GoussLegend:
About your old method of rate-PID tuning:
What is your speed setpoint/reference ? I guess 0 deg/s and before your have manually put your quad at 0 deg for roll and pitch angle?
I have trouble understanding what you mean.. But I'll give it a shot.. When the quadcopter is in rate-mode, the set-point is determined by the RC-reciever.. Meaning you change the setpoint directly with the transmitter/Remote control.. For example, if you roll left then the setpoint will be something <0deg/s (negative angular rate), and the opposite if you roll right, >0deg/s (positive angular rate)..
If you're in angle mode, the reciever controls the setpoint of the angle-PID, and the angle-PID will in turn decide the setpoint for the rate-PID...
GoussLegend:
I know well Matlab and I have got it on my laptop. (My dream would have been to use Simulink :)). Anyway what do you do with your Matlab script? Transfer function?
Simulink is slow and not optimal for something you run and optimize in real time.. Sure, you got the Real-Time toolbox, but if you ask me it sucks!
No it's not transfer functions, that would be optimal in-case i modeled the system.. But instead I did the following:
Arduino side: Wrote a whole new sketch that only handles inputs, outputs and gyro, acc calculations.. Meaning all the PID calculations are done in matlab..
Matlab side: I implemented some known PID tuning methods, like Ziegler-Nichols, SIMC, IMC etc.. They are easy to calculate.. It was just a matter of iterating and testing the results I got from the different methods.. The method that gave the best result for my quad. was the SIMC.. Still the results were not perfect, but it got me pretty close to something acceptable.. I know your going to ask why it didn't give me the optimal magical numbers =P! The reason is lag/delay in the system.. Matlab runs fast, a little too fast for the Serial-communication on the arduino.. So by the time arduino sends the data, the quadcopter would have changed its state drastically (not for the human eye maybe, but you can see it if you look at the data).. This kind of lag/delay can lead to early oscillations in the PID-tuning..
The optimal way to run this type of tuning is on the arduino itself.. So maybe write a PID optimizer for the arduino??
//Basel