laptop

Bought this laptop: HP x360 11inch

• Windows 10 Home 64
  
• Intel Celeron N3060 (1,6 GHz, tot 2,48 GHz, 2 MB cache, 2 cores)
  
• 29,5 cm (11,6 inch) HD IPS UWVA WLED-backlit multitouch
  
• 2 GB DDR3L-1600 SDRAM
  
• 32 GB eMMC
  
• Intel HD Graphics 400
  

It's an old model, but new from the store. Cheapest I could find with a dedicated gfx card. Not good enough for gaming, but can play video smoothly, and possibly some graphics/video editing.

Had to buy this laptop to replace my dead tablet. Fucking cheapo tablet lasted only couple of months, then suddenly the battery refused to recharge. But using the tablet to tune my quads turned out to be a bitch anyway, it did work, but changing the numbers through a small touchscreen only, really sucks. Plus the microUSB made bad contact, making it a real challenge.

Received the laptop earlier today, checked for dead pixels, and everything seems ok. Very happy with this laptop, now I can finally do some decent PID tuning. And also other stuff I could never do because I had no laptop.

Ah cool, I've got a Dell mini 10 with pretty much the same specs, for the very same thing...
Ace.

It's just about good enough, the 3D model of my quad in CleanFlight is a bit slow rotating around, plus I've got to say generally things loads a bit slowly, I've put an SSD in mine which helps a lot but it's still a bit sluggish, but it's works, and it's tiny, mine a 10" and fits perfectly ion the back pack.

N1...

Looks nice canner,should be a lot easier to see stuff than
it was with a small tablet.

Don`t get too obcessed with PID tuning though or you will
never get any flying done.

muckyman wrote:

Don`t get too obcessed with PID tuning though or you will
never get any flying done.

It is part of the things you need to do to make the quad fly good. Sometimes not a lot is necessary to make the quad fly, but to make it fly perfect you need to tune the PIDs. Each time you change type of propellors or switch battery brand, performance can change, and then the PIDs need tuning. Not only PIDs, but also several filters can be tuned, and after that maybe the rates need to be adjusted also. But not all bad behaviour is caused by wrong PIDs ofcourse, sometimes there is a mechanical failure, or as in my case difficult motors that cause a lot of vibration.

And I want to know what PIDs do exactly, how it works. I want to fly and know what to change when there is a wobble or vibration. I can watch 100 videos about PID tuning and still don't really get it, I must try for myself to feel the difference in how the quad handles.

Yeh I agree they need to be played with to get the perfect tune, and just another thing to experiment with too and of course it's very interesting...

Filtering is essential for anything with a PID loop and potential mechanically induced vibrations and with the standard settings things should pretty much work fairly well as these filters are tuned to motor frequencies and will "out of the box" do it for you with a preset, standard setting.

Noise from motor vibrations in quads is bad and needs to be filtered out, as the software in the FC ie the PID loop tries to compensate for the data it's getting, and if that data is just vibrations from motors then it's compensating unnecessarily. No motor is ever perfectly balanced no matter how well it's made or how much tape I stick on (BTW this is the reason I use tape, so the PIDs don't over compensate, or so they compensate less than they need to). I have admittedly little, if any practice in the air with this, but I know a lot of theory as I've programmed games and code for years and used PID loops many times and I understand the reason behind removing unwanted vibrations or "noise" with filters.

You can easily work out what frequency roughly most motors cause vibrations at as you know their rotation speed range, so these frequencies can be factored in inside BetaFlight as presets. But allowing for other variables like unbalanced motors or props that can oscillate and vibrate at certain speeds and create prop-wash is tricky, props especially act dynamically depending on speed and flexibilty etc and this needs data and feedback to work it out properly, hence having to analyze data logging sometimes to do it accurately.

Keep a look out for the new Dynamic Notch filter in BetaFlight, it's a game changer by the sounds of it and from what little I understand of it so far. Reading more into it seems you won't need all the other filters as the dynamic notch is an all in one solution, more than that, it's dynamic. Now dynamic, does this mean it auto-adjust itself depending on noise, or simply makes it easier to assess which frequency range the noise it at, I'm not sure. Early reports are that's it's superb and works really well.

Having said all that, most setups will work just fine and possibly have some vibration here and there as they are not tuned perfectly, it doesn't really matter, but the point is you an actually play about, tune it in, and get it handling much better if you adjust these settings...

All good fun...

Quote :

Keep a look out for the new Dynamic Notch filter in BetaFlight, it's a game changer by the sounds of it and from what little I understand of it so far. Reading more into it seems you won't need all the other filters as the dynamic notch is an all in one solution, more than that, it's dynamic. Now dynamic, does this mean it auto-adjust itself depending on noise, or simply makes it easier to assess which frequency range the noise it at, I'm not sure. Early reports are that's it's superb and works really well.

Can't wait, only a few weeks till the official beta is out.