FBL Gyro Ikon Governor and setup of Ikon

[DAL2855]

Ok guys my Ikon is supposed to arrive tomorrow for the 550. I have the HobbyWing RPM sensor and attached it to the red and blue wires on the motor, and have the adapter plug that allows it to plug it into the Ikon.

I've never ran an external gov before, so how do I test it to ensure it's working properly? Do I just attempt to bog the motor doing pitch pumps or something?

I think I've decided to go back to the original setup instead of running the separate RX pack to eliminate all the hassle of trying to wire everything correctly.

I'm sure I'll have alot more questions tomorrow when I get ready to set it all up once it's installed and hooked up.

 

[coolgabsi]

There are multiple steps to set a governor properly. The biggest thing is making sure IKON knows your ESC's throttle limits.. NOT JUST your tx's .. That is tricky business sometimes. I have gotten the way to caliberate castle esc down. Like seriously. I know how to do that. once that is done, you would start by making sure that your sensor is picking up the rpm's by just simply spinning the motor fast by hand.. you should see RPM in the IKON software

How to tune the governor. Its like gyro gain.. No you dont try to bog your head at first. You start with gain to default. keep your computer handy. Do a pitch pump going up .. keep going high as you are confortable with in IDLE up , then all of a sudden feed negative pitch into the heli, ofcourse the heli is gonna jetting towards the ground pretty fast. in that transition coming down the head is unloaded, and is picking up RPMs. Like some SERIOUS RPM..your governor at this point should try to turn the motor rpm as low as it can. If it doenst, or takes time to catch up, you need to bump up the gain. I would bump the gain up by 5-7 points as needed.. and listen for the motor.

Now how do you know gov gain is too high . just like tail gyro gain makes the tail wag, governor gain will cause motor hunting.. RPM will keep huunting high and low.. (now in a nitro its much more obvious, but similar sounds in electric.. check out my VIBE 50 big block maiden video, you can hear the nitro motor hunt) ..

they start flying the way fly normally.. whatever you do.. if you see that your motor is hunting at some manuevers, decrease the gain, and if it drops or overspeeds too much on some manuevers, take the gain higher.

if your ESC can show logs, that is a GREAT way to find out how your governor gain is. Look at the RPM .. if it going over set rpm, and the throttle input isnt dropping, well gov gain needs to go higher. .

hope this helps

 

[DAL2855]

Yeah that helps alot! I just wasn't exactly sure how to tune the gov. I don't know how yet to do many maneuvers, only passes, flips and rolls, and semi-circuits but that's only been done in the sim and I'm practicing every day doing them so that I get better before attempting them with the real bird.

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BTW, I am using the YEP 100a ESC, KingMax HV servos, HW RPM sensor for the Gov.

 

[coolgabsi]

Yeah that helps alot! I just wasn't exactly sure how to tune the gov. I don't know how yet to do many maneuvers, only passes, flips and rolls, and semi-circuits but that's only been done in the sim and I'm practicing every day doing them so that I get better before attempting them with the real bird.

- - - Updated - - -

BTW, I am using the YEP 100a ESC, KingMax HV servos, HW RPM sensor for the Gov.

You will have to know how to get the high and low points on the esc calibrated. If you can tell me how you do it, I could adapt that to fit ikon

Governor is thre to tune according to your flying style. When you progress and see that change needs to be made , change it

If for what you do it's perfect don't change

 

[pvolcko]

Yeah, I wouldn't jump immediately into trying to tune the gov gain.

Do some flying with it. Get used to the sounds and the behavior. I found that the headspeed governing was much better with the ikon than the CC ESC governor, to the point I needed to make significant change to my tail gyro gain (down) to get rid of some fast wagging and flutter during high speed (ie. high collective) banked turns. I'm 10 flights in or so with the new gov setup. Now that I've finally got the other stuff dialed in, I'm going to start experimenting with some gov gain adjustments.

