5011 Digicourse Birds Tip and Tricks

“BAD DI” troubleshooting

Simply re-calibrating does not fix a “Bad DI”. It will come back few days later. Some possible
reasons for “Bad DI” are shown above:

1) Leakage in Motor Module, Wing Module or Backplane connector. This is most commonly (but
not always) caused by moisture.
- Examine connectors carefully for signs of moisture (water droplets, corrosion, and damaged o-
rings)
- Applying Contact Cleaner followed by thorough drying may remove a leakage fault
- The Motor Module and Backplane connectors can be checked for leakage using an adaptor and
Multi-meter (leakage value must be > 60 MΩ)

2) Clogged pressure inlet (Barnacles or other growth)

- Sometimes this is less obvious, examine the pressure inlet carefully – there may be growth
deeper inside
- Use a hard instrument to break away growth material, and then clear with air line (The 80psi
supply used for calibrating is good enough)
- A small zip tie can be used to check that the channel leading from the Pressure inlet to the
transducer itself is clear

3) A “Real” bad DI is a failed Depth transducer

- This may be caused by failure of the transducer, or possibly by water ingress to the Wing
module itself
- The Wing module is not field serviceable and has to be replaced whole

4) Bad Data Acquisition Board

- A bad data acquisition board can be replaced (from bird with a bad compass for example)

MAKE SURE IT IS CLEAN – MAKE SURE IT IS DRY – KEEP NOTES OF YOUR FINDINGS / ACTION TAKEN

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Things to pay attention to using Bird Check

1. It is important that all three Depth Sensor Performance Tests are done
during the birds’ test. Please note that one should pay attention to the sensor
readings values, not only to the Test PASS or FAIL. This is due to the fact that
tolerance on depth is way out of acceptable values. Test PASS even if the readings
5-6 ft out.

2. Simply checking if the “0” meters matches 14.7PSia is not enough.

Drawing below shows possible scenarios.
1. Depth Sensor is good
2. Wrong Depth Offset
3. Wrong Depth Slope
As you can see in cases 2 & 3 the depth readings at 14.7 PSia are “0” but at the
36.75 PSia or 81.5 PSia they all are incorrect.

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WING RESET MECHANISM

Prior to a wing reset command, the brass follower (A) can be in any position – from -15 to +21.
Following a Reset command or by inserting a battery, the processor commands the motor to drive
the brass follower and subsequently the lever arm to the far left position, +21° (as in the example
photos, steps 1, 2, 3, & 4).

The motor has an optical encoder, which provides a mechanism that returns signal pulses
to the bird’s processor board. These pulses represent the position of the linear actuator
(brass follower) (i.e. fin angle). Upon reaching the far left position, the spring attached to
the brass follower hits the wall (B) of the motor module body. The motor, however, keeps
moving thus pushing the spring & brass follower against the wall. The linear actuator
comes off the stainless steel worm thread, the spring re-seating the follower back on the
worm thread. This is repeated several times and produces a “click” sound, after several
“clicks” the processor resets the internal counter.

This marks the reference point that equals approximately to +21 degree of fin angle.

Step 5: The motor then moves the lever arm from position +21° to +15°.

Step 6: The reset process then returns the lever arm to 0°. This marks the end of the wing
reset procedure. The whole point of the wing reset is to find the reference point, +21°,
thus the initial position of the brass follower (Pic.1) wouldn’t matter.

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More on the Wing Reset

Ideally a “Wing Reset” should bring the wings to “0°” every time it’s done.
Reality is slightly different; there is always a “window” within which the wings reside after
reset. It is about 2.4 degrees for a new bird (+/- 1.2).

The older the bird, the wider this window becomes, this due to wearing of the white plastic
insert in the brass follower, which enlarges the lever arm slot.

Lever arm slot

Plastic insert

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The accuracy of the wing reset is limited by one turn of the stainless steel worm thread
(or internal thread of the brass follower), which is equal, approximately to 2.4° of wing
movement, as shown in the drawing below.

That’s actually where the confusion starts because everybody is expecting the wings to
move to 0° at reset, whereas the repeatability of the reset is dictated by the accuracy of
the mechanism, this being 2.4°.
This is absolutely normal. Watching the wing reset, one can notice that it repeats every
6 resets. 6 positions corresponding to 6 resets are shown on the picture below which lies
in area of +/- 3 mm of 14 mm (relative to the “red” body) and this is the normal window
for good bird. Bird with the “high” fin angle will do the wing reset in the same window
but shifted up or down from 14 mm. Normal window is shown on the picture below.

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Another confusion with the wing reset.

