Acro mode?

[borislip]

I know MP generally not supposed to fly in ATTI mode, yet can stil be forced into it by modifying some parameter...

Something i've never seen discussed anywhere, though is - can we somehow put it into Acro mode?

To those aren't familiar with the names - ATTI - no positioning, but still levels the craft automatically. Acro - no leveling either, whatever you do with the controls just translates into motors RPM, no sensors involved, fully manual.

 

[gnirtS]

Surely without direct control of the RPM of each prop that'd be a disaster because you'd lack the fine control needed to stabilise the thing.
No flight mode as far as im aware allows direct adjustment of the RPM.

 

[andrejpodzimek]

Acro - no leveling either, whatever you do with the controls just translates into motors RPM, no sensors involved, fully manual.

Now that is a total misunderstanding of the acro mode. There is no direct translation to ESC signals (not to mention motor RPM), ever; there is always a PID controller involved. The closest to a direct translation (yet still safely far away from it) may have been the “Acro Plus” mode, popular in the past in Cleanflight and early Betaflight. It was used with ultra-old gyros that sometimes had integer overflow issues above certain angular speeds and in such cases, Acro Plus came in handy when one wanted to do 10 flips in a second. But it was never used permanently in normal flight; it would be activated for a few moments beyond a certain stick deflection.

(You can think of acro with Acro Plus as of horizon mode, but shifted one “derivative” level higher. Horizon mode switches your controls from absolute angle to angle derivative over time (i.e., angular speed) beyond a certain stick deflection. Acro with Acro Plus switches your controls from absolute angular speed to (almost) angular speed derivative over time (i.e., angular acceleration) beyond a certain stick deflection.)

With today’s 32 kHz gyros, Acro Plus is no longer needed and therefore a regular acro mode always has a full PID controller behind it (including the “I” term) with lots and lots of auto-tuning and adaptive filtering improvements. That’s almost the exact opposite of direct motor control. There has never been a “fully manual” mode for drones; that would be way outside any human pilot’s capabilities. That’s why drones have flight controllers.

What the modes really mean, in summary:

• attitude mode: uses gyro and accelerometer
• acro mode: uses gyro only [with a few exceptions]

 

[Koelkop]

I know MP generally not supposed to fly in ATTI mode, yet can stil be forced into it by modifying some parameter...

Something i've never seen discussed anywhere, though is - can we somehow put it into Acro mode?

To those aren't familiar with the names - ATTI - no positioning, but still levels the craft automatically. Acro - no leveling either, whatever you do with the controls just translates into motors RPM, no sensors involved, fully manual.

You can put it into manual mode by setting the parameter to 0. Where you put in 3 for Atti mode just put in 0. It is a handfull so anyone who tries it better know how to fly

 

[borislip]

Now that is a total misunderstanding of the acro mode...

Thanks for the detailed explanation, i've been, indeed, assuming acro mode it pretty much straight from user input to motors, as in 'without any feedback loops from any kind of sensors whatsoever'.

that would be way outside any human pilot’s capabilities

Guess this kinda explains why we've only started seeing drones (as in quad-copters, not in general) in rather recent years.

 

[andrejpodzimek]

Guess this kinda explains why we've only started seeing drones (as in quad-copters, not in general) in rather recent years.

Exactly. Unlike planes and helicopters with their self-stabilizing aerodynamic properties, drones are quite “anti-aerodynamic”, so to say, and just fly by “brute force”, both in terms of physical power and in terms of computing. Their inherent efficiency issues are also the reason why we’ve only started seeing drones in the age of LiPo batteries; I don’t recall any well-known NiCd-based builds.

 

[borislip]

Kinda makes me wonder, how long would a well designed fixed wing RC craft at about the same weight as an MP would fly, powered by a similar (50Wh or so) LiPo battery, and what distance it would be able to cover.

 

[Flycaster]

If you are planning to go aerobatic with manual mode, you may want to pay attn to your gimbal, being flopped all around doing flips???
This is a camera ship...

 

[FoxhallGH]

If you want an example of how hard you'd have to work to keep a Mavic up with no electronic assist, just look at the rpm reading on your RC Controller - and bear in mind that the one continuously changing figure is an aggregate of the four motors!

 

[tenashas]

This is exactly what I was looking to do as well. I've put it atti mode but as OP said it likes to self level. I've also sweated bullets for 5 minutes while in full manual 0 and then turned the MP2 into a lawnmower. Its set by default to climb in altitude so your constantly fighting to bring it back down while dealing with extremely sensitive sticks. My question is:

are there any parameters to edit that would affect how atti mode handles? anything to adjust or turn off? the config_mode parameters I see are for normal, sport, tripod, etc. but I don't see anything that would let you make adjustments to atii...

 

[DanMan32]

Perhaps tilt angle limit, but really the point of atti is you have nothing but barometer for height, and gyro/accelerometer for general flight control.

I suppose there would be gain, expo, etc that you can set right in the Go app.