ArduCopter 3.0.1 has been released and is now available in the Mission Planner, firmware.diydrones.com, GitHub and the new Downloads Area.
Warning #1: Compass calibration and reducing interference is far more important than with 2.9.1b
Warning #2: GPS glitches can cause sudden and aggressive position changes while in loiter mode. You may wish to reduce the Loiter PID P to 0.5 (from 1.0) to reduce aggressiveness (see image below of where this gain can be found in mission planner).
Warning #3: optical flow is not supported but will be back in the next release (AC-3.0.2 or AC-3.1.0).
Warning #4: loiter turns does not maintain altitude. This bug will be fixed in AC-3.0.2.
Warning #5: This release has only been lightly tested on Traditional Helicopters.
Improvements over 2.9.1b include:
- Inertial Navigation for Loiter and Auto meaning much more accurate control (Randy,Leonard,JonathanC)
- 3D navigation controller follows straight lines in all dimensions between waypoints (Leonard,Randy)
WPNAV_SPEED, WPNAV_SPEED_UP, WPNAV_SPEED_DN, WPNAV_ACCEL allows configuring speeds and acceleration during missions
- "compassmot" to compensate for interference on compass from the pdb, motors, ESCs and battery. (Randy,JonathanC) (Set-up video here)
- Safety improvements:
- simple Tin Can shaped Geo Fence
- pre-arm checks to ensure all calibration has been performed before arming (can be disabled by setting ARMING_CHECK to zero). (video description here)
- GPS failsafe - switches to LAND if GPS is lost for 5 seconds
- stability patch improvements to stop rapid climbs in very overpowered or overtuned copters
- Circle mode improvements including "panorama" when CIRCLE_RADIUS set to zero (Randy,Leonard)
- SONAR_GAIN parameter added to allow better tuning of sonar surface tracking
- CH8 auxiliary switch (same features as CH7)
- works on PX4 (some minor features still not available) (Tridge,PatH)
How to upgrade:
1. Make sure you are using Mission Planner 1.2.59 or newer (get it here)
2. Click on the MissionPlanner's Hardware, Install Firmware screen. The version numbers should appear as "ArduCopter-3.0.1", then click the appropriate frame icon and it should upgrade as per usual.
3. Reduce the Loiter and Alt Hold PIDs if you have modified them from the defaults. The modified PID values for the 3DR frame can be seen in the image below.
Note: Nav parameters have been combined with Loiter so do not be concerned if you can't find them.
4. Although not directly related to this release, if you purchased an APM prior to March of 2013, update your PPM encoder to the latest firmware (instructions here).
5. Try out the new version in stabilize mode first, then alt-hold, then loiter and finally RTL and Auto.
Numerous How-To videos are available:
Special Thanks to Marco, DaveC and the large number of testers on the pre-release thread who put their copters at risk during the extended testing period. Some of their videos can be found here, here, here, here, here and here. Thanks also to MichaelO for the MP changes required for this release.
All feedback welcome. Please put your questions, comments (good and bad!) below.
Replies
As posts tend to get a bit lost in this fast-moving 220 page thread, I've documented my odd problem of my APM2.5 not 'seeing' my functional external compass here: http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/strange-external-compass-issue-ap....
Any insight there would be very welcome!
Hi Randy,
Could you make THROTTLE_IN_DEADBAND a configurable parameter to reduce (if we want) the deadband for ALT_HOLD ?
Thanks,
David
Hi Michael,
If you have a Hexa try with Dataflashlog setting: disable all.
After this I had no more such Spikes. (Also in Pitch and Roll Axis)
My be AMP is to busy with more than 4 Motors and all the Logs (Dataflash an Teleterie)
As I could read People with Quadros are happy.
Otto
This is cool and I think useful for noob like me.
Is it possible for someone to code "Auto Land" a an option for Channel 7 in the Mission Planner? I feel this option should be there as an option.
Thanks
ArduCopter-3.1-rc3 should appear in the mission planner's Beta Firmwares link in about 1 hour. This release is primarily for the Pixhawk users because it resolves a somewhat serious issue with the SPI bus that could lead to corrupted values from the accelerometer. There will be an -rc4 hopefully within a week which will include some CPU load efficiency gains to resolve the altitude hold performance especially for APM2 hexa and octo users.
Improvements over 3.1-rc2:
1) GPS Glitch protection - gps positions are compared with the previous gps position. Position accepted if within 10m or copter could have reached the position with max accel of 10m/s/s.
2) Bug fix for pixhawk SPI bus contention that could lead to corrupted accelerometer values on pixhawk resolved
3) Auto Tuning (compile time option only add "#define AUTOTUNE ENABLED" to APM_Config.h and set CH7_Opt or CH8_Opt parameter to 17)
4) CPU Performance improvement when reading from MPU6k for APM
5) SUPER_SIMPLE parameter changed to a bit map to allow some flight modes to use super simpler while others use regular simple (MP release to allow easier selection will go out with AC3.1 official release)
6) Safety changes:
a) safety button must be pushed before arming on pixhawk
b) RGB LED (aka toshiba led) changed so that disarmed flashes, armed is either blue (if no gps lock) or green (if gps lock)
c) sensor health bitmask sent to groundstations
I had a sudden uncommanded yaw for a couple rotations in Alt Hold Mode on my Tricopter today which gave me quite a scare, especially since it was a demo with spectators watching. The rest of the flight continued normally. Can anyone provide any clues as to what might have caused this?
Thank you.
2013-10-07 14-26 4 Tricopter yaw spin.log
Randy,
On the Fence, I read the Wiki here
http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/ac2_simple_geofence/
and watched the Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDnGdo54o-4
But I did not 'see' where its mentioned if the fence is ignored in Auto or not, i.e. can I fly in Auto and it will ignore Fence. Also if so and I am in Auto and I was past the second fence(+20 meters outside first fence) and I changed to Stabilized would it land or better yet try to come back home first?
I also don't see RTL Altitude mentioned so not sure what that does.
Thanks guys, this is cool.
hello Randy & Devteam,
Is there a way for the system to detect if it's downward velocity decreases rapidly?
So the soft overloads arduino in apm when driving an octocopter?
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2012435
Maybe time to optimize code?
"....
With a quad, in Simple Loiter mode, the 50Hz loop is running at about 20hz. It's slow, but it's still OK. However, with an Octo, the 50Hz loop drops to about 5Hz. It's barely running at all, and it performs very poorly. Once you turn on Mount, it drops below 5hz, and the process falls apart. I can't even measure the loop rate. In fact, it's so bad, that it stops being able to read the barometer properly. This can cause a flyaway. I tried 4 times to conduct this particular segment of test, and each one resulted in a crash. ...."
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