ArduCopter Alpha 1.0, First official release to public test
Time has finally come!! ArduCopter Alpha 1.0 is here
We have been talking about this release for a while while it's been in development and testing, but it's finally ready for daylight. Its been long and exhausting 4 months or so that we have been doing this project, there has been a lot of long nights and will be more. But today is a huge milestone: on behalf our whole team, I'm happy to release our first official ArduCopter Alpha 1.0 release for our users.
This code has been tested over multiple ArduCopters, they all worked out of the box after proper installation eg. EEPROM reset and calibration and we have not found anything alarming but I am sure that there are bugs lurking behind the corner. If you are afraid of bugs, then better to wait till we are in beta but if you think you can handle some small issues this is now ready for ou to play with.
What you need to know of this release are:
- This is an First Alpha release so there might be some bugs waiting, we just haven't found any yet.
- New orientation system: Always mount your APM/IMU aligned by Front/Rear Arms eg. in + configuration. X mode is switched from software it self and you are not allowed to rotate your APM on frame.
- Before switching to X mode, test your settings and Artificial Horizont on + mode. When X mode it activated from software, Artificial Horizon on Configurator shows AH incorrectly (this will be fixed later on Configurator itself)
- On X mode, your original "nose" rotates 45° to CCW eg Front becomes Front/Left
- New variables and default settings so RESET your EEPROM by doing Initial Installation procedures
- Unzip file and copy all Libraries from this zip file to your Arduino/Libraries folder and replace them if you had some of the libraries already installed. This Alpha release is designed to work with Libraries included on ZIP file.
- Zip file contains Arducopter_alpha_RC1 folder where all firmware codes are and also libraries folder is there.
Alpha 1.0 Features:
- Acro / Stable modes, changeable by switch input from radio
- + and x modes, changeable from software code, APM orientation always as +
- Magnetometer support (optional, default is off)
- Finetuned PID controllers on stable mode
- More cleaner code
- 200Hz main loop
Sorry guys, no GPS features yet. We have some issues with it so we temporary took it out. We try to find it out as soon as possible. This is built on the APM code, which has full scripted GPS navigation, so as soon as we turn it on ArduCopter will have full UAV functionality.
For feedback please use #47 ticket on our issue tracker in here.
If you find bug or expect that you have a bug, please open new issue for us so we can look it. But before opening issues, try to reproduce your problem 2-3 times at least. If you can reproduce it, post an issue for it.
Also if you have code proposals of feature proposals you can post them too as new issue. But again before posting, check our wiki pages to see if someone has proposed it already of it or proposed feature is already on issue lists or on our software roadmap.
General help can be found from our Wiki pages at GoogleCodes ArduCopter Wiki
Happy flying guys/gals and don't do anything that I would not do :)
File download: ArduCopter_Alpha.1.0
(Current and future files can be found from wiki download areas too, http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/downloads/)
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Comment by Rupert Kent on October 1, 2010 at 11:16pm -
Fantastic...! A great effort from you guys which will be greatly appreciated. :)
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Comment by Cláudio Miklos on October 2, 2010 at 3:13am -
HI Jani!
Only mode 2 radios can be used with this code... this is correct?
Sorry if this is a dumb question...
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JDrones Comment by Jani Hirvinen on October 2, 2010 at 5:39am -
Cláudio, ArduCopter software does not care what mode you are using. Radio mode is only hardware issue on your radio eg. on which stick has throttle, rudder, aileron and elevator. Different mode's have different order nothing else.
Most of us are using Mode 2 radios eg. Throttle/Rudder on left stick, Aileron/Elevator on right stick.
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Comment by Öncü Kayalar on October 2, 2010 at 6:28am -
I flew the quad a couple hours ago using the alpha code. It was stable. Congratulations for the good work :)
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Comment by phill on October 2, 2010 at 7:37am -
help when I try to load the new alpha to the board is get this error
APM_RC was not declared in this scope
APM_ADC.h: No such file or directory
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Comment by Igor Romanenko on October 2, 2010 at 9:17am -
@phill Usually it means you had not installed libraries or put them in the wrong place.
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Comment by phill on October 2, 2010 at 9:37am
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yep i got it to load now thanks
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Comment by Rana on October 2, 2010 at 11:07am -
ArduCopter seems like one man show and the man is Jani !
Jani, hats off to you for your incredible work !
I have put all the documentation discrete data, actually created by you, in a 117 page PDF document which would be usefull for rest of the guys who are trying to make Arducopter, but because there is no option of uploading any file here. Either I would find some way to put the file somewhere and put the link here or I would mail the file to you so that you can put it in the blog itself.
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Comment by Rana on October 2, 2010 at 11:14am
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Comment by Taylor Cox on October 2, 2010 at 2:06pm -
We can still use tortoise svn to get the updates for the code correct?
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