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.

You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!

Join diydrones

Email me when people reply –

Replies

    • I am really no expert but I will see the same as you: GPS glitches and GPS errors. I would think to check your cable to the GPS and maybe the configuration file for the GPS if its no original 3DR Modul.

      • @gregmaan thx for replying so appreciate it.. what do you mean by gps configuration? How to do it? Have u solve that?
    • And also when auto and rtl.. the copter moving with twitchy movement sometimes.
      • Hi the expert.. please answer my question.. im running 3.1.3
  • Flew my quad with V3.1.4-rc1 today.

    I ran Autotune, once it finished i was bring my quad into land in stabilized mode, when it was about 40cms off the ground it just flipped.

    I have the log file but it is 4mb (I had it set to log nearly everything) 

    What should i be looking for in the logs around the event?

    It flipped towards #2 motor.

  • Developer

    AC-3.1.4-rc1 is now the official version available through the Mission Planner.

    There are no changes for APM1 and APM2 users, but for PX4/Pixhawk users there are these bug fixes:
    1. Bug Fix for Pixhawk/PX4 NuttX I2C memory corruption when errors are found on I2C bus
    2. Fat system file corruption bug that could lead to corrupt log files

    As mentioned higher up in this thread, the top one is the serious one.  It's rare but we found a long I2C cable connecting the Pixhawk to the compass would lead to I2C errors that could cause random memory corruption.  The effect of hitting this bug could be almost anything from no-impact (the most likely impact) to the board crashing.

    AC3.2-rc1 should be available through the beta firmwares link in a day or so.  Just sorting out a few small issues.

    • HI Randy, I would like to use mast for GPS+compass and I need long i2c cable,

      Would it be possible to know which cable lengths have you encountered the problem?

      "25cm" is right length for i2c cables ?

      Ciao - Giuseppe  

      • Developer

        Giuseppe,    THe i2c problem was only on pixhawk and we found it while using a 1m+ cable.  You should be OK with a 25~45cm cable but definitely upgrade to the AC3.1.4 code if using a pixhawk

This reply was deleted.

Activity

Neville Rodrigues liked Neville Rodrigues's profile
Jun 30
Santiago Perez liked Santiago Perez's profile
Jun 21
More…