Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Add Automatic Pitch Management demo profile #3

Draft
wants to merge 2 commits into
base: Main-Trunk
Choose a base branch
from

Conversation

ZZ-Cat
Copy link
Owner

@ZZ-Cat ZZ-Cat commented May 5, 2023

Overview

This profile demonstrates how Automatic Pitch Management can be used on a helicopter.

This is a proof-of-concept that I have been testing both in the simulator & IRL, since 2021.

What is Automatic Pitch Management

Whenever you give a cyclic pitch input on your controller, you are adding pitch to the helicopter's main rotor. Whenever you give a collective pitch input on your controller, you are adding pitch to the helicopter's main rotor.
Both collective pitch & cyclic pitch are summed together in the main rotor, & if you feed in too much pitch, you run the risk of overloading your helicopter's power system & stalling the main rotor blades.

In order to fly efficiently, you need to learn how to trade cyclic pitch for collective pitch & vice-versa. The ability to do this is called "Pitch Management" (sometimes incorrectly & confusingly referred to as "Collective Management").
Automatic Pitch Management (as the name implies) automates this process - IE You no longer need to do Pitch Management "by hand" any more. This frees you up to focus more on the task at hand - Flying your helicopter.

What benefits does this bring

First off, it makes flying a lot easier & lighter on the brain - especially if you're the type that favours long flight times.
Secondly, Automatic Pitch Management increases your flying efficiency, which has the flow-on effect of increasing your flight times.

I have this feature on Sieglinde & Tesla, & I have recorded up to 6 & 7 minutes (up from 4 & 5 minutes, respectively) with flying full-on 3D aerobatics.

...& thirdly, there is an adjustable gain that you can use to adjust how much influence the Automatic Pitch Management has over your helicopter's main rotor.

Okay, now let's have at it

Well, in that case, you need need to be aware of a few things first, before you try this out for yourself.

  • This Pull Request is for testing & demonstration purposes ONLY.
  • If you choose to use Automatic Pitch Management in its current state in one (or more) of your helicopters, you are doing so at your own risk. Observe good pre-flight inspection & pre-takeoff checking practices to minimise the risk of injury caused by erroneous/incorrect operation.
  • This profile is not set up for any protocol & flight controller combination in particular, despite its references to ExpressLRS & the MSH Brain2. ELRS & the Brain2 here are merely placeholders, & both the internal & external modules in this profile are disabled.
  • This profile is purely for demonstrating the capability of EdgeTX itself, & is a proof-of-concept for how helicopter flying efficiency can be improved on the controller's end. You assume all risks involved, if you choose to set this up yourself on one (or more) of your helicopters.

Now, that I have that out of the way, here is what you need to do:

  1. Checkout the branch RadioMaster-TX16S/Demos/Automatic-Pitch-Management right here on my repository.
  2. Either clone my repository or download the zip file (by clicking the green Code button).
  3. Extract the zip file.
  4. Copy all of the folders in Profiles/Community/RadioMaster TX16S/ over to your SD Card contents' directory.
  5. Open up EdgeTX Companion.
  6. Synchronise your SD Card contents with your RadioMaster TX16S.

From here on out, you should be able to view the model AutoPitchMgmnt in both EdgeTX Companion (if you click on Read models and settings from radio) & in your controller (Model Settings ► Manage Models or long-press the MDL key).

To see it in action, simply set your collective stick to any point above zero (AKA centre stick). Then move your cyclic stick around.
Using the Channel Outputs, you can observe how your Roll & Pitch (that's Aileron & Elevator to you traditionalists) cyclic inputs influence your collective pitch channel without you needing to move your collective stick.
What is happening here is, your Collective Pitch channel is reduced by how much deflection you give to your cyclic stick commands. Thus, Automatic Pitch Management in action.

Additional

As always... I willl update the information here, as this Pull Request evolves.
Watch this space. =^/.~=

This profile demonstrates how Automatic Pitch Management can be used on a helicopter
@ZZ-Cat ZZ-Cat self-assigned this May 5, 2023
@ZZ-Cat ZZ-Cat added the enhancement New feature or request label May 5, 2023
@ZZ-Cat ZZ-Cat added this to the 1.1.0 milestone May 6, 2023
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Labels
enhancement New feature or request
Projects
No open projects
Status: In Progress
Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

1 participant