 If the bird was set to depth keeping mode prior to the wing reset, it will return to
depth keeping mode as soon as the wing reset is complete.
 If this is the case, the wings will briefly stop at 0° (at the completion of the reset),
they will then continue to -15° as the bird tries to dive from the workbench (0m) to
it’s target depth (e.g. 5m).
 This occurs whether the wing reset was initiated by battery reconnection or user
issued reset command.
 If you require the wings to rest at 0°, depth keeping mode will need to be cancelled
by setting the wings to 0° manual fin.
 Bird will not perform wing reset upon inserting the battery if there are problems
with depth readings i.e. if bird reads more than 4-5 meters on the bench.

High fin angle troubleshooting

“High” fin angle may be caused, as previously reported, via several mechanisms,
usually associated to differences between where the bird ‘thinks’ its wings are at present
and the actual position. Below is a selection of observed problems seen on birds
removed from operation d/t High Fin angle.

1. Bent lever arm: Should be 90 degrees between the wing shaft and plastic wings
center line. Any discrepancy between 90 degrees line and lever arm creates fin angle
error.

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2. Deformed and twisted wings: These

should be parallel; the reported position
will be inaccurate due to the difference
in wing angle. This will require the bird
to compensate by increasing the fin angle
to produce the required lift.

Possible causes of wing deformity have been attributed to:

i. Bent wing screws, they have to be straight

ii. Twisted wing shaft.

Twisted wing shaft is very hard to detect by eye due to the size of the shaft.

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For instance 2.5° will correspond to only 0.2 mm misalignment on the opposite sides
of the shaft.

3. Damaged thread in the brass follower:

The picture below shows that at least one thread is damaged (absent). That
automatically shifts the “0” position to - 2.5°. This fault can be observed by issuing -15°
command. The value on the screen is showing -14.5°instead of -15.1°. Sometimes it
leads to “Missing Pulse” or “Motor Failure” errors.

Normal thread is shown below

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This is the case of one more confusion, when “high fin angle” supposedly can be fixed
by spinning the brass follower to certain position, so the “0°” on the screen will match
“0°” of the wings. It is actually a self-delusion for a very simple reason – the very next
wing reset will shift the wings back to -2.5° (or what ever it is) instead of “0°”. In order
to fix this the brass follower has to be replaced. As we don’t have spares of this kind the
whole motor module needs to be shipped for repair.

4. Loose lever arm.

 The slot in the bird’s body is big enough to accommodate the full diameter of the
lever arm, so the orientation of flat faces on the lever arm relative to the wing shaft
is not important.
 The flat faces are only there for using wrench.
 It is important that lever arm is properly tightened, and loc-tite is applied to the
thread.
 If lever arm isn’t secure in the thread there is a chance that it will come loose and
become jammed in the motor module.

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Communication Signal Level Check.

To test the signal levels, the Test Coil has to be moved away from the Bird Coil as
shown on the drawings below

At the distance up to 360 +/- 10 mm between the Test and Bird Coils the AGC Voltages
should be good and read High = 0, Low = 0, Offset 2.5 as shown

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Further distance increasing should degrade the signals. AGC High and Low will be
different from “0” and Offset starts changing from 2.5 down to 2.4, 2.3 etc.

The distance value 360 +/- 10 mm is only relevant to the current Vison Bird Shack
Setup and could vary dependant on the Digicourse modem and coil in use. In fact on the
Vk1 it is at least 1.5 meters either way.

Possible causes of week communication signal

1. Bad wing module
2. No connectivity from wing module to the main board through the motor module
3. Bad modem board

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Fixes
1. Try to replace the wing module
2. Try to replace the motor module or check the connectivity with the meter

3. Replace the modem board

Every time you work on Bird, even for a simple battery change, after you have finished
and happy with the Bird performance:

1. Give it a full test using the Bird Check program, including the Depth keeping.
2. Put brief description of the work done and your initials in the Comments Box
and save the report as “Bird NNN Check-Out Report.pdf” file in to Bird
Calibration Report Folder.
3. If the File with the same name already exists save it with different name.

Some more additional notes

 Below is the simple check if the Wings come back to “0” after the wing reset.
Wings plane should be aligned with the slot of the excentric rod head if you are looking
at them from the side

 To prevent the water ingress one should pay close attention to how the WM is
being inserted in to the Bird. It is shown on the following page. WM should be
aligned in parallel to the birds’ body (3) and pushed towards the front (1, 2).
Springed pin should be freely moving and not stuck. Failing that the WM

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becomes misaligned (8) and possible pinch of the O-ring may occur (9) which
leads to water ingress and wrong Depth Readings.

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