CC3D - LibrePilot for Stabilization and Leveling

by jimmyp39 | January 5, 2016 | (8) Posted in Projects

I've been looking for a quick and cheap way to add stablization to fixed wing aircraft. I think I may have found this in the CC3D board.

This year for Christmas I decided to built two FT-Explorers. One for me and one for my Friend Ted as a Christmas present. Ted is a beginner and doesn't fly too often so he tends to lose his feel for flying and has to re-learn each time out. Last year Ted came with me to Flite Fest and he crashed so much his wife nick named him "Crash Test Ted". I made up a little logo to put on his plane.

I wanted to do something to help him a bit and thought if I could figure out a cheep way to add stablization to his plane then I would go ahead and do it. 

I found a cheep CC3D Open Pilot controller on e-bay for about $10 and ordered one. http://www.ebay.ca/itm/351556163521?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

I mounted it on a piece of 1/16" plywood and mounted a reciever on it to make it easy to install in the plane in one piece

 Here it is mounted in the plane

You can find the PC softare for programming here. http://bit.ly/1jUC3YT and they also have a Mac verson.

The software has a fairly easy wizard to go through which updates the firmware, picks the model type, and leads you through the set up of the device and your radio. The only thing I had to do was swap a couple of wires betwen the CC3D and my reciever during the radio set up. 

I don't need to go through all the set up steps as the software is fairly self explanitory. One thing to remember though you will need to change the arming settings to "Always Disarmed" whenever you need to make changes or it will not save the changes. This is for safety so you won't spin the props if you do something wrong. After you make all your changes you will need to change this back to "Always Armed" or if you like you could set up arming to work like  a mulit rotor as an extra safety.

Here is a start to finish video of the setup of the fight controller for Fixed Wing stabilization used on this plane.

Step 1: Set up firmware

Step 2: Set up plane type 

Step 3: Set up endpoints and midpoint for control surfaces

Step 4: Set up radio

Step 5: Set up Flight Mode

Step 6 Level plane and set level point.

Step 7: Set up arming type.

Save everything.

Make sure to bench test your setup to make sure control surfaces are moving correctly to relevel the plane

Here is the first test flight.

The test flight went fairly well but not without a slight problem. When I enabled the stabilization the nose started to drop right away. I quickly turn it back to manual control and gained some altitude. When I tried it again I found that I needed to give some up trim to level it back out. After getting the trim sorted out it flew quite well. I noticed that it was holding things quite level and secure. When letting go of the sticks it went right back to level flight. Also the controller limited the roll and pitch amount preventing over control and one getting them self in trouble. Tried doing a couple of rudder only turns and without touching the ailrons the wings were held perfictly level. With the stabilization turned off you can fly anyway you like but like a panic switch, turning it on would level things back out for you. When I flew close enough to see the control surfaces you could see them doing small corrections continually holding the plane level. After testing everything out I turned off the stabilization and just flew this great plane. Thanks to all the guys at Flite Test for the Explorer Design.

I learned from this project that you don't have to spend a lot to get stabilization in you plane. Making sure you perform the leveling of the board after you mount it will make the maiden flight go better than mine. I really like the ease of the software. Having the wizards really helped lead me through the setup. For any other questions about the setup of this board you can go the well written Wiki here https://librepilot.atlassian.net/wiki/display/LPDOC/User+Manual 

This was a fun project and now the next step is to get this into "Crash Test" Ted's red explorer and set up for him. Maybe if it helps him to fly without crashing, I will need to come up with a new logo for his plane. 

Thanks, Jim

 

Edit March 2016. 

I've been flying this plane with the CC3D board and teaching my friend Ted with it. He loves it. His confidence has increased greatly and landings have become a breeze for him. One change I made after flying it for awhile is to turn the Yaw control back to manual from rate. I found that we needed to use the rudder stick (not just bank and yank). With the Yaw back to manual we could bank and yank just fine. 

COMMENTS

richmond2000 on January 22, 2016
cool I to have a friend that is wanting to get BACK into the hobby and is starting with a GLOW motor RC (it is a trainer of some sort) he stuffed it last year and is repairing it and I would like to try one of these flight controllers to aid him

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mungral on January 31, 2016
great info Jimmy. thanks

hopefully this is a easy question

I never really know what is meant by "Level your plane" (step 6 in your instruction)

does it mean level wings?, level fuse? or ???

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jimmyp39 on February 1, 2016
What I mean there is that you want the plane sitting level front to back and side to side. You do this during the set up process while connected to the computer. Then in the software when you click the level function it will set this as its reference.
When you are flying the plane it will return to this position when the sticks on the transmitter are centered.
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c.sitas on February 2, 2016
I have seen these things cursed by the old timers. Know why? Cause they know how to fly. I think these things are a great a great help for the beginner. Wind is one thiong but, a bad or ,say it better , tooooo strong a command , and this thing will help you save your contraption. You have to play around with the adjustments, and that takes time. Just grab some more glue and try again. You just adjust the pots so they don't over react. It does take some trail ans eeeeero, but , thats what they make hot glue for. have fun guys .I agreee 10000 percent here. .Need help hollar. Good goin Jimmy.
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RCman50 on January 23, 2016
5 stars and bookmarked! Great article and thanks for the link to the board you used. I have yet to order one but I was browsing. Thanks again Jim. Dustin

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paultbg on January 24, 2016
An easier way is to use the cc3d Atom mini (smaller footprint, already in a case) with either OpenPilot or LibrePilot firmware. The only problem is that doing the settings (after the wizard) is not quite user friendly if you do not have some previous "board" experience.
In terms of "easy to set-up" gyro for autolevel is better to go with something like HobbyEagle A2 Super 2
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jimmyp39 on January 24, 2016
I agree that it took a bit of tinkering to get it all working but I really like the $10 price tag.
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jimmyp39 on January 23, 2016
Just an extra bit of info. I did some more testing today and I found that the FT-Explorer when flying level is not actually level but is slightly nose up. To eliminate the problem I had in the video with the nose dropping I re-leveled in the software with about 1/2" spacer under the front of the plane and it fixed the problem. Now flies fairly level without any additional trim from the transmitter.
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D17E on May 10, 2016
Hi....it's sound very cool......
can you share here...how you setup the cc3d from beginning to the end for this aircraft....?

thanks so much..
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awsomeness62 on August 15, 2018
awsome thanks so much. super helpful.
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CC3D - LibrePilot for Stabilization and Leveling