that is really great news of the progress that you made. This will surely speed up production of the other arm.
I am not so sure why Autotune is having so much trouble to do its' job. What are your tuning end results from the manual tuning. It would be nice to see the screens. Can you send them as attachments? I am thinking that different people may have different approaches to tuning, affecting how they design their tuning program. We deal with programming all the time at my job, and have a special crew to deal with this. We have all kinds of control schemes, different sized vessels, different conditions to work with. I would think that this program should at least be designing for worst case scenario. I am curious what is the difference between what the tuning was without the claw and what your final tuning was. I haven't had a chance to watch your newest video, but was wondering how you would describe what you dislike about the tuning now, what you would like to tweak. I realize that you are very pleased with the results you have now, and they are great. It is so great that you have it stopping so very close to your midpoint. I need to find my articles that I had found and try to see if there is one that well explains how to do tuning with understanding of what is happening, what you are doing, and what results to expect. Basically, having more of a guided approach.
I really don't think that Autotune should be having this problem in tuning. This is to say that you are totally reasonable in expecting to have Autotune to be able to tune this. Could you explain to me exactly what you are calling your asymetric loading. I believe that I know what you mean, but I would rather make sure, from what you observe.
I look forward to be involved with future projects with you in the future. I think that I have experienced more of the fun part along the way than you have. At least you are having the fun part now.
thanks,
David M.
--------------------------------------------
On Mon, 1/18/16, David Schulpius dschulpius@wi.rr.com [B9Builders] wrote:
Subject: RE: [B9Builders] Re: B9 Arm centering issue demo
To: "Tobor001@aol.com [B9Builders]"
Date: Monday, January 18, 2016, 12:53 PM
Autotune was a failure because the
Kangaroo can't figure out the 4 pound heavy load I have
out on the end of the 2 foot arm. Once I removed the claw
section it tuned just fine. However it was set up for the
lighter load. I did give me a good base line to work with
after I reattached the 4 pound claw. Man, setting up a
properly tuned PID is a pain but I have it real close now.
Maybe a little tweaking yet if I run out of things to do.
I attached the ezb last night and battle tested
stopping at my set point from each direction. I'm going
to call this issue RESOLVED! It's stopping either dead
on or within 1mv of the set point.I couldn't be
more happy, thankful and excited.
Here's a youtube video I took last night of
the results of the final testing. Enjoy :
http://youtu.be/G5qhSu42XlM
Herb, after rereading my last post I
think it sounded pretty abrasive. Sorry, I didn't mean
it like that. I do agree that I shouldn't have the same
CS expectations from Spectra. They do supply on a more
industrial level. However, they do offer the option of
custom made components. From the website it appears that the
best way to get help is to call their phone number. At least
that's the way they seem to lead you to support.
Thanks for the insight. Dave Schulpius
On Jan 18, 2016 8:52
AM, "Herb hclann@hotmail.com
[B9Builders]"
wrote:
Yes I was thinking more about Spectra, D.E. has no
excuse as their market is
hobbyistHerb
Sent via the Samsung
GALAXY S 5, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone
-------- Original message
--------
From: "David Schulpius dschulpius@wi.rr.com
[B9Builders]"
Date: 01/17/2016 9:11 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: "Tobor001@aol.com
[B9Builders]"
Subject: Re: [B9Builders] Re: B9 Arm
centering issue demo
I understand all that
Herb. I'm not takling about "most" companies.
I also understand that DE is a small but growing company.
Right on their About page it's stated; "We aim to
sell easy to use electronic and electro-mechanical products
to the hobbyist, educational and research markets."
That tells me that "I'm" their target
market. If what you say is the case with DE they
shouldn't offer a Help Desk on their website where you
can submit Help Tickets and suggest there is customer
support available. If I'm on your own with this company
then they should have a better FAQ and Knowledge base
section. Also a group forum where other owners help each
other would go a long way in lessening the demand on their
customer support. I've actually chatted with the guy
that runs DE and after he asked me personally what could be
done to make DE run better I gave him these suggestions.
Nothing changed.
Dave
Schulpius
On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at
6:04 PM, Herb hclann@hotmail.com
[B9Builders]
wrote:
Dave,Not sure about D.E. or
Spectra, but most companies are not set up to provide
support for hobbyists and one time users. Many do so when
times are slow or because the support person feels obliged,
but most companies are so short handed they can only support
major customers and those with a large profit potential. If
your project was a prototype with a hundred thousand part
potential, you would more than likely get the support you
asked for in a day or two. I've worked as both a design
engineer and as a manufacturers rep, and believe me when I
tell you it tough just answering emails and supporting a
handful of major customers while also trying to do the day
to day job of designing or in the case of being a rep.
getting engineers to design in your product. Those companies
that do have a customer support department are usually there
to handle more mundane requests, tech support gets forwarded
right to engineering. Herb C.
