I wanted to try Spirit Governor, but can't get the bailout to run. I think it was working in the past, but I did use ESC governor instead. Now I can't get it running. I think I must be missing something obvious.

Goblin 570, Latest version of Spirit (updated today) on Spirit Pro.

When I set the throttle to ~12%, the motor is spinning, I get about 400 RPM of the rotor head. See here:



I have to reduce the throttle to ~8% to make the motor stop:


But then the bailout does not work. I always get smooth startup sequence.
What am I doing wrong?

PS. The "search" engine does not allow to search for "governor" so I can't find, it maybe was already answered...

Hello,

please check this page:
http://manual.spirit-system.com/index.p ... on_Bailout

_________________
Spirit System developer

Oh yeah better now. Funny is that I recommended this fix to someone a while ago and now I had the same problem...

It seems to be running now, but there are 3 small issues. I wonder if this can be fixed. See graph:


1) at spoolup I have a sudden RPM increase ~450 which will cause a kick - probably this is a point where my ESC (HW 130a platinum 4) stops slow spoolup and Spirit governor takes over. I can tweak it by lowering "spoolup rampup", but this causes the bailout to be delayed. Wouldn't it makes sense to have a separate rampup for bailout?

(ESC is in "Heli linear" mode, which means it is not governing, but makes slow spoolup at the beginning)

2) Governor always spools up close to desired RPM, and then it takes few seconds to get the last 50 RPM to the proper level. Until this happens, I think it is not engaged, because if I would try bailout it wouldn't work. It would make a slow spool-up. Is this delay normal? It's independent of desired RPM. If I request 2200, it will spoolup to 2150, and then take several seconds to get over 2200 and get it engaged. Also, is one supposed to take off or wait? It's quite some time.

3) After bailout, governor very often goes to high RPM (sometimes 2600 instead of 2200) and stays there. I reduced Holding Limit to 80% but this still happens. Not always, but very often. Is this normal?

1) You can try to set Spoolup in the ESC, this could make a difference. So that Spirit Governor will drive it more on its own.

2) This rather look like RPM is jittering considerably, for this reason it takes some time. You can play with RPM filter and a Ferrite ring of the ESC to minimize jittering. Then it should engage almost immediately after reaching requested RPM.

3) Decrease Holding Limit until the issue disappear.

_________________
Spirit System developer

Hello Thomas



Could you help, what do you mean with "set Spoolup"? I experimented for hours with that and I can't get a soft spoolup - I'll write another post about this, as this might be longer.



I've mounted a ferrite ring on the cable near the ESC, and also increased RPM sensor filter to 8. It doesn't seem to help much, but it might be slightly better - not sure.. But I don't get too many "RPM signal noisy", but I do get the occasionally, but it's like 1 event per 5 minutes of testing.

The "RPM sensor tester" window in Sporit -> Governor shows RPM at the bottom, and some "button" at the top - this is blinking for me, changing from active to inactive all the time - is this wrong?



I got to 50% and lower is not possible. Still same effect - I request 2200 RPM, but after bailout it goes to 2500-2600 and stays there.

And as for spoolup - I have read a lot about that, and tested a lot.

With "Fixed Wing" in HobbyWing ESC it is not possible to get a smooth spoolup at all, using Spirit as a governor. No matter what you set in Spirit, the initial start is a kick. I read about that and it seems this is normal. It seems getting smooth spoolup at initial phase (from 0 RPM) is complicated, needs varying motor timing and only ESC could do this. Not FBL.

And I believe this is why HobbyWing ESC has "HeliLinearTH" option. This one makes soft spoolup, done by ESC, whenever you start the motor. But after some short time (either something like 2 sec. or maybe crossing some 400 RPM limit - not sure) it starts to work like "Fixed Wing" - that is, whatever power is requested with throttle, it makes it instantly. My belief is, this is what should be used for external governors (I can point to a proper thread on helifreak, but it is long..)

Now, what happens with HeliLinearTH and Spirit governor is - I believe - this:


As you see, because spoolup is controlled by ESC at the beginning, it makes RPM increase slower than what spirit requests. At some point Spirit maybe wants 200 RPM, but ESC makes 100 only. Then Spirit wants 300 maybe, but ESC makes 150. And at some point, what Spirit requests starts to work, because ESC stops spoolup and starts to react immediately to throttle level. And then we get a kick, because RPM increases wildly.

One way to fix this is to set very slow spoolup in spirit (flattens the blue curve) - but it has to be the slowest one, which is wasting time and batteries - I don't want to spoolup for 25 seconds. And I'm not sure, but I think it still wasn't perfectly smooth (tested that some year ago).

Another way is to increase "Startup power" in Hobbywing, to steepen the red curve. But then it is not smooth anymore.

The "Spoolup rampup" does not help in this case. It will just delay everything. But at some point motor will start - just little later - and then it's RPM will not increase at the rate Spirit is requesting. And we have same problem.

On the other hand, what the HW internal ESC - I believe - is doing, it makes this slow spoolup for 2 seconds (or so), and then it starts a normal spoolup with whatever speed you have selected (I use 15 sec), from whatever RPM it has there. You can see that spoolup speed is not constant - it is changing at the beginning.

Does this makes sense what I'm writing, or am I missing a point somewhere?
Is there any way to make soft spoolup?
I'm testing this another day, so there's a chance I go nuts here..

From the thread on helifreak it seems it is a matter of somehow aligning these curves. So at the point, at which ESC is giving full control to throttle level (stops spoolup), the RPM requested by the FBL and the RPM which we have in reality are close to each other. But I don't see any parameter in Spirit which would make this. It seems Spirit is increasing the throttle slowly, independent of anything. Could it take RPM into account? Or have different spoolup speed for first few seconds? Whatever could work..