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
Hi All,
Do you think it is a good idea to tune Rate_P, Rate_I and Rate_D for pitch and roll axis in Alt-Hold than Stabilize mode?
Also, I find that it can also be better than in Loiter mode. Any suggestions on why to only tune it in Stabilize?
Hi all, I have two questions...
1) with the "hit Rad" set to "0" the copter does a chicken dance trying to find it's spot on about half the points... it's quite dangerous looking. I set the hit rad up to 30 and all is good. I don't want to type in 30 to every line of my mission.. is there somewhere I can set this an forge it?
2) the copter seems to want to auto land at the last waypoint. I did not instruct it to do so and I don't recall this happening on previous firmwares... Did something change?
Thanks and great work on APM both fixed wing and MR guys.
Steve
could you guys look at my log in this thread and let me know if anything major stands out .
I have had the same quad drop at the same point during the auto-tune routine 2 days in a row and the pile of destroyed motors and carbon fibre is growing. Right after the roll portion is done and the pitch test begins it like a switch is flipped and the quad just falls to the ground.
Randy may have pinpointed the problem with a bad file but at $200-300 a crash of a once rock solid 800mm quad I would like to know if anything in my logs leap out as a problem. Thanks
http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/need-help-figuring-out-why-qaud-f...
AutoTune:
Can someone tell me if the Autotune need to be completed and the CH7 switch toggled back and forth to save the new tuning parameters. The autotune as I see might take > 9 minutes in windy conditions and under load, battery finishes.
Any idea to work around this issue?
@Randy
Will the servo gimbal option still work on the next release? or is it getting removed?
I am sure this has been covered but this thread and the one at rcgroups have both become to deep to wade thru.
When in auto tune how do slight adjustments to position via roll and pitch input effect the time needed and outcome of auto tune? Two quads I have run it on go thru the process in under 5 minutes, I have another extremly light quad and running auto tune I cant find a feild large enough to run it in and not have it drift away
. Always windy here in Florida on the coast. I ran the autotune yesterday on the light quad and with corrections for drift it took almost 9 minutes to run thru the roll portion of the test and only made it thru when I let drift for a few hundred yards, I made it about 30 seconds into the pitch portion before batt died and quad fell to its death.
Does the procedure start at the begining everytime a manual correction is made?
Question for anyone with regards to ACRO... Are ACRO_BAL_PITCH and ACRO_BAL_ROLL ignored when ACRO_TRAINER is set to 0? Or if you want true rate-control do youneed to set both of those to 0 as well?
The wiki is not current on these parameters as it still references AXIS_ENABLE which I believe has been deprecated..
Sorry if this has been asked and answered, but I'm unable to find...
I've got a copter that in Stabilize requires one throttle setting to hover, but in Acro requires just a tiny bit more. Is there a setting I can tweak to be able to maintain the same PWM-output to "Throttle" between the two modes, or is this a deeper tuning issue between Stab and Acro?
My THR_MID is set to 444 and my TRIM_THROTTLE is 531. I thought about getting these two values closer together but I know my copter hovers just under half (which is why I set THR_MID to 444, per watching the Tuning window in MP) and I thought we weren't supposed to alter TRIM_THROTTLE as this is calculated live. Maybe I just suck it up and adjust THR_MID to match?
Anyways, appreciate any input! Throttle params in the attached jpg..
FYI: I recently upgraded to 3.1rc4 of the firmware and noticed that the battery voltage and current was always zero in the MAVLink Status messages. I went back to to the first release of 3.1rc2 on 9/18/2013 and confirmed that the batter voltage and current was correct. I checked the last 3.1rc2 revision on 10/10/2013 and the battery voltage and current were zero. So somewhere between 9/18 and 10/10, it appears that a bug was introduced regarding the battery voltage and current readings.
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