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

  • Are your ESC's calibrated? What number do you have motor spin armed set at?
    • Thank for your answer, I calibrated the Esc at first but not re-calibrated when I change the firm ¿I have to do it again?

      motor spin armed is set as default, I don't remember now if it 30 or 130, I'm going to check.

  • I installed the last vers but the motors didn't spin when armed, I check that mot-spin-armed is enable but is not working ¡Any idea?

    Another thing,I had the  stupid idea to put a cheap HK camera upside the frame cup and that affect the GPS, swich to loiter, The gps lost some sats and the copter suddenly moves very quickly to the house, I swich to stabilize and Land with no damage but I'm not shure if I have GPS glich detection well configured, ¿Can avoid this quick movements when lost gps?

    These are little details but my cheap cuad is flying great, I enjoy it a lot Thank's Randy.:)

    2014-03-31 11-14-29.log

    https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3701698879?profile=original
  • Please help, yesterday I updated from 3.01 to 3.1.2 on the apm 2.5 board and all day I tried to arm but no success. kept saying my #FailSafe throttle value# is at fault but Ive checked many times and recalibrated everyting a few times and still not arming. I even disabled arming check, still no joy. Will the arming issues be fixed for 2.5 boards too in the future updates? At the end I reverted back to 3.01 and it arms! Thanks in advance.

    • Why not trying 3.1.1. I heard issues with 3.1.2 but 3.1.1 is okay as far as I know and there aren't whole lot of differences between the two for the APM 2.5

      • Great idea! I'll try 3.1.1 tonight!... I see there are three of 3.1.1, which one should I try? 2.77, 2.78 or 2.78b

        Is the 3.1.1. (2.78b a beta)?

        • i think the 2.77, 2.78 or 2.78b are for arduplane. 3.1.1 is for arducopter. Pls check again.

          • Thanks :)

          • correct

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