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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Replies

            • This is the log of the flight before crash, same low voltage....

              2014-05-16 17-46-52.log

              • Again I see an RTL did you envoke that one ? I also see a Battery low failsafe between 5mins and 6mins .. It still seems as you have power supply issues .. ..

                • Yes sometime i try RTL and other mode, normaly i fly in stabilize.
                  I have another power module and it's 5V This one have a problem...

                  Thanks

                  • Sorry I have not answered in my reply, but was a similar problem  and I have created confusion.

  • Can anyone tell me the reasons for my crash?

    2014-05-18 18-48-07 34.log

    • My opinion: mechanical failure or.. powering problem (vcc too low, are you powering from internal "bec esc's ?)

      Ciao - Giuseppe 

  • Developer

        AC3.1.5-rc1 is available in the MP’s Beta Firmware’s link.  This will be available for the next few days and any testing would be greatly appreciated.  If all goes well it will become the official release at the end of this weekend.

     

    Changes from 3.1.4

    1) Bug Fix to ignore roll and pitch inputs to loiter controller when in radio failsafe

    2) Bug Fix to allow compassmot to work on Pixhawk

     

         Release Notes are here: https://github.com/diydrones/ardupilot/blob/ArduCopter-3.1.2/ArduCo...

    • I see now :

      ArduCopter 3.1.5-rc2 20-May-2014
      Changes from 3.1.5-rc1
      1) Bug Fix to broken loiter (pixhawk only)
      2) Workaround to read from FRAM in 128byte chunks to resolve a few users boot issues (Pixhawk only)
      I just looked on mission planner 1.3.1 (beta firmware section) but the latest version is still 3.1.5 rc1
      Ciao - Giuseppe
    • There seems to be a bug in 3.15 RC1. Loiter did not work anymore. It seems to be only Alt_Hold in Loiter Mode.Attached my log. Cheers Gregor

      10.BIN

      https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3702492521?profile=original
      • Hi, just flew my pixhawk for the 1st time also using 3.15rc1 and experienced no GPS hold in loiter
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