PID Tuning Masterclass - Part 3 - Yaw P Term

Let's take a look at what low and high PIDs do. This will give you a perspective on what to change when your copter is not behaving the way you want it to behave.

In this video, I discuss the Yaw P Term. The yaw axis doesn't have enough authority to really oscillate like pitch and roll, so you have to tune it a little bit differently.

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This playlist will culminate with my 1.5 hour PID Tuning Masterclass presentation at the NYC Drone Film Festival on March 18, 2017. (Note: the presentation will be March 18. The video will be uploaded some time later.) In the mean time,

[kentboehm]

I have been watching this entire series waiting for you to land it upside down way down in your field. Knew it would happen eventually!

[PuttingOnTheFoil]

Great material! Keep it coming. I really like that you are showing examples of the extremes in this series. I'm getting more comfortable with tuning, but it's great to have a better understanding of how far is too far, and what is likely to smoke a motor or ESC vs. what is safe even if it's twitchy.

[CF_Joel]

These are the BEST PIDs lesson videos!!! Thanks!

[proporange]

Hi Joshua, firstly thank you for the tutorials - they are massively helpful. Secondly thank you for the end of this video... As a new FPV flyer I had a similar yet opposite experience - I was not where I expected to be and flew straight into my own face. You've made me feel a bit better about having done so. I had just got a GoPro so there is evidence on my channel if you fancy a laugh (goggles were ruined but I am fine).

[mojokeeper]

Thanks for the pid tune videos, with you flying and explaining what’s going helped me figure it out, I’m a hands on kind of guy & they way you did the tutorials made me feel like I was there👍🏻 I got my 5in tuned great now and my vortex 150 has very little prop wash on aggressive split-s turns thanks man🛸

[ojkolsrud]

3:54: "I can't believe I fell down up side down - I have to walk down [there]". It was 2017, before turtle mode=P
Cool series man, even in 2021. I have a problem with the quad pitch bounce back, especially after a pitch maneuver, but also on rolls. I suspect that my I gain is too low, but I'm learning a lot here now.

[Banda]

Thanks for this awesome Tuning tutorials! Youre helping us a lot. Keep going on!

[Ensetsu]

Joshua you are quite fun to watch😁.
Anyway I'm quite happy u making these videos. cause trying on your own and have no clue what an real oscillation is then it ain't easy to tune drones. happy flying 😀

[NarcolepticLTD]

you'd mentioned the bit about sloppy turns in the last vid... I started taking yaw P term up a bit and definitely noticed a difference from stock. I know it's difficult to document a lot of this stuff as it really is up to feel, but it's much appreciated. Looking forward to the I term piece, and hoping there's a nugget in dealing with nose pitching before anti_gravity fixes (I'm tuning on kiss right now - my first fix was to drop the first TPA breakpoint that covers the lower end of the throttle range).

[wazzalicious]

That was funny at the end :) interesting that the high Yaw gave more robotic feel to the flight.

[jedoug]

Thanks for doing this. Very informative.

[ICEMAN_GLX]

holy shit Josh you nailed it that yaw p is what was holding me back I could not figure out why I could not do orbit and I was wondering why it felt like I was sliding on ice that fixed it

[therookie]

Hey josh these are the best tuning vids to date I watched hundreds and these are the best so far just tuning the wrong copter lol I flying to well

[TheWorkshopByGM]

I am not sure if this happened only with me, but I was having a LOTTT of jello on my Gopro Hero 5 session, I checked everything, motor balance, prop balance, PI tuning, I tried every possible thing. I then played my Gopro footage next to my betaflight log viewer, and it turned out I had continuous high-frequency oscillations on the Yaw axis. I decreased the P term of the Yaw and the video is much better now (can nearly see the jello) but I can still see some oscillations on the betaflight log viewer not sure if I should increase the D term, will try this soon.

[t-producciones]

Such a great video! Awesome explanations. Joshua, do you have any written text on PIDs & Rates you can share. Would really like to study this in a way I can perfectly manage all PID and rate concepts. Besides of course replicating what you show here to get a better feel of what I have learned. Thank you very much for all you do and share.

[saggynun]

standing in the wrong place is funny.
I've done that a few time and it's like who's that standing in the way. "oh yeah its me lol"

[stehodge]

Soft-mount the FC and Motors, use stock pids with a 30% increase in pitch P term for long body quad and 10% increase in pitch P term for true X quad. Then the rest of the tune is in the rates. Life is much simpler that way.

[Cc-njzm]

Great examples of yaw P too high, but what about too low?

[FlyingboatsRCG]

Awesome series thanks Josh, even for us RC Helicopter rather than Multicopter types. Linked them from a thread on RCGroups. Were you going to get more detailed on the I settings? Thanks :)

[adamk.]

with the more powerful motors, it seems like if you push yaw P too high it does cause very noticeable oscillations in the yaw axis in blackbox, and creates a shaky quad in flight unfortunately, an prop wash on turns gets bad. it's very odd and hard to tune for because it seems like D term oscillations when turning reaaallly hard when going fast.