Developer

ArduCopter-3.1 released!

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.

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      • Hi thx rainer for take a look.. ya i got problem on my arm.. there are too soft i am planning to change the arm soon.. becaus i use u shape alumunium.. because the square one out of stock.. do u think the drifting can cause by this soft frame also?
    • Do you always do your test flying in the same spot as in the video?  Have you ever tried it in a open field perhaps?  GPS signals will bounce off buildings giving you a less accurate lock...

      • ya. i also try it in basketball field in the park and the rooftop of my house. my house almost the highest house in my village and its still the same.. and i got pretty low HDOP.

  • The only thing that is missing from my copter is to serve me a coffee :) . It's impressive what you can do with this :)

  • When is the 3.2 version going to be released? I want use hybrid mode as my loiter is totally lazy and It can be better just when I turn stabilizer Pitch and roll up which makes stabilize very agressive. I am sure that would solve my problem as I am flying perfectly in stabilizer, alt hold and loiter stays in place when I am not moving. any hints?

    • Developer
      Maybe 1month until the release candidate. There is a lot in AC3.2
      • one..two...three months is not important but this release should be a real step for arducopter users so i think it s important to take the time to clean the code and release it when it will be ready

      • Still a long wait to all my friends!

        But I'm hopeful that this will put an end to all known issues both for APM and PIXHAWK.

  • I don't believe either of those are the defaults
    • Sorry I check now, is 70

       

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