How do I force manual control?

ricitron · Dec 19, 2018

Hello,

We ran into a bit of a mishap when flying our Solo. We had the Solo on an automatic mode (grid survey). When we set it to return to home, the solo flew up and then kept flying up and up and up. It didn't know it was already 50 ft off the ground.

The reason? Well, we are using a Lidar rangefinder to keep it a constant distance from during the grid survey. We are using green cube with the new arducopter so that we can use terrain follow mode (in mission planner we have the Altitude control set to "Terrain". But it appears to use the lidar as well when it tries to return to home and land, and it registered an error when it got too high.

When it started flying up out of control I tried to use the controller to guide it back to the ground, but I could not force it to switch to manual. So my question is how can I override the return to home command and switch to flying the drone manually? So I can bring it down safely and regain manual control?

Thanks!

P.S., the issue with the lidar I think was it flew into some fog, so the lidar reflected off the fog and the drone thought it was too close to the ground and tried to continue going upwards before returning to home. You can see in the attached plot, that after a grid survey (at 2 meters), it flies upwards (the spike to 15 meters) before entering the fog and the lidar registering it too close to the ground. It then continued to ascend. Eventually I managed to start bringing it down manually (I think by holding the fly button), but it ran out of battery and fell from about 250 feet. I'm surprised it was still mostly intact (soft ground). Is there a better failsafe way to regain manual control in any situation?

Pedals2Paddles · Dec 19, 2018

Is this Open Solo or the stock firmware? If you had the A or B button set for manual (Alt Hold) or Stabilize, that would probbaly have worked fine. If you were hitting the fly button (loiter), I suspect that won't work because of the LIDAR related position error. Holding the fly button would have switched it into land mode.

ricitron · Dec 19, 2018

Thanks for the reply! It is running Arducopter 3.5 with the pixhawk GreenCube. How to I tell what the B button is set for? I think the A button is set for Auto, it will run the auto waypoints sent to the drone in MissionPlanner.

What happens when I hold the Fly button? During the flight the controller said hold fly for manual, and I was able to bring it lower after that, but not before the battery ran out, and I'm not sure if that was just triggered by the low battery or not.

Pedals2Paddles · Dec 19, 2018

You set set the A and B button options in the app. It definitely didn't tell you to hold fly for manual. There is no such prompt or function. Like I said, holding the fly button will put it in land mode. Which is also what it would have done automatically if the position was unusable and the battery got too low.

ricitron · Dec 19, 2018

I see, thanks. I don't use the solex app. We are controlling entirely from Mission Planner and the controller. Is there a parameter I can set in Mission Planner to then change the function of the A and B buttons? I can change and write parameters to the drone, as we had to do that to install the Lidar.

just_bruce · Dec 19, 2018

ricitron said:
I see, thanks. I don't use the solex app. We are controlling entirely from Mission Planner and the controller. Is there a parameter I can set in Mission Planner to then change the function of the A and B buttons? I can change and write parameters to the drone, as we had to do that to install the Lidar.

Mission Planner itself should be able to put the Solo into Alt Hold. But I don't think MP can set the buttons on the Artoo GCS for what seems like obvious safety reasons. You don't need solex, install the original Solo App and use it just once to set the B button to Fly:Manual.

Pedals2Paddles · Dec 19, 2018

You need to be using the 3DR Solo App, or Solex, or SidePilot for these Solo specific things. If you don't know how the controller works, how to use the buttons, or what the apps do, you really need to take a step back and read the manual and watch the instructional videos. What you're doing now is not safe.