Developer

ArduCopter 2.8 / 2.8.1 released

Arducopter 2.8.1 is now in the mission planner and in the downloads area! Remember to do your MP configuration again after loading this code, since it erases your EEPROM and sets it to the new defaults. 

Note: Issues with APM1 user's level feature not working are now resolved.  If you installed 2.8 we highly recommend you upgrade to 2.8.1 as 430 extra bytes of RAM have been freed up which reduces the chance of memory corruption (although we haven't seen any cases of this on the APM2 at least) .

Note #2: this release has not gone out for Traditional Helicopters until they can be tested fully.  Flip and Toy mode have also not been fully tested.

Improvements over 2.7.3:

  • Improved ACRO mode (Leonard Hall)
  • Improved stability patch to reduce "climb-on-yaw" problem (Leonard, Rob Lefebvre, Randy)
  • Rate controller targets moved to body frames (yaw control now works properly when copter is inverted) (Leonard/Randy)
  • Less bouncy Stabilize yaw control (Leonard)
  • OpticalFlow sensor support for APM2.5 (Randy)
  • DMP works again by adding "#define DMP_ENABLED ENABLED" to APM_Config.h You can also log DMP vs DCM to the dataflash by adding "#define SECONDARY_DMP_ENABLED ENABLED" (Randy)
  • Watch dog added to shutdown motors if main loop feezes for 2 seconds (Randy)
  • Thrust curve added to linearize pwm->thrust. Removes deadzone found above 90% throttle in most ESC/motors (Randy)
  • More timing improvements (main loop is now tied to MPU6000s interrupt) (Randy)
  • GPS NMEA bug fix (Alexey Kozin)
  • Logging improvements (log I terms, dump all settings at head of dataflash log) (Jason)

 

Bug Fixes / Parameter changes:

  • fixed skipping of last waypoint (Jason)
  • resolved twitching when no GPS attached (Tridge)
  • fixed loss of altitude if alt hold is engaged before first GPS lock (Randy/Jason)
  • moved Roll-Pitch I terms from Stabilize controllers to Rate controllers
  • TILT_COMPENSATION param tuned for TradHeli (Rob)


Code Cleanup:

  • HAL changes for platform portability (Pat Hickey)
  • Removed INSTANT_PWM (Randy)


As per usual PIDs are optimised for the 3DR/jDrones quad with 850 motors and 10" props. If you're using more powerful motors/props and are seeing bad flight behaviour in stabilize, start by turning down Rate Roll P in 25% steps.

Please note that on this release we've moved the Roll and Pitch I terms from the Stabilize controller to the Rate controller. There's some evidence that says this can lead to flips on take-off if you move the roll or pitch sticks around as you take-off so we recommend you leave these sticks in the middle until you're in the air.

Please feel free to report issues you find in the discussion below and/or add them to the issues list.

Thanks and enjoy!

Tags: ACM, APM1, APM2, ArduCopter, Heli, Quad

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Replies to This Discussion


ModeratorPermalink Reply by Sgt Ric on January 2, 2013 at 3:52pm

@ Ardobeginner     Oh boy, I think alot is being lost in translation.

Again it sounds like you do not like the APM.

I know what you are trying to say, it just doesn't come out that way.

 

Permalink Reply by Tony Heaton on January 4, 2013 at 9:23am

@Ardobeginner, no, my response was to titeuf007.  If you notice, my response is indented under his. If my response was to you, it would have been indented to your level.

Permalink Reply by Boston UAV on January 2, 2013 at 4:36pm

@tony: Good. Good. Let the hate flow through you...

Permalink Reply by Ardobeginner on January 2, 2013 at 11:48pm

@Sgt_Ric, Maybe my English is not the best, but I really want to say, that I like the APM very well.

Permalink Reply by Tony Heaton on January 4, 2013 at 8:50am

@ Boston UAV:  Good. Good. Let the ignorance flow through you...

