After months of testing AC3.1 is finally available in the Mission Planner and GitHub.
Warning #1: If the vehicle is left landed (but armed) while in AltHold or Loiter mode for more than a few seconds, the vehicle may suddenly jump into the air the moment the pilot raises the throttle above zero. The reason is the baro altitude may fall while the vehicle is sitting on the ground. In AC3.2 this bug is fixed because we reset the target before take-off.
Warning #2: Motors will spin (slowly) by default as soon as the copter is armed! You can switch this feature off by setting the MOT_SPIN_ARMED parameter to zero.
Warning #3: if you see "Bad Gyro" on the HUD then you may have a blown 3.3V regulator. See this thread for details.
Warning #4: if you use a sonar set the SONAR_GAIN parameter to 0.8 or lower
Warning #5: Trad Heli users should now connect their main rotor ESC to APM's RC8 output
Warning #6: Trad Heli BUG causes loss of collective control in ACRO mode if swash type set to flybarred (i.e. not flybarless). Will be fixed in AC3.2.
The major improvements over AC3.0.1 are (full list here):
1. Pixhawk support (Tridge & PX4 development team)
2. Autotune of Roll and Pitch gains (Leonard/Randy)
3. Drift mode (Jason)
4. Improved Acro (Rob/Leonard) and new Sport mode (Leonard)
5. Arming, Take-off, Land in Loiter or AltHold
6. TradHeli improvements (Rob) including:
a) support for direct drive tail rotors
b) smoother ramp-up of main rotor
c) reduced collective for better control in stabilize mode (STAB_COL_MIN, STAB_COL_MAX params)
7. Support for SingleCopter (Bill King)
8. Performance improvements resolve AltHold troubles for Hexa & Octacopters
9. Safety Improvements:
a) GPS Glitch detection (Randy)
b) Motors spin when armed (Jonathan Challinger)
c) crash detector shuts off motors if copter flipped for 2secs
d) batt failsafe option to RTL instead of LAND, gps failsafe option to trigger AltHold instead of Land
e) more pre-arm checks of inertial nav speed,
10. Bug fixes:
a) optical flow working again (although performance is still not great because not integrated with inertial navigation)
b) ROI working (use DO_SET_ROI command)
How to upgrade:
Click on the MissionPlanner's Initial Setup >> Install Firmware screen. The version numbers should appear as "ArduCopter-3.1", then click the appropriate frame icon and it should upgrade as per usual.
Special thanks to Marco and the many beta testers on the AC3.0.1 thread who put their copters at risk during the testing of this new version and uncovered many problems so that you don't have to! Here are some of their videos: loiter in wind, patio sonar, autotune, autotune2, roi, beach, acro, vrbrain, tricopter, train spotting, radio failsafe, the tree, double loiter
If you haven't seen it recently, please check out the ArduCopter wiki.
Feel free to post comments below and we're going to use the new APM Forum for support issues so please post your support requests there.
Replies
ublox does work normal when connected to ublox softwere...
The only thing I can see is that there may be a slight difference between 5V that the 3DR PM develops and the 5V the Attopilot produces.
I think you can remove the 5V line from the Attop... It supplies it's own power.
The two grounds are important. Be sure you run a ground from the BEC(s) of the ESCs to the main output servo ground rail.
Hi!
I just ordered a Pixhawk to put on my s800 hexacopter. As I need 12v for video TX and gimbal controller card i have a 3s lipo onboard, the ESC/motors run on 6s. I just want to make shure my thinking is right.
I want to power the pixhawk from the std. APM Power module from the 3s and monoitor the U and I on the 6s Battery (because it is the one that will become empty first...)
Is my drawing correct???
If it is correct you are free to use it on the wiki...
Best regards Ronny Grimm
I have been flying on drift mode and i like its performance. It is like flying a delta wing plane. However, when i fly fast and let go of the stick, it does automatic braking by pitching up suddenly. This pitching up behavior seems to make the copter flip backwards. Is there a way to reduce pitching up but allow the copter to slowly stop and loiter?
It'd be best if people raised their support issues in the APM Forum. There's a developer there called Jonathan Challinger who should be able to help with log analysis and other questions. I'm right in the middle of a pile of dev for AC3.2 so I'm hoping that Jonathan can handle the bulk of the support calls.
yes, had the same issue !
but was able to recover the Props :-)
hi fellow flyers, i had been flying 3DR quad in auto mode pretty well without major problems. after upgrading to AC3.1.1 the quad does not executes any command that follows 'takeoff' and does not do RTL. The craft would just climb the planned height and would keep loitering there after both these commands. Then i downgraded to AC3.0.1 and i had same problem. then down to 2.9.1b with same parmas and the problem was resolved. with AC2.9.1b all mission planing commands are executed sequentially. The parmas are mostly default for 3DR quad. in AC3.1.1 I did try by changing alt_hold_ P form 1.0 to 1.5 and 2.0 but no luck. i have two new APM2.6 and they behave exactly same way. is there a bug in 3.1.1 or a hardware problem?
I posted this in the ardupilot.com forum but not sure if it was seen. I'm having a problem with setting declination with ch6. I've set it now to 0-4 range but can't find a setting that solves the problem. I'm flying FPV and the problem I'm having is when I make large circles to the left it works good (but with a tendency to overshoot or be too sensitive) but when I do large circles to the right, it resists it. Sometimes I can even full a full right yaw while I'm trying to turn on the large circle and it just doesn't want to turn right. Turn left and it swings around easily. Too easily. Flying straight doing zig zags seems fine. I'm not sure if I'm overshooting the correct declination value or not. If it's resisting right turns and is over sensitive on left turns does that indicate a wrong declination setting?
http://ardupilot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=6304
The latest mission planner lists many options for channel 7 and 8 that are not described on the wiki page. Can some one please explain these and tell me if they work. For example Auto does not seem to turn on Auto. I tried searching this and other sites, but cannot seem to find anything.
Thanks.
Jonathan,
Thanks for running this down, I appreciate your work. FWIW, Your diagnosis makes sense to me, MSL looks fine, its the home alt that resets.
Steve
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