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
Today, I had nigh accident at altitude 100 meters by GPS lost about 2-3 sec but i change to ALT_hold and still under my control. I have video on my arducopter please look at 3.10 mins is begin have gps lost signal.
2013-01-24 19-11 3.log
2013-01-24 18-39-41.tlog
Today I had a strange issue with my new scratchbuilt tricopter. I wanted to check the ACC Z vibration data and wanted to do some hover just to log data. As it is cold outside, I did it indoor, and I think that safed my copter from flying away.
After a short time of really nice and stable hover, it suddenly jumped up to the ceiling, felt down, jumped up again and felt down again. I was lucky that the rear prop went of the prosaver so that I could grap it there and remove the battery. I had noc control with the RC. The motors kept on spinning, no matter what I did on the RC.
After that I checked everything, but could not find anything wrong with the copter.
Then I did a full eeprom erase and reainstall of the FW. I did the whole setup process and tried again. This time with the copter tied to a heavy toolbox, so that it could only go up about 1m.
So I did a nice hover for about 5 minutes and nothing bad happened. I also tried to acitvate alt hold, but then it wants to go up and only the thread held it down.
At the moment, I do not trust the 2.9 any more. When this happens outdoors the copter would go up to the clouds, I think.
I attached the logfile. Maybe someone can see something in it.
2013-01-23 08-58 8.zip
Randy,
I know you have a Flamewheel 450 (or a clone) which I presume you are flying with 2.9.
If so, could you let me know what relevant PIDs you are using for it.
I lowered the Loiter rate PID - P to 2.4 as you suggested elsewhere and while it greatly improved Loiter it still "twitches" in pitch and roll quite a lot (over 10 degrees) and completely unnecessarily in completely calm air.
Previously with the stock 5.000 PID - P the twitching roll and pitch was much worse to the point of becoming unstable and temporarily blasting off in one direction or the other then working its way back.
I was hesitant to further reduce this PID.
In any case if you do have this working smoothly on your Flamewheel (clone) I would very much like to know what PIDs you have changed from default and their values.
On evening, I setup HD wing camera on my arducopter loiter on the air about 100 meter is very stable and no wobbly.
Nice work
FAILSAFE QUESTION:
If failsafe is engaged by turning off tx for testing purposes.
What happens when the Tx is switched on again?
It seems like it stays in RTL mode. Ideally one would want to take manual control over the copter again and land yourself.
Thanks
I just finished building a Octa and are Happy with 2.9 release. It looks great in Barometric Altitude Hold, Loiter and stabilize. All default settings except for lowering p-stabilize (roll and pitch) to 3.7
The only thing I don't understand is that when I connect my Sonar, the motors are jumping a lot, no more Altitude Hold. My throttle stick is just below midstick (same as when I did altitude hold with baro). I did test my Sonar in the Mission Planner under tests and I do get good readings, so it is working fine.
I don't see any spesific PID to tune for sonar specific? Baro and Sonar use the same PID?
Do I have to use ch7 to lock in my hover position (safe that parameter)? If I understand correctly this throttle hover position is automatically safed when you lock into altitude hold.
Please help with the latest Altitude Hold procedure and how does Sonar differ from Baro in tuning?
Greetings,
Hein
Hello guys.
I am facing a problem and I cant solve. I have the v 2.5 board with the 3dr radio.
Uploaded the new 2.9 version, erase the eprom, and set all hexa again.
Then I start flying. Its working normally. Stock rate P is a little high. Then I go to my netbook and start to dial it down.
Then I start to change others PID's.
So far everything is working as expected.
Here goes when my problem start.
To make tune process faster, I set the dial on channel 6 and set mission planner to Rate P on channel 6. No big deal, right?
After choose that option, hexa goes crazy.
When input like 20% stick throttle just to spin the motor, motors spins for like 2s and BOOM. It throttle up itself so fast that Hexa jumps and flip and hit the ground :(
After that I have to reflash the board, because throttle is on berserker mode forever, even if I turn channel 6 off on mission planner.
That happened to me twice, and both time this erratic behaviors starts only after channel 6 is set on mission planner.
What is driving me mad is channel 6 dial button its working. I dial up and down and when I refresh data on mission planner, new rate p is there. New firmware is using 1.5 on stock. I set min 1 and 1.5max.
I tried two boards (an arducopter and an AIO pro/megapirate v2.9) and both are doing the same back flip on take off when channel 6 is activated. If channel 6 is off on APM it works flawless. Tried different esc and diferrent radios and motors. Broken two quads already trying to figure that out. That wasnt happening with the 2.7x version.
Here goes the telemetry log of my last crash.
Maybe someone smarter than me can help.
log.zip
Ch6 tuning doesn't seem to be working for me now. I'm not sure if it's mission planner, or 2.9 that's to blame. I'm on mission planner 1.2.32, and haven't tried tuning until now.
The problem is that when I set CH6 Opt to CH6_RATE_KP (or any parameter it seems), it will ignore the range specified below it, (I am trying to use min 0.05 and max 0.22) so when the ch6 pot is outputting low pwm (992), it will give a parameter value of 0.45 and at a pwm on 1500 or above will give a parameter value of 0.
Tried recalibrating the radio, but it doesn't help.
Can anyone replicate this?
Has anyone tried to upload octo quad firmware (2.9)? Marco?
It complies and upload fine using arduino 1.0.1.
I can connect via mavlink (USB), and latest mission planner, but I cannot see any realtime movement on the HUD.
Also cannot complete radio calibration. No green bars at all.
Cannot perform acc calicrations either.
I tried rc5 and 2.9 official, no luck.
When I load standard quad FW from the mission planner everything works...
Any Ideas? thanks
The first thing I looked at was my local firewall I changed "load custom firmware" & I am able to load 2.8.1 so is any one having issues?
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