PID optimiser software

[Desmoboy]

Another newbie question from me but is anyone using software to  tune their Gimbals or flight controllers. Is this a daft question and is it even practical to connect the controller outputs to a GUI ?

Sorry but i have been reading a lot on here about the grief some are having with this subject and as a newbie i expect i will be suffering the same very soon.
Regards
keith

[Col_M]

Hi Keith, as nobody has chimed in I';ll offer my opinion. You aren';t going to get a piece of software that can tune your PIDs for you.

They are dependent of so many factors like the frame, motors, ESCs, pilot';s preference and others, it';s hard to predict what PIDs a multi will require even when you know all the parts and frame. The only way you can tune them is fly, see how it reacts, make a change, see how that feels, make another change, after a while you get a feel of what changes will do. There are some flight controllers that will self tune during a setup flight mode but it';s not perfect and will more than likely require some manual tweaking.

[rickp]

Its starting to look like we';ll have a PID autotune in Arducopter fairly soon. Maybe 3.1 or 3.2...

[Hands0n]

As one of those who has had some "grief" in setting up the PID, particularly in the APM 2.5 Arducopter software, I can say that before you attempt any PID tuning that you pay attention to eliminating vibration.  That will mean ensuring that the props and their hubs are balanced as best you possibly can - the difference in my case (see in the forum) was staggering.  The APM went from unflyable, untunable to stable instantly.   I';m now at the point of refining the PID to squeeze out the last bit of stability and performance that I can.

With other devices such as MultiWii the vibration seems to play a lesser part in overall PID tuneability - although I am absolutely certain that it will interfere with the accelerometers to quite a degree if you dont.   But Multiwii doesn';t, yet, use the accelerometers [particularly Z] in the same way that Arducopter does - I';m sure it will in time, however.  I';m basing that comment on the experience of flying MultiWii Pro 2 in an air frame happily (!) and then all hell breaking loose when I swapped in an APM 2.5.   Lesson learned ...

Bottom line, there is a lot of factors to getting the aircraft sorted.  PID tuning has its limits as I found out. You';ve got to get the basic build sorted out before you turn to PID.

Fortunately, APM 2.5 has the requisite logging to help you assess your initial build and what needs to be done. The rest is up to you