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 just get change GPS Ublox (From MTEK). Loiter is very perfect.
2013-01-29 22-07 1.log
2013-01-29 22-08 2.log
Guys.
Id really appreciate some help with code editing.
Have followed the instructions to the letter but think they are a bit outdated. Every step I try just gives more compile errors.
Was using Arduino 1.0.3
Now tried Ardupilot_Arduino 1.0.3 ........mostly log related errors
Have added the #define for 2.x
Noticed there is a new ArduinoCPP102 tried that............ get mavlink errors.
Should the ‘verify’ work without the APM attached?
After a compile attempt all the PDE files change to .ino. Is that right?
Does it matter where the arduino.exe file and its associated library’s are?
Help!
Should be doing DIY for the wife but rapidly running out of brownie points.
Ardu copter 2.9 Heli
I flew a mission with only 2 waypoints, straight out, then 90 degr to the left and then RTL.
At the 90degr. turn the heli hurtled about 20m of track, the same when he turned around for returning home.
After the not so great mission I checked yawing while in Loiter. If I didn’t touch the controls the loiter was perfect, but as soon I yawed only about 90degr, the heli hurtled off like on the mission, to stabilize again, for a great loiter but at a different position.
Then back on the table, I realized an odd thing.
I’m in stab,mode, and if I move the pitch forward and backward, the Yaw moves left and right, like this 2 are mixed together. Then the same happens if I Yaw left or right, the swash pitches back and forward.
I checked this on my 450 and 600 heli and at a friend’s 450 heli, all running 2.9, everywhere the same, more or less obvious. It looks like a kind of compensation between yaw and pitch, but I can’t make any sense out of it.
I think this causes this unwanted reactions at Loiter and Mission flying when yawing.
Hi Guys
I was away for 2 weeks and now back. I have recently flashed my RTF 3dr Hexa with latest Version 2.9 and glad to see that alt hold is actually holding and it was not working in my case in ver 2.8.1 Congratulations to the team.
I am having a strange problem and suffered few crashes because of that. I would post videos of two flights here. First is to test RTL using mode switch and second one a few minutes later to see it happening again. Copter was going away and when I switched to do the RTL it lost control and flipped and crashed. Broken props and motors. I have replaced those and couple of days later I tried running missions and during those missions it crashed few times in autonomous flights and later in a new mission it did not took off in auto but motors started without sufficient lift so I switched to Stabilised and took it off but within minutes it crashed landed.
I am attaching the logs of the video graphed flights here. What could be the problem and I am using APM 2.5 and stock 850KV motors and 10.47 APC props.
Following is the link for a good flight and RTL
http://youtu.be/emPqsbVgu_4
and this is the crashed flight minutes later.
http://youtu.be/LeaR7JDfLks
Please suggest me what I am doing wrong or there is some hardware or firmware / Software issue.
I have done accel calibration as suggested before these flights.
regards
Bhanu
2013-01-22 16-04-57.tlog
2013-01-22 16-44-37.rlog
2013-01-22 16-44-37.tlog
Based on the feedback on this thread, we're going to push out a 2.9.1 release hopefully in about a week. It will include fixes for these issues:
This will be a patch release so it won't include the inertial navigation for loiter & waypoints which we'd hope to put into 2.9.1. Instead those two will appear in 2.9.2 which will also be the first officially support PX4 release. I can't give an ETA on 2.9.2 but the dev is proceeding well but undoubtedly it will be pushed back a week or two as we resolve the above 4 issues.
By the way, thanks very much for all the help people are providing each other on this thread!
Finally got arround to testing the latest FW.
Stab no probs at all.
When swithing to AH with sonar it gets very jumpy when flying over a obstacle. You can hear the motors almost stop. The quad falls abd then has to compensate to much.Not very smooth.
When doing a similar test without sonar the quad just drops slowly untill it touches the ground. When I push the throttle up almost to max, the quad rises slowly but keeps ascending even with throttle at center and even lower.
It doesn't really hold alt and doesn't react accordingly to my inputs.
2.8.1 work great!
Any suggestions?
Z acc is very acceptable.
Logs included
2013-01-28 10-25 2.log
Ok, I don't get it... I turned on the RAW log file (via CLI) but when I load the Graph in telemetry this is what I'm getting... What am I missing? I will attach both .tlog and .rlog files so that you guys could PLEASE help me with this.
Also, how is every one loading Accel(x) In the choices that I have all I see is (x)acc, (x)gyro, gyro_cal_(x), and accel_cal_(x).
Thanks for helping the Noob...
2013-01-27 19-01-41.rlog
2013-01-27 19-01-41.tlog
Had a uncommanded RTL today with v2.9... was it a failsafe, how do I tell?
I can't see anything unusual on the logs, CH3/THR was normal.
http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/uncommanded-rtl-but-why-there-was...
Bug in the "autotrim" with rudder stick for over 10 seconds:
I've found a bug in the "manual autotrim" procedure in the "ArduCopter 2.9" branch (the release in the planner): during the corrections of ALE (and I think also ELE but I have not tried) commands that takes them from aparte gives away, so instead of removing the trim the error increases, with the risk of not being able of course to land straight on your drone.
The "SaveTrim" with the CH7 work fine, same as in my demo video.
Now: don't use this "autotrim with left rudder trick" but only the "SaveTrim/CH7" in the planner, like in my demo video, and when arming motors put the rudder stick to right for 3 or 4 seconds, not over!
I'm sorry, but during the alpha/beta/gamma/epsilon tests is one of the few things that I've never tried, because for the first time had been removed from the code but I and Leonard we requested it to be reintroduced.
Unfortunately, that whoever holds the arming motor control for long time, and then takeoff with "45 seconds of quad uncontrollable".
I have already alerted the dev team to fix.
Bests, Marco
Flew my DwarfStart 2.0 Octo for the first time on 2.9. All went well so far. I have to tune up Alt_Hold, but it's getting there and I haven't seen any big problems yet. Didn't see any vibration problems and I haven't bothered to balance the props yet.
Gotta an unrelated question, but it'll have more visibility here.... (hijack).
So it's a big powerful machine, I used to fly it on 2x 4S5000 batteries in parallel. I have 4 sets of these packs, of various ages. 2 brand new, 2 almost new, 2 moderately used, and 2 that are fairly old and crusty. All of these are 20C and when I flew with the first version of this Octo, I found that they could not deliver enough power, with very significant voltage sag on climbing. So I decided to design the Octo to hold 4 of these packs at a time.
I did the flight yesterday with the last two sets in parallel, so basically it's 4S 20,000mAH. Now the problem is, that the packs became very unbalanced. After 12 minutes of flying, the newer packs were at 20% capacity, but the old crusty packs were at 50% capacity. The new ones took a little over 4000mAH to charge, and the old ones only 2000mAH. I think what's happening is that the old crusty packs have much higher internal resistance, and aren't delivering the power than the newer ones are.
Is there any way to balance this out? I don't know if I kept flying, the new packs would drop in voltage as they approached depletion and the voltage falls off sharply, and then the older packs would start to deliver. I don't think the newer packs would get over-depleted, because the voltage is being held up by the older packs, they are all in parallel.
Obviously the solution is to buy newer batteries and get rid of the old crusty ones... But in the meantime...
I was just surprised by how unbalanced they became.
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