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
Let me first thank all of you for putting so much work into arducopter. I find the hardware and software really outstanding. In my opinion this is one of the projects which really proofs that open platforms may in the end be superior to commercial systems.
Let me introduce myself: I did a lot of RC model stuff (on a competitve level) more than 20 years ago. About 3 months ago I started out of curiosity with a off the shelf quadrocopter (Bumblebee) and was impressed how easy it was to control. At the same time I really was stuck by not being abel to do any modifications on this "closed" system. That brought me to the arducopter APM 2.5 project. After reading quite a lot of instructions I managed to get a DJI F450 based quadrocopter flying, first under 2.8.1, now under 2.9.1 and in contrast to others, I love to fine tune PID parameters etc.. Stabilize, Loiter, RTL, Missions, everything works perfectly. Lately I fly more in Acro mode since it is more like my old RC planes and I noticed with Acro_Trainer=0 and Acro_Bal_Pitch=0 and Acro_Bal_Roll=0 I can, as it was stated in some other threads, do flips/rolls but no loops. So, I was wondering, what is the difference between the nick and the roll axis, since from the quadrocopter point of view the two axis are identical? Are there any parameters to change that would allow also to do loops with the 2.9.1 firmware? What confused me most is the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrZafwZ74HQ by Marco Robustini where he shows loops in version 2.6. What was different at that time?
Any input on that is greatly appreciated. Thanks Werner
So I had a chance to put 2.9.1 on my hexacopter. I've not flown this since a bad crash in the very early APM2.0 days, so not sure if the board is ok. It passed the hand-test ok - so I wanted to see how the vibration levels are doing first, as I think it'll need remounting.
I turned on 'raw' and 'motor' and I saw that the vibrations are bad (-2 to -19 on z). Definitely some work to do. However, there's also the occasional screwed up log entry:
RAW,0.00, -NTUN, -100, 17943, 0.17, -10.87,
ATT, 0, -68, 0, 136, 0, 6403, 6403
MOT, 1101, 1101, 1101, 1101, 1101, 1101
0
Is that an artifact of 'too much logging'?
However, the real concern was on landing. Wind was gusting, I decided to land, and as I touched down it started bouncing. Got 2 or 3 bounces in, each time increasing in height before I cut the throttle. Is that down to the very bad z vibrations? I was just in stabilize - not auto-landing or alt-hold. Log attached (hopefully the right one!).
Cheers,
Rick
2013-02-26 12-38 1.log
My Arducopter started to circle and loosing altitude fast resulting in a crash in guided mode. It seems that I have found 4 similar incidents in the past week. I was running Arducopter 2.9.1. Here is the flight path and log file.
Any idea of what caused this behaviour?
A detailed description can be found at: http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/arducopter-crash-help-needed?xg_s...
Thanks!
Flight.log
Hello,
Just a quick question. What does the "preflight_level" command under the actions tab in the flight data page of mission planner do with the 2.9.1 release? does it only re calibrate the gyros? I was under the impression that the level command had been removed and replaced with the accelerometer calibration procedure. This question arose in my other thread posted here...
Thanks.
On evening, Loiter test low altitude.
2013-02-25 23-03 4.log
Is it necessary to flash the atmel if you are using a specktrum radio?? My throttle drops to 952 when radio is turned off and this should trigger proper failsafe-am I correct? Are there any other other reasons for updating the atmel?
I've just had my first crash with 2.9.1 after many flights.. lost all props and, 2 motors and a canon digital camera..
my tricopter is doing some crazy right roll during alt_hold..
i'm thinking it's caused by a hardware failure, but maybe someone here could point me other problems..
attached is my logs from the crash..
2013-02-24 07-51 2.log
2013-02-24 07-51 2.kmz
2013-02-24 07-51 2.log.gpx
Just had a failsafe event that I can't figure out. My quad seemed to go into RTL mode and I had no control. It ended up descending after a minute or so and bounced off the ground, flipped and the motors continued to spin until I pulled the plug.
I see the following ERR and FS codes at these lines:
13205: ERR FS 3
15559: ERR FS 2
15560: EV 15
15561: EV 29
15562: MOD RTL 704
15567 ERR FS 0
Not sure what all this means other than I had something cause me to go into RTL?
Can someone please help me figure out what happened?
Thanks
2013-02-23 13-37 9.log
Hi all. In my last real flight, I lost power for some unknown reason from about 30-50 feet up when i switched modes during a flight. I went back to stabilize mode on the way down but it didn't seem to respond. It hit the roof of my house flat on the belly of the quad and then it landed in the lawn. Two snapped arms from the dji frame that i'm using and broke the props (typical) but otherwise no physical damage to anything else... but it was a hard smack to be sure.
test flight_more_logs.zip
Crash.zip
Altitude Drift.
This morning I was out flying and found that my quad was flying more than 5m lower after flying a 7 minute mission. I looked at the GPS and HUD altitude and found that the HUD was off and the GPS was correct. I checked and the AHRS_GPS_GAIL is 1 but the altitude did not get corrected.
Is this function working for multi-rotors? If yes, how do I get the GPS to correct the altitude faster?
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