FBL Gyro Robird G31

[fhu667]

I just got my Robird working with my Trex 450, and I thought I'd leave some notes for future reference. I set this up with a Spektrum DSMX satellite. The Robird system will not assist with binding a satellite to a transmitter. I know when using the 3GX, for example, that it a satellite can bind to a transmitter if you hold down the button the the 3GX when connecting the battery. I actually had to bind the satellite using another receiver, or in my case, a 3GX. Then I moved the satellite to the bird that had the Robird attached. Another thing that kind of confused me was in reference to the tail servo. The tail servo has a separate power bus. Robird provides quite a few cables with their unit, and a couple of these are called SRX cables. One of the uses for this cable is to plug your satellite into. The SRX cable also has another three prong plug on it, and it is for providing power to the tail servo bus. The bottom of the SRX IC board is labled with positive and neutral, so you don't plug it in backwards. It's just a jumper cable that gets connected from there to a port called "SRX2/Rud".

As for the transmitter, I didn't really have any special settings. My swash type was "1 servo normal". On switch select I left everything "inhibit" except for "knob" and I set it to "Aux 3". I'm not sure why, but I had it set this way on another heli. I disabled all my trims. This just seems like a good idea on a FBL controller like this or the BeastX. I then set the gyro channel to "gear". I read somewhere you have to do that, but I don't know that to be a fact. I then associated that with my gyro switch. I need to some experimenting with this setting to see what all is happening.

On the software you can also assign your aileron and elevator gain to two extra channels if you have them. I haven't done that yet due to frustration levels with just getting the tail to work. Also, I'm not sure what buttons I want to assign to those channels, so I was going to ask around and see what people use.

I also hooked up the RPM sensor, so I could run governor mode on it. I don't know how well this works, but I'm going to try it at a later date.

Now about the software. It is surprisingly easy to navigate through, and it seems to work pretty well. You also do your firmware upgrades from here, but mine shipped with the latest version. I didn't get to test it. There is a tab in the setup guide to set the frequency of your servos. It asks for a motor/ESC as well as cyclic and rudder. I guess the motor/ESC is referenced if you have a fuel powered heli and they want to know your servo frequency. I have read that you can leave it as analog if you have an ESC, but I left mine as "1.5ms@250Hz". I read somewhere else you could do that too. I guess I'll find out if it's wrong. I found everything else to be self explanatory and easy to navigate through.

 

[fhu667]

Gyro update: I found that with my DX8 that it is much like my 3GX for setting up the gyro. I assigned the gyro to the gear channel, and then if you have a negative number it is for rate mode, and a positive number is for heading hold. A zero disables the gyro completely. I have position 1 on my gyro switch set to something like a -50, and it seems to do very well in rate mode. Heading hold is a different story. I have a constant counter clockwise spin in heading hold. When I increase the gain number to the 90s then the counterclockwise rotation turns into what looks more like a slow drift, but that high of a number also creates a tail wag. I haven't figured out what isn't set up correctly, but it is strange that rate mode is near perfect and heading hold is such a mess.

 

[fhu667]

I can't edit yet, so I'll have to append the above post. Depending on how your servos are mounted and if you're throws in the Robird unit have been reversed, you can actually have a negative number be heading hold. This happened to me. The for sure way to tell is that you will get a blue light on your State indicator when you are in heading hold mode. I am running mine at about a -59 on my DX8, but depending on your setup it could be a +58. Just look for the blue light. I also did not know that in rate mode your heli may still drift or rotate, and that rate mode is to smooth out or stop abrupt movements but not stop drift. If you want to adjust the drift in rate mode then it must be done mechanically. I disconnected the ball link from the tail, and turned it in a couple of turns to test it. It seemed better, but it was hard to be for sure in the gale force winds we were experiencing today.