Sent from my
iPad
On Jan 17,
2016, at 12:05 PM, dschulpius@gmail.com
[B9Builders]
wrote:
Just
a short update (I hope). Edit: Nope, it a long
one.
I
have not heard back from Spectra Symbol about the Softpot or
Dimension Engineering regarding the Kangaroo X2. It's
been almost 2 weeks now. I did send a second request but
nothing back. I'm very disappointed in them but not
really surprised. DE puts out great products but myself and
other people I personally know have found their customer
support spotty and slim. Also, I do have a little history
with Spectra Symbol's customer support. The one other
time I asked for help from them I got a quick responce. Not
this time. It would be nice if these companies don't
know how to help to just send me a reply saying they
don't know. This may not be the case but I'm left
with the impression that they just ignored my request for
assistance.
So,
as usual I'm left with the feeling that I have to figure
stuff like this out on my own. However, thank goodness
I'm wrong about that! I've had many fellow builders
jump in and lend a hand with support, ideas and advice. You
guys are wonderful and have helped in more ways than you
know. I really have to mention a certain builder by the name
of Davis H. from Louisiana. He has spent hours personally
studying this issue and more then two full hours on the
phone with me going through the issue step by step. It
doesn't seem enough to say "Thanks
David"!
Anyway
David H. has suggested many things that may be causing this
issue of not being able to get the arm motor to stop at the
same point depending on which side of the radius it's
being approached from. I think that the total sum of this
issue is a combination of a few of the problems David and
others have identified. I've been working through most
of these suggestions and have made some real progress and
also eliminated a few things that were not the
issue.
So
far the things I've done that have really made a
difference:
Reduce
the speed of the arm over all and more so as it reached the
set point. I found this to be the best way to reach a
consistent set point.
Reduce
all the deadband values as far as I could without getting a
rocking action as it's trying to stay at the set point.
Using the DeScribe software I found there are at least 3
deadband settings. Two for position and one for
speed.
After
I did some studying on PID adjustments and what they really
are I tried to adjust the Coefficient values in the PID
section. The Autotune filled these in for me but as I said
before I had to redo them to get the motor to respond
smoothly. With better understanding of each setting I was
able to get better resolution of the set point (the point
I'm trying to stop at). I was now able to stop with in a
constant 2 or 3mv on each side of my set point. (I have to
say here that the terms that DE uses for the different Gains
are not the same as the rest of the world uses. They use
terms like Fast and Slow Gain) This makes it even more
difficult for the newbie to understand what needs to be set
and changed).
Even
though this resolution may have been enough to give me the
tolerance I need on centering my arm my OCD kicked in. I
thought I can do better then this. So I took another step
David H. suggested and replaced the !0K resistors on the pos
& neg pins between the Softpot and the Kangaroo X2. This
would give me almost the full 5v (4.8 in think) that the
Kangaroo is supplying the Softpot and expecting back to read
(feedback) the variance as the arm moves. With the 10K
resistors I was only getting 1.6 volts around the pot. Well,
This change through off all my PID and limit settings in the
Roo. None of my old setting would work and the arm was
unusable.
I
had to try to do a new autotune and I was not looking
forward to it. In the past (only on this arm setup) I was
never able to get a successful tune with the arm fully
weighted down. After removing the arm from the robot and
mounting it directly to my workbench I tried a few autotunes
and failed. The software always reported back that it
"couldn't move the system" even thought the
thing was rocking up and down wildly. Obviously
the Kangaroo is not able to auto tune such a heavy
asymmetrical load as I have. So I took off the front claw
section (about 4 pounds) and attempted another Autotune.
This time I had a quick and successful tune. When I tested
the tune I had nice smooth action with nice ramping effect.
However when I reattached the 4 pound claw section the
movement sucked.
At
least now I had a good baseline tune to work with. These
past two days I've spent about 10 hours resetting and
testing the PID settings for the Roo with the DeScribe
software. Late last night I've finally got the arm
moving smoothly with nice ramping. I think I have the
resolution very close to where I can get this thing stopped
at within one MV of my set point. At least that's what I
can see in the Live Test section of the DeScribe Software.
Today I'll hook this monstrosity up the EZB and see if
all this did any good.
Thanks
again to all of yo that has lent a hand. Thank
for nothing DE and SS!
Dave
Schulpius
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