ACRO bug (fixed in 2.9.1b): while doing flips in ACRO mode, if you switch to Stabilize while inverted your throttle will go to minimum. To regain throttle control you need to switch back to ACRO then back to Stabilize again (i.e. switch to stabilize twice). You never lose control of roll/pitch/yaw.
Loiter/AltHold/Auto/RTL bug: if you switch into these modes with throttle at zero motors will go to minimum until you raise the throttle.
Auto mode altitude bug (fixed in 2.9.1b): setting a waypoint altitude greater than 320m over home altitude may wrap around and instead be interpreted as a low altitude.
ArduCopter 2.9 is now in the mission planner and the downloads area!
The major improvement is we use inertial navigation to improve altitude hold. This increased reliance on the accelerometers means you must do some additional set-up before flying:
1. Perform the new accelerometer calibration in the mission planner (video). The auto-trim metho has also changed (video).
2. Add vibration dampening foam between your frame and the APM. Some suggested materials: DuBro, gel, hk foam.
3. If upgrading from 2.8.1, modify the throttle and altitude PID values:
- Increase your Throttle Rate P, reduce I to zero, increase D
- Increase Altitude Hold P, reduce I to zero
- Tune Throttle Accel P and I terms but try to keep P about 1/2 the size of I
Here is the list of major changes (a more detailed list can be found in the release notes):
- Alt hold using inertial navigation (Leonard, Randy, Jonathan)
- AUTO_VELZ_MIN, AUTO_VELZ_MAX parameters control the max climb/descent rate for the autopilot (cm/s)
- PILOT_VELZ_MAX controls max climb/descent rate for the pilot (in cm/s)
- Landing improvements (Leonard/Randy). Copter will descend to 10m or until an object is sensed with the sonar. Then slows to 50cm/s descent (speed can be adjusted with LAND_SPEED parameter). (video).
- Surface tracking with sonar (Randy/Leonard). Copter will attempt to maintain current distance from objects in front of sonar regardless of altitude. Only used in alt-hold and loiter, not used for missions. Sonar can be enabled/disabled with CH7 switch. (video)
- Failsafe improvements (Randy/Craig/John Arne Birkeland) including bug fixes, additional check for PPM encoder failure and implementation of battery failsafe. Set-up instructions are here.
- Mediatek gps driver accuracy improvements and use of SBAS [Craig]. Instructions on upgrading your mediatek to firmware 1.9 are here.
- Traditional Heli improvements (Rob) including (a) bringing heli code back into the fold, (b) enabled rate controller (previously only used angle controllers). (c) fix to rotor speed controllers - now operates by switching off channel 8. (d) allow wider collective pitch range in acro and alt hold modes vs stabilize mode (e) bug fix to allow collective pitch to use the entire range of servos
- Acro trainer (Leonard). Copter will return to be generally upright if you release the sticks in acro mode.
- ACRO_TRAINER : set to 1 to enable the auto-bring-upright feature
- ACRO_BAL_ROLL, ACRO_BAL_PITCH : controls rate at which roll returns to level
- Camera control improvements (Randy/Sandro Benigno): (a) AP_Relay enabled for APM2 (b) Trigger camera with CH7 or DO_DIGICAM_CONTROL command (c) Allow pilot override of yaw during missions and fixed CONDITIONAL_YAW command.
- PPM sum support for transmitters with as few as 5 channels (Randy/Tridge/John Arne Birkeland).
- Performance and memory useage improvements (Tridge).
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.
Special thanks to our testing team lead Marco and the dedicated bunch on the 2.8.1 release thread who put their copters at risk while testing the pre-release version. Some of their videos are here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Please feel free to report issues you find in the discussion below and/or add them to the issues list.
Replies
did a test flight today with AC 2.9 and GPS MTK 1.9
Stabilize and Alt hold just perfect.
but Loiter did some very big circle and RTL wes flying in the wrong direction.
i did the Loiter and RTL with compass calibration Auto and manual with declination 1,58 ° the results are the same on Loiter and RTL
any idea what i did wrong???????
2013-01-22 11-30-20.tlog
Loiter_RTL.log
Randy,
It could be nice to have a changelog page for the wiki, don't you think ?
By the way, thanks for your hard work.
David
I have a problem, before updating all was working perfectly (3DR radio, Minimosd and APM2.5)
i started Mission planner and did the firmware update with APM connected via usb, started and stopped at 50% +-, then i unplugged the APM and restarted, since that i cannot connect to usb anymore and the APM is not initializing.
