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
Jay, i also loaded 3.1.3-rc1 before and tested it. anyway, i simply loaded 3.1.3 without erasing or resetting the parameters from CLI. i didn't do any calibration afterwards but my copter flies very well. Maybe, you can reload back the 3.1.3-rc1 and load your original params, then, simply install 3.1.3 like i did. regards.
I cant find what the change was between 3.1.3 and 3.1.3-rc1
3.1.3-rc1 is a beta firmware. 3.1.3 is an official release in MP. i think they are the same.
Yeah that's correct. That's why the twitch on rtl still there. Be careful not to use it on windy condition.
HI willy, I think no need to redo
Maybe your axis are reversed ? check in radio calibration.
Axis for what? Sorry I can't get it.
I have a question about Octocopter and Pixhawk..
I am building coaxial X8(actually it is H8),and we all know about problems with efficiency on coaxial setup..
In order to cut losses to minimum it would be better if props on one arm(top and bottom) spin in same direction..
Can we do something similar what we did with Y6 B New?
And how would that affect flight characteristic's, redundancy, etc...?
Emin,
It's not difficult to add an X8-new. I'm planning to do that to rationalise the motor order (i.e. making the motor order clockwise so motor 1 is front-right-top, motor 2 is front-right-bottom, motor 3 is back-right-top, etc). We could also make all top props spin CW, bottom spin CCW but I hear that it's not important for control on the x8 though. Doing that was important for improved control on the Y6 but apparently not on the X8.
Noo, don't change all top props spin CW its better when they spin cw ccw cw ccw...but for efficiency and better handling in wind will be better if top and bottom props spin in same direction, cant find the link now but.it can cuts loses to half......thank you
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