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Permalink Reply by Andrew Radford on July 30, 2012 at 5:50am

I think we need an up to date wiki page for this - it's a question that comes up every week.

FYI yes I think it is possible, you will lose at least logging and GPS auto detection.

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Permalink Reply by u4eake on July 30, 2012 at 8:47am

Even with logging and CLI disabled, the current ACM 2.7 won't fit into a 1280.  I also disabled AP_Limits (geofencing) but still about 20Kb too big.  

I do think this is a reasonable request though.  But requests there are many.  People who execute those requests...  way too few.

From 3DR drones there is not much initiative or motivation towards the developers to do this, cause 3DR drones wants you to spend some more $64 and upgrade your APM to a 2560.

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DeveloperPermalink Reply by jasonshort on July 30, 2012 at 9:17am

I don't really get paid to do this, and I don't get a cut when 3DR sells a 2560 board either. I put up a donations site (the sim) and only made about 400 bucks to cover 3 months (>400hrs) of hardcore development of 2.7. It was fun and all, but I have like no motivation to go back spend a solid day ripping out pieces, a solid day of testing and then documenting and supporting it. It doesn't make a lot of sense for me.

Jason

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Radford on July 30, 2012 at 1:12pm

I think the expectation is for someone who goes through the process should document it to a standard good enough to put on the wiki, or make a 'sticky' blog post, whatever, something to point these people to that are wanting to do it. Tridge did it a while back - it would be a good opportunity for someone reasonably technical to give something small back to the community without committing a huge amount of time like you have Jason ;-) 

Otherwise yeah the option is to upgrade to a 2.0 and sell the 1280 to someone who wants a super advanced MultiWii heh heh

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Permalink Reply by Andre S on July 30, 2012 at 9:03pm

One way to find out what to disable would be to look at the git repository change logs, which should give you an indication of what features were added / what changed in the big picture. I don't have a copter and thus don't know anything about ACM but someone with a APM1280 who is sufficiently motivated and actually knows the code could certainly just create a new branch of the code. A feature reduced version could even be a desirable option on its own. Usually, less features, less complexity, less lines of code, fewer bugs (?) :-) I'm planning on doing something like this for ArduPlane when the time comes, probably soon.

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Permalink Reply by Cliff-E on July 30, 2012 at 9:56am

Since one can get an APM1.4 for under $60, the development time required would outweigh the cost of just upgrading to a new board. Mind that maintenance by the devs would become like an iOS3-->2 scenario (i.e. complex to maintain). Hence it's not reasonable to back-port the code. Since we're talking flying objects (dangerous), it's better to keep the code structurally manageable.

I still have 2 APM 1280's, and looking into it some light refactoring of the AC2.6 code to fit as well. Also, note both ArduPlane/Rover still fit in the prog space so there's a place for comparison if you attempt to back-port.

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Permalink Reply by Guntars on July 31, 2012 at 5:29am

What about 2.6? Is it possible to get to the 1280?

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Permalink Reply by u4eake on July 31, 2012 at 6:37am

yes, 2.6 will fit on the 1280 if you disable logging and CLI.  But 2.7 has a few interesting improvements and bug fixes.

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Permalink Reply by Guntars on August 2, 2012 at 11:55am

So, has anyone managed to cut and fit 2.7.1 to the 1280?

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Permalink Reply by Jason Wise on August 7, 2012 at 3:49am

Oh if only we could still work thru with our APM1 1280's!

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