I’ve just finished the build of my BlueROV and have moved on to pool testing…. when in the pool and armed the ROV is pretty uncontrollable and then gets ‘angry’ and moves out of control. It does seem able ot move forward and back, but not up and down. I have the heavy config.
I have all the thrusters in the correct place, with the correct CCW or CW orientation according to the BlueROV manual. I have also checked manually see if the thrusters are reversed or not. I did notice that in the QGroundControl set up, when setting up the frame, it suggests all the thrusters should be reversed in terms of CCW and CW compared to the BlueROV guide. However, I have kept them as in the BlueROV manual.
I’m sure I done something stupid wrong or missed something, but any advice would be really appreciated to get me going.
Sorry for the frustrations! It is pretty typical to get something misconnected, a thruster direction not set properly, or the default parameters not loaded correctly.
I’d recommend using the auto-motor direction test - close QGC, put the vehicle in the water, and navigate to vehicle setup, pwm outputs in BlueOS. You can click the button and wait, and all your motor directions should then be set correctly - I would bet some of the verticals aren’t correct from the sound of it.
You can then re-open QGC (or try Cockpit) and things should work normally from there!
If you still have issues, double check your motion sensors are calibrated, see if behavior differs between manual and stabilize mode, and try loading the default parameters in BlueOS, also in the Vehicle Setup menu.
Thanks. I have tried the autodetect for motor reversals.
I get the following message
Bad thrust read, trying to push the other way…
Failed! Please check Thruster 5 and frame setup!
However, if I then arm the vehicle and try and test Thruster 5 the thrusters runs and is in the correct place (front starboard - top on heavy - vertical one)
It doesn’t matter which way you do the cw/ccw thrusters, as long as there are 4 of each type and they are symmetric in arrangement as both diagrams show.
The auto-calibration only works if you’ve accomplished a good calibration of your motion sensors - what version of BlueOS are you using?
If you arm the vehicle in manual mode, and pull down on the right joystick to descend, all of the vertical thrusters should blow air upwards. If this doesn’t happen, reverse any thrusters that need to be corrected. If they were all correct, you may not have connected the wires for thruster 5 to the correct ESC? Or you could have similarly mixed up another ESC and thruster…
I have checked all my thrusters and all are set and connected correctly, and I have reversed any thrusters not blowing air upwards. I have also downloaded the Mac version and Cockpit.
When I arm the ROV out the water and (gently) pull the joystick the ROV thrusters fire in a way that makes sense, and it now seems to work pretty well in the water with Cockpit.
The problem appears to be with QGC. When I arm it in that, it goes crazy….
I guess I will just use cockpit…. Unless you have any other suggestions?
I have couple of other questions:
In cockpit I don’t seem to be able to change any of the joystick controls to assign a button to my grabber (this works fine in QGC with a button I assigned.). I won’t let me change any settings.
In cockpit in the pool,The forward/backward, up/down, turn left/right works well. Crabbing is not particularly great and it bears, is that normal for BlueROV?
When I enable the shift button to engage the shift button and the pitch/roll trim its spins very fast! is it supposed to do that? I just want to slow pitch forward and back.
I really appreciate your help, I think I’m nearly there!
What version of QGC are you using? Have you calibrated your joystick in it? Under advanced, you may need to select “center stick is 0 throttle” ?
You can absolutely control a gripper via button in Cockpit - what did you select in QGC to do this? In joystick configuration in Cockpit, simply click the button you’d like to use, and assign the correct function (called Actuator # inc / dec / etc. )
What mode are you trying to strafe/crab in? If in Manual mode, no heading control is active, so drift is expected. Switch to stabilize or alt hold mode (holds depth) to strafe while pointing the same direction.
Do you mean you’re entering Acro mode? Or trying to increase / decrease pitch a small amount? Sharing a .bin log from the autopilot from when this occurs would be helfpul - one is created each time the vehicle is armed.
I tried your suggestion for calibration of the Joystick, but makes no difference. When armed in QGC (and in manual mode) all the vertical thrusters fire.
Have managed to set up the grabber in Cockpit. Thanks.
Also that makes sense regarding crab, get better results in non-manual mode.