What did i do wrong ?
Thanks the development team for new release. I just uploaded and did some procedure to set it up.
The new calibration is quite difficult to do, especially with my Y6 frame. Does it need to have a good level for all 6 axis?
After I did the new calibration, the virtual horizontal is always leaning to right and toward. I have still not tried to fly it but I think it will affect to the copter. How to resolve it?
And the new calibration does not work with Xbee connection. I must do it by wire.
-Duy
WOW! that is a super stable release! Will try to do a video tomorrow, winds were so strong this weekend that I did not think it would fly. But it did. Great job guys, this is worth sending a newsletter email to all my customers telling them to make sure to update to 2.9 era!
Super excited, now let's get the Follow me box working! :)
Dany
http://www.CanadaDrones.com
Hi Guys,
Please help me out. I have uploaded 2.9 to my Quad (previously on 2.8) and have made the changes as described on the first page of this thread.
Problem is this, I could hardly hold the quad at a fixed altitude after the changes due to the throttle being very un-responsive I then changed the Throttle rate settings back to what they where in 2.8 and that worked allot better. Why? (this is taking the throttle rate P from 6.0000 to 0.6000)
Also, when I had my copter connected to the Mission planner to download logs just now, it talked to me. It said something like BAWI every 10 seconds or so. Any idea what that could be?
Thank you
I had a good experience flying 2.9 today after being away for 6 months with no copter. Had my first ever rock solid loiter with a bit of wind. Props to the developers!
I rebuilt my original 3DR quad with a jakub gimbal using good servos, and put some dt750s with gemfan 11x4.7's on, and a set of 3DR radios. It goes pretty well now!
The only thing that is annoying me isn't really 2.9 specific, but it's that my minimOSD won't update with data until I connect to mission planner with the 3DR radios. I understand this is because the tx line isn't connected on it, but a lot of the time I will go out and fly without taking a laptop, and I still need the OSD to work (mainly for battery info etc). I've tried enabling the SR3 update options in the parameter list, but it still doesn't update the OSD data without the radio being connected. (thread link)
Is this the best way to achieve operation of the OSD without radios being connected?
Will it actually cause problems if I do connect the tx line of the minimOSD in parallel with the 3DR radio?
For the first time , and with the release of 2.9, I feel very confident with the Arducopter platform. The Alt Hold is great! Also the overall performance is fantastic. The Sonar following elevations is very nice, it even reacts to small hedges etc. I tested it on my Hexa-b.
Keep up this excellent development and project. This is great work guys! Congratulations.
Thank you,
Sedim
Just when you think you have it figured out, gravity wins. I've been flying tricopters APM2 since 2.5 and have had tremendous success. I couldn't wait to install 2.9 and take advantage of the new features. I added some 1/4" foam rubber below the APM2 and enabled the RAW logging and saw a significant improvement over just using industrial velcro to attach.
I flew 2.9 in Stabilize and was able to tune RateKP for good stabilization. All is well until I switched over to Alt-Hold or Loiter. Immediately motors stopped and didn't throttle up until it had lost a meter or two and I was able to switch back to Stabilize mode. I recovered and tried Alt-Hold mode again... this time the tricopter wildly pitched back and forth in quick bursts while somewhat maintaining altitude. I was flying with default parameters, then changed Throttle Accel P and I to .5 and 1.0 and made another flight. This time, after gaining a bit more altitude, I switched to Alt-Hold and experienced the brief motor-cut/drop, but it quickly recovered and maintained precise position. What a relief to see. Switched to Loiter and moved the throttle down and the tricopter smoothly decended as expected, then rolled right and left to see it change positions. All was well then it quickly rolled upside-down and tumbled to the ground at 9.8m/s/s. I have had NO issues with loiter since 2.7. I've attached my log file in hopes that someone can help me identify what happened.
This tricopter has lots of power and was flying with no payload. It takes about 25-30% throttle to hover, so I have to switch to Alt-Hold and bump my throttle up to around 50% at the same time to keep from falling.
Tricopter (18" arms)
3x PowerUp 25 Sport motors
3x 12x3.8 SF APC props
3300mah 4-cell NanoTech LiPo
45amp Turnigy Multistar ESCs 480hz
DX8-AR8000
900mhz 3DR Telemetry
No Sonar on this one
APM2 AC2.9
UBlox-Lea6 GPS
2013-01-20 16-46 7.log
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