One thing that's 100% certain is that the self-level is set up for small angles. Do not expect it to recover from any position at any time. Do not try to fly acrobatically with self-level on. For one, the accelerometer component is mixed in only for angles that are less than a certain deviation from the horizontal. There's some confusion about what the maximum angle for which accelerometers are factored in is - I would guess based on my reading of the code that it's 26º.
Since the raw accelerometer inputs are treated linearly, the small angle approximation would allow less than 5% deviation from the true angle up to 30º and less than 10% deviation up to 45º. I might try increasing the maximum value for accelerometer merging up to the higher limit of 45º, just to give it more workspace for aggressive flying. Past 45º, the linearizations really start to break down and it would be wise to switch to a gyro-only estimate and hope for the best. (This is assuming that trig operations or other methods of handling large angles are out of the question on an 8-bit microcontroller.)
That's not the only problem, though. As KK himself points out in the now-226-page RCGroups thread, the simple controller based on two complementary filters begins to lose its fast attitude estimate when you combine a yaw command with either a pitch or a roll command:
Unfortunately it was not that easy. It works very well as long as no yaw is commanded when the craft is not level, as seen in the video earlier in the thread. If yaw is applied when not level, both roll and pitch angles change, but roll/pitch gyros does not sense this rotation, resulting in wrong angles. Try for your self with a airplane model in your hand.That, plus a more direct warning:
In short: only yaw when level.Mathematically it makes sense. If you do happen to yaw while within the 26º (?) envelope, the accelerometer readings can still help the angles recover over time. But the fast gyro update is lost. If you yaw while outside the 26º envelope, all bets are off. Since my flying is decidedly conservative, it's possible that the problem had just never come up. So, more aggressive flying is called for.
I felt comfortable enough to put the GoPro back on. It's basically indestructible anyway, and it's a good way of registering the angle of the quad. You can see that I attempted, mostly successfully, some long moderately banked turns. This seems like the most likely scenario where a yaw + roll input would occur and where the sensors have enough time to stray from correct values. While in the turns, I had no trouble maintaining attitude. Coming out of the turns and returning to level flight was a bit trickier (I had one unintentional landing resulting in no damage), but not at all impossible.
Granted, I never really got past 30º in the banked turns. It could start to fail more catastrophically at steeper angles. But the ironic thing is that, until now, I've never felt comfortable enough with the performance of the self-leveling to even attempt these maneuvers. I can also fly nose-in and at larger height with much more confidence thanks to the faster and more stable angle control.
I can think of ways to handle the yaw + roll and yaw + pitch inputs at small angles (45º or less), and they only require math that the ATmega324PA should be able to handle. Maybe I will dig into the assembly more and try to implement something. But, 4pcb has lived this long with nothing but independent pitch/roll complementary filters. (Not that it's the most smooth-flying thing in the world...) Some day I'd like to make my own flight controller from scratch, maybe with a bit more fancy math on a 32-bit processor. But right now this is working very well for me.
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