Developer

ArduPlane 2.50 released

I'm delighted to announce the release of ArduPlane 2.50 for your flying pleasure. This release has a lot of advances to some of the core ArduPlane code, and should be a big improvement for many people.

Perhaps the most important change in this release is the new DCM code that does acceleration correction based on the GPS. This improvement is based on work by Bill Premerlani which really advances the state of the art for attitude estimation on small microcontroller based autopilots. The improvement in attitude estimation is very noticable in flight, resulting in significantly more accurate control. Many thanks to Bill for his patience in working with Jon Challinger and myself to bring this improvement to ArduPlane.

Other significant improvements include:

  • updates to the barometer driver to sample the pressure and temperature much more rapidly, leading to better altitude estimation
  • updates to the AP_AnalogSource driver to be interrupt driven, allowing us to sample all analog sources much more rapidly. For ArduPlane this improves the airspeed sensor on the APM2 a lot.
  • updates to the waypoint completion logic, to use a "finish line" algorithm. This prevents the problem of circling around a waypoint when we miss it by more than the waypoint radius. The waypoint is now considered complete when we pass a line that is perpendicular to the track, and passing through the target waypoint.
  • improvements to the AP_Mount code, allowing for control of roll/pitch/yaw stabilisation via EEPROM variables that can be set over MAVLink. This allows you to setup the mount once, and it will resume operation as soon as you boot. These changes also fix a number of bugs in the AP_Mount code, so it AP_Mount hasn't worked for you, please try again. Many thanks to Greg Fletcher and Amilcar Lucus for the AP_Mount improvements.
  • Lots of improvements to the ArduPlane parameter documentation.  This documentation should be the first place you look when trying to understand ArduPlane configuration parameters. Many thanks to Andreas Antonopoulos for his great work on generating these wiki docs based on the source code markup.
  • New LAND_PITCH_CD parameter to control the landing pitch when not under airspeed control. Thanks to Jeff Taylor for fixing this!
  • New SCALING_SPEED parameter that allows you to set the base speed for scaling PIDs. Previously we assumed a standard speed of 15 m/s, which is too low for fast aircraft. By adjusting SCALING_SPEED you can have the same set of PIDs for both airspeed and non-airspeed flight control.

There is one change in this release which may require some re-tuning. We were using the wrong value for time delta when using the PID controller for navigation roll. This has been fixed by making the PID library calculate the delta time internally, but it means that existing HDG2RLL_I and HDG2RLL_D values  will be incorrect. I have fixed the defaults, but if you have your own settings for these, you will need to drop HDG2RLL_I by a factor of 5, and raise HDG2RLL_D by a factor of 5 to get the same result as for the previous release.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this release!

For the next release the plan is to concentrate on improved stabilisation and navigation controllers, based on the great work being done by Jon Challinger.


Happy flying!

Views: 12028

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Marcin Krawczyk on August 1, 2012 at 11:57pm

That's the point :-)

When PC with Mission Planner connected in parallel, works great.

Thank you Andrew

Permalink Reply by Andy on July 26, 2012 at 4:01am

WOW thx a lot.

Hmm strange can't compile it with the arduino-0100-relax with the 2.4 there wasn't any problem.

Has something changed do I need to take the "real" arduino IDE?

EIDT: OOOPS my fault didn't copy the whole zip into the sketch folder :)

Thx

Andy

Permalink Reply by Mike Mac on July 26, 2012 at 4:55am

Is there a way to have altitude hold flight if I do not have an airspeed sensor? I would like to be able to just fly around at a constant altitude.

 

 


DeveloperPermalink Reply by Andrew Tridgell on July 26, 2012 at 6:05am

Hi Mike,

Altitude hold works fine both with and without an airspeed sensor. The only time when an airspeed sensor is really critical is when you are flying close to the stall speed, which usually only happens when you are landing.

Cheers, Tridge

Permalink Reply by Mike Mac on July 26, 2012 at 6:32am

The reason that I am confused is because I don’t know what mode to use. I don’t see an Altitude Hold Mode. FBW-B looks like the mode I want but it says that it won’t work without an airspeed sensor and reverts back to FWB-A, which is NOT Altitude Hold. So you see why I am confused?

　

.


DeveloperPermalink Reply by Andrew Tridgell on July 29, 2012 at 11:05pm

Hi Mike,

sorry, I thought you meant in auto modes like AUTO and LOITER. You are right that it doesn't work in FBWB and we should fix that.

Cheers, Tridge

Permalink Reply by James on July 26, 2012 at 11:22am

Gongrats once again team,

i have never tuned HDG2RLL_I & D, so i dont exactly understand what it does, neither i undestood the bug on release notes. My platform follows waypoints like a train with stock PID's and 2.4 firm (APM2). What should i expect if i update? should we wait for a fix release?

thanks you all.

Permalink Reply by Andke on July 26, 2012 at 12:59pm

Thanks to those who made it possible.

Permalink Reply by mack goodman on July 27, 2012 at 4:50am

Can I use the same bixler parameter file that I was using with version 2.4?

Permalink Reply by Asaak on August 2, 2012 at 12:16am

I would suggest not to do so...I tried it yesterday and I got weird behaviour

http://www.diydrones.com/forum/topics/strange-behaviour-upgrading-t...

Permalink Reply by Gábor Zoltán on July 27, 2012 at 11:36am

Is it possible to make a quary of climb rate?

Like: mavlink_msg_vfr_hud_get_climb(&msg);

I have tryed it but does not works.

Thx


DeveloperPermalink Reply by Andrew Tridgell on July 29, 2012 at 11:06pm

Hi Gabor,

The climb rate is logged as VFR_HUD.climb in mavlink.

Cheers, Tridge

RSS

Social Networking

Top Content 

1 Mapping Mission Ride Along

Mapping Mission Ride Along
2 ArduPlane 2.73 released

ArduPlane 2.73 released
3 Alt_hold and loiter acting crazy

Alt_hold and loiter acting crazy
4 APM 2.5 from hobbyking

APM 2.5 from hobbyking
5 Mechanical Hands From A MakerBot: The Magic Of Robohand (From Makerbot blog news)

Mechanical Hands From A MakerBot: The Magic Of Robohand (From Makerbot blog news)
6 3 axis Camera Gimble connections.

3 axis Camera Gimble connections.
7 ArduVTOL - Wingcopter - Flight Report Nr.1

ArduVTOL - Wingcopter - Flight Report Nr.1
8 DroidPlanner for Android The best missionplanner alternative! Using Mavlink via cheap usb adapter (Follow me - PIDS - ACC calibration - FREE)

DroidPlanner for Android The best missionplanner alternative! Using Mavlink via cheap usb adapter (Follow me - PIDS - ACC calibration - FREE)
9 Looking for best laptop screen to see in the sun

Looking for best laptop screen to see in the sun
10 New micro-cameras emulate insects' compound eyes

New micro-cameras emulate insects' compound eyes

Contests

Season Two of the Trust Time Trial (T3) Contest has now begun. The fourth round is an accuracy round for multicopters, which requires contestants to fly a cube. The deadline is April 14th.

A list of all T3 contests is here. 

Groups

Advertisement

© 2013   Created by Chris Anderson.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service