As for calibrating everything. Disconnect the motor from the ESC to start (if you can power up only the ikon, not the ESC). First step is calibrate your tx to the ikon in panel 4 (tx setup). Get it reading 0 and 100 for min and max position on the stick using a linear throttle curve and adjusting throttle travel high and low settings as needed on the Tx. Now you need to calibrate the ikon to the ESC. Go to panel 10 (governor setup), there is a slider bar with + and - at either end. I'm not sure on the YEP how to do this, but on the CC ESC you set the min and max slider toward the middle of the range, move the throttle stick up and then plugin the ESC and the motor wires (make sure no blades on it in case it spins up). This starts up the CC ESC in calibration mode. Then you increase the max slider little by little until the ESC beeps a couple times. Increase the slider a couple clicks more for safety. Then go to low throttle stick and move the min slider down little by little until the ESC initializes, add a few more down clicks for safety. Tx is now claibrated to ikon and ikon is calibrated to ESC.

 

[DAL2855]

I do not have a clue how to calibrate the ESC with it yet, didn't know I needed too. More research for me to get figured out I guess! My next question, I know about the SL, and I looked at the Software last night in demo mode and I do not see much about the SL feature. I only see in one place on page 12 of the setup wizard where it says to Use Governor and Use Auto Level. This is the only place that I see anything about it. I've heard that you can adjust the gains for it, but I do not see any gains for it anywhere. What am I missing here? And I hear to setup 2 different gains for it, One bank without it completely, then bank 2 with mid gains and bank 3 with full gains. I have no idea what I'm doing here and don't wanna screw this up!

 

[DAL2855]

I am a newbie to setting up a gyro as complicated as this one Gaba! So you're gonna pretty much have to hold my hand through setting this one up! I need to know more about setting up the SL feature and everything of this gyro!

 

[coolgabsi]

ok here is my suggestion. The SL feature is good.. Nothing bad about using it. But hear me out. You can totally decide to go a different route, and thats no problem, I (We) will help you setup just the way you want it so . here goes

IKON Beginner setting on the banks is VERY VERY beginner friendly. It has HIGH gain so it grabs hold of your heli, and the agility is Low.. Agility is how fast it reacts to the inputs. Gain is how fast it reacts to wind / torque and unwanted directional changes.



You can setup three banks as : Beginner with HIGH gain low agility.. (usually stock is pretty low)

Bank 2 with beginner with a little lower gain and a bit higher agility and third one with the same as the second but with SL.

You say you are starting out and just hover birds. Why I am not SUGGESTING ( not saying its wrong, but not suggesting) SL to be used in all flying modes is because, you really wont be flying it at all. Your gyro will be flying it. In my Opinion.. in that way, you will have a hard time progressing as when you come off it, the gyro wil obey your commands, when you wont know how to correct the bird when not on SL. BUT thats my opinion there is no hard and fast rule.
I started flying flybarred. And that is NO help at all from the bird. Took me a while to catch up to all the orientations, but man, (boasting here) , can I hold a hover.. lol .. flybar or less, i know to correct and how much looking at where the bird wants to go. Now FBL makes things so much easier for the better...


If you are not comfortable with being on beginner settings, then .. OK lets do what you said.. SL on two banks with varied gains, and non SL on the third.

Just and FYI.. try doing one hover with just the beginner settings on an IKON. You are coming from Tarot. I have flown tarot. and IKON and tarot are like day and night in performance. IKON is GOOD!!! You will see the bird just hang there with no inputs on beginner mode


Now let me know what you wanna do. Like I said, I will help you no matter what. .. have you started the setup yet ? First lets cross that river, and then think about the gains

 

[DAL2855]

No haven't started setting up yet because it hasn't arrived yet. I hate when you pay for 2 day priority shipping and the USPS don't know how to do their job. According to their website, it was supposed to be delivered today but no luck there!!! I had my new servos the other day go through Charleston WV, which is 70 miles away and it took three days for them just to travel that far! It had better be here tomorrow! Is all I can say!

 

[DAL2855]

I wouldn't buy another one of these junk gyro's if they gave it to me!!!!! THE IKON IS JUNK! the SL feature on these DOES NOT WORK! I took my bird way up and as soon as I flipped the switch, the tail went straight up into the air, and the bird WOULD NOT RECOVER!!!! Even after I switched back into normal mode. It would not recover. So they can have their JUNK GYRO'S. THAT'S ALL THEY ARE IS JUNK! The SL feature DOES NOT WORK like they CLAIM it does. And my bird had absolutely no vibs in it whatsoever.