Permalink Reply by Tony Heaton on January 4, 2013 at 9:20am

@Boston UAV:  That was an ad hominem attack.  I shouldn't have attack you in kind.  I should have presented facts to backup my statement.  It's obvious that I was replying to titeuf007 and not Ardobeginner.  Unless someone has found all the bugs in multiwii and arducopter, there is no way to say one is less buggy than the other.  Doing so exposes bias.  I've been flying my quad with APM 2.0 for nearly 800 hours and have only hit one bug.  Hitting that bug was in fact my fault.  I knew the GPS didn't have lock but I switched on alt-hold anyway.  Yes, the code should have handled this better but I should have done something I knew was not safe.  The bug was addressed and fixed in the next release.  In this case, more releases was a help and I saw improvement.  Multiwii hasn't had a release for almost 7 months so there has been no improvement in that time.  I stand by my statement that titeuf007 was saying that arducopter sucks and multwii is great.  He did so with no facts to back up his assertion.  You said I was a hater with out facts to back up you assertion.  If you have some facts to prove I'm a hater, present them.  Otherwise STFU!

Permalink Reply by Ardobeginner on January 4, 2013 at 10:01am

@tony, I agree with all you write about bugs and updates. I own a company that produces software and I know all the problems in this business. It is not possible to make software without bugs. no way.

So it depends on how the developers deal with it. I think the way the arducopter dev team does it, is fine. I have sevreal APMs and also several Multiwiis. I like them all. BTW, I do not use one of the official releases of multiwii on my wii bsaed controlers. I use the version from crashpilot which does the best alt hold job possible on a multiwii.

Arducopter is my favorite, becaus it is a really great system. I followed the improvements now for about a year and I see many improvements.

So I am looking forward to the final 2.9.

Permalink Reply by titeuf007 on January 3, 2013 at 9:22am

yes!just want to say that multiwii has less bugs on each version than arducopter.

it s not to be negative ,i like arducopter!

Permalink Reply by Bill Patterson on January 2, 2013 at 6:54pm

Actually no. Not every 90 days.

Last multwii was released 7 months ago. 

See for yourself.

http://code.google.com/p/multiwii/downloads/list

Permalink Reply by Crashpilot1000 on January 4, 2013 at 10:23am

Hi!

Since i see my mwii alteration based on mahowik and alexmos is mentioned here i want to drop a line.

1. There is probably no code in the world exceeding 2 lines that is without any error :)

2. Multiwii and Arducopter are in no way compareable. Arducoptercode is MUCH more complex, sophisticated, modular, expandable and versatile than mwii. Eventually mwii took the code from apm to have gps functions. I really like them both flying and coding wise. Mwii is much simpler done and a good point to start with messing around with multirotor stuff and try out some things. Arducopter code is for me something to stare at and say: that is programming i want to be able to do as well... I would like to see both projects inspiring each other where they can for the benefit for us users. They serve different purposes. Mwii is for the cheap entry (some clones sell for less than 20$) doing basic stuff and Arducopter is for the advanced needs/users. I really benefit from starting with mwii. I could crash with confidence not rendering expensive equipement useless and learn a lot of things wich makes understanding and using the Arducopter easier. My route might not be suitable for everyone but i don't regret having started to learn flying/using multirotors with mwii. Today i fly them both. But more apm2.0 i must admit. Thats only me.

Cheers

Kraut Rob

Permalink Reply by Stephen R Mann on January 4, 2013 at 10:31am

1. There is probably no code in the world exceeding 2 lines that is without any error :)

I was once a software engineer and the product design engineers asked me to write a program to stress the processor for thermal profiling.  It was just one line of code.  it looked something like this:

here:  jmp here

Permalink Reply by Ardobeginner on January 4, 2013 at 10:47am

Even there could be a bug, if the guys that developed the compiler or interpreter or even the processor made some mistakes;-)

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