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
Just a simple question.
Why would you want to take off in loiter or alt hold, and why would you waste all that time on developing the code for it, I can not see the rationale behind it all.
I'm sure there is a good reason for it.
Some of those users, like enforcement officers or mining specalists don't want to be bothered with "learning to fly". Just want to get down to business.
Some user's don't have the flying skills to fly in stabilize mode. It sounds strange but with the growing popularity of multicopter there are more than a few. Let's not have a debate on whether these people should be flying at all, or if that's a debate that you feel we should have, could you open up a new discussion for it?
A debate or a poll, maybe.
agree +1
Hi
Yesterday I did a Pixhawk firmware update for my multi rotor and ever since I am unable to connect to the Pixhawk from Mission Planner. I have re installed MP and cleaned out and re added all the usb drives etc but to no avail. I was connecting just fine before the firmware update. 6 weeks ago when loaded the previous version of firmware it worked)
I am able to reload the firmware which I have done a few times (Have to change from one model frame to another otherwise it says already on board) but still no change. Is there something wrong with the firmware build?
Help.
Very Sad and unable to fly.
Clive,
It's probably the IO board's firmware hasn't been updated. Try holding down the safety-switch for about 5 ~ 10 seconds after plugging in the board.
Thanks Randy
I tried that a couple of times but nothing seems to work.
The leds change their pattern a bit while I do it, but still there is no Mavlink connection.
Hi I have just seen a post at http://ardupilot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6830
Seem this guy has the exact same issue with his 2.6 after a firmware update in the last day or so.
"no connect and timeout/heartbeat error."
Are there any others out there that have taken the latest firmware update and been stuffed up?
Hi Randy,
An Update..
If I disconnect the compass (Leave the GPS plugged in) from the pixhawk then it connects ?? and seems to be fine. Albeit with no compass. I tried this after reading the post on the forum I mentioned above and something to do with blown reg. Can that be a clue ?
Where can I get a copy of the previos firmware to load back. I recon the latest is the problem.
Many Thanks
Clive
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