 

[coolgabsi]

I wouldn't buy another one of these junk gyro's if they gave it to me!!!!! THE IKON IS JUNK! the SL feature on these DOES NOT WORK! I took my bird way up and as soon as I flipped the switch, the tail went straight up into the air, and the bird WOULD NOT RECOVER!!!! Even after I switched back into normal mode. It would not recover. So they can have their JUNK GYRO'S. THAT'S ALL THEY ARE IS JUNK! The SL feature DOES NOT WORK like they CLAIM it does. And my bird had absolutely no vibs in it whatsoever.

I pm'ed you and then saw this post.

You'll see in PM the things I tell you to do before going airborne

Did you balance your blades? Main and tail first and test on the bench before going up

Sorry if your bird crashed . That sucks and yes there is no reason not to be mad ... Or disappointed


these self leveling features take a lot of time and tweaking... Bench testing is a start of it

 

[DAL2855]

Gaba, when I flipped the switch on the bench, the swash never moved at all. The bird had absolutely no vibs and everything was setup according to the manual, so there was absolutely no reason for it to cause the bird to go into a completely nose down attitude. A little drift in one direction or the other yes, that could be understandable, but this? No that is completely uncalled for when everything was setup according to the manual. In no way should it have reacted like this. And yes it crashed the bird, completely destroyed the frame. I don't know what else yet as I haven't closely inspected everything yet, as I was too pissed off. Maybe one day this week after I cool off a bit, I'll inspect everything and see exactly what all will have to be replaced. But this Gyro WILL NOT be going back on this bird. EVER!!!! So if someone wants a smokin deal on an IKON PM me and let me know! I will NEVER fly another one of these gyros!

 

[Island Breeze]

Wow! Mike.. sucks to read about a crash. We all hate something that causes us a loss and don't blame you for being pissed off. But it had to been something that wasen't programmed right.

 

[pvolcko]

Mike, sorry to hear that you got nabbed by this issue. How high were you when you gave it a try?



We've had reports of SL causing the heli to go in unexplainable directions before. It's typically attributed to vibrations, though I'm less and less convinced of that as these reports come in. People use these things on nitros which are inherently vibration heavy and presumably many have used SL on them without issue. And if it were caused by vibes, I would expect it to be a "come and go" kind of problem for each instance, not the all good or completely screwed up direction we keep hearing about.

Maybe a manufacturing issue with the accelerometer. Some accelerometers are highly sensitive to magnetic fields and people running certain configurations in relation to motor magnet strength or relative positioning are getting the unexpected behavior? Maybe setup issues? The ikon setup is very particular and somewhat different from others in that you setup the ikon to your Tx and then use ikon settings to get everything going in the right direction (as opposed to Tx reversal and other tricks common with other FBLs).

And it could be a bug in the software, which is how I'm leaning on this. People flip the switch and it either works or they end up trying to avoid catastrophe. Maybe it doesn't work right when the ikon is mounted in certain orientations, resulting in a positive feedback loop in the software governing the SL feature instead of a normal negative feedback control loop? Maybe an issue with servo frequency/setup causing electrical interference in the unit?

It's got to be something more deterministic than vibrations.

 

[DAL2855]

Island, as I said before, EVERYTHING was setup EXACTLY as the manual and software stated. I quadruple checked everything in the software. The helicopter was dual bubble leveled when the Set level was performed. Top up, wires facing front was selected properly in the orientation of the unit. Unit is mounted on top of the transmission as I could not mount it in the normal gyro position on the antirotation bracket due to the USB port being on the back of the unit.

 

[pvolcko]

For reference, I've got mine top up wires back, forward of the main rotor.

When you were bench testing, did you try tipping it in different directions and then engaging SL to see what it did? I'm wondering if maybe it was moving the swash in the opposite direction of the correction that was needed.

Gone through and found out what all needs to be replaced yet?

 

[DAL2855]

Yeah I have to replace the Frame, Swashplate, Main gear, Front TT gears, Blades, front Skid Mount, I was really lucky that the tail boom and TT didn't get bent. I'm sure I'll find other stuff as well that will have to be replaced.

 

[Slobberdog]

Dude sorry to hear you crashed, as I have not seen these units I can't comment 100% but after the issue Westy had with his and yours, well I don't know.

But have to say there is a few on here that its working fine for, think if you want a bail out feature you would be safer going for the helicommand,

 

[DAL2855]

If I were you or know anyone looking to purchase one of these unit's I would advise them not too buy it!!!! The SL feature DOES NOT WORK as they claim it does!

 

[danhampson]

i dont know if it would be any use but you can contact MSH, heres the link MSH Contact