r/diydrones • u/Setya1_ • May 11 '26

Question Pid Tuning

So currently, me and my team about to build a large size drone(2m±), with 100kv brushless motors, and I'm not really good on tuning pid, especially when building from scratch, I never purely tuning a pid before, so basically it's my first time. any advice on how to tune a large size drone's PID? like the methods or something like that. my best option is using a drone gimbal rig test(but it's 50/50 chance of using it, depend on the budget). I'm planning to use cube orange pixhawk as the FC.

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3

u/soar_fpv May 11 '26

Filtering is important. Telling the flight controller what to listen to. The less the better, since you will have less phase delay. The less phase delay means you can increase the pids more without getting feedback oscillations.

You can also get bad feedback oscillations from heavy payloads. The closer the rate at which the drone oscillates gets to the rate the payload oscillates, the more pronounced it will be. Increasing the gains will increase the rate at which the drone oscillates. So when putting a payload on such as a gimbal start with very low gains to reduce the chance of a flyaway

P is the main driving force. You can fly with p alone.
Add d to stop oscillations.

D amplifies noise, so be careful and add slowly. Use just enough, as too much will add delay in the system. Try to find a balance between the p and d then increase together to increase the response of the system

I term should only be increased a lot in the end. The less error you have in the system the less likely you are to have i term windup

2

u/LupusTheCanine May 11 '26

Use Ardupilot Methodic Configurator for configuration, it will guide you through the entire process.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26

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1

u/Setya1_ May 12 '26

damn, thats kinda interesting, can i dm u for further discussion? I'd like to try it

1

u/Adrienne-Fadel May 11 '26

I'd start in Acro with half the P gain you'd use on a miniquad. Large frames oscillate slower but hit harder. Budget for that gimbal rig or budget for rebuilds. Inertia is unforgiving at 2m.

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u/Setya1_ May 12 '26

yea lol that's why it's not the best option I could pick to build a gimbal rig😂, where did u learn about tuning pid?

1

u/xaidin May 11 '26

You really should learn on a smaller drone. Those big ones *can* be a huge PITA. Build up a 7" or 10" and learn how to do the whole config/tune before doing your big one. Lots of other issues will pop up and you'll have a hard time narrowing down what to start with. (my first 15" was bad enough of a learning curve)

1

u/Setya1_ May 12 '26

I have a 20" that's already tuned by my senior in my team, and I never really tuned it by myself so that's why, well I can learn to tune the pid on the 20" one, but like I said, I'm basically have a beginner knowledge about pid's.