that some degree of IMU drift can be introduced by impact, but this seems extreme based on the devices I've interacted with before. I essentially have to power cycle the entire copter every single time I want to take off.
This is also observable when flying from the iOS app, though there's obvious no GUI to visually observe the gyro drift. I just see the same erratic takeoff behavior after a landing of any sort. Power cycle required.
Is this normal for the crazyflie or is something wrong with my sensors? I seem to recall a time when I was able to fly a few times in a row without a power cycle, but I'm not positive.
Thanks
Sean
Got a crazyflie 2.0 for Christmas and have been playing with it for a few days. All firmware/code is up to date for the radio, client, copter, etc.
I've gotten a couple good stable flight sessions out of it, but the vast majority of the time, the IMU goes way out of whack. Here's a typical flow of operation:
1) Power on the crazyflie, ensuring the copter is sitting flat on a level surface (for the initial IMU calibration)
2) Connect via the client in the VM.
3) Observe the pitch/etc in the graphical display to be pretty level. Slightly off, but nothing abnormal.
4) Take off, fly for a short while (I've gone as long as 45 seconds)
5) Usually, crash land. Sometimes I've set it down moderately gently and seen the same effect. On a few rare occasions, I've seen this seem to materialize mid flight for no apparent reason.
6) IMU is now way out of whack. The GUI shows a pretty consistent drift along all axes, even when the copter is sitting stationary. The speed of the drift is proportional to the degree of impact the copter saw on the landing.
7) Copter is totally unflyable until I power it off and return to step 1.
I understand that some degree of IMU drift can be introduced by impact, but this seems extreme based on the devices I've interacted with before. I essentially have to power cycle the entire copter every single time I want to take off.
This is also observable when flying from the iOS app, though there's obvious no GUI to visually observe the gyro drift. I just see the same erratic takeoff behavior after a landing of any sort. Power cycle required.
Is this normal for the crazyflie or is something wrong with my sensors? I seem to recall a time when I was able to fly a few times in a row without a power cycle, but I'm not positive.
Thanks
Sean