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
@Marco yesterday you mentioned for me to Launch My Quad & check in Mission Planner for my Throttle rate while the aircraft maintained a stable Hover. I have searched fro that information and cant find it. is there a video for this, or a link describing it? i think its video worthy since it seems like the ideal way to ascertain that THR_MID number. if you cant make a video about i can, just looking for the steps to produce that information. thanks in advance
Prob best to look at the following site:
http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/ac_throttlemid/
Basically you get throttle readings by plotting ThrOut from CTUN logs in mission planner & then average the value (by eye) that corresponds to your hovering period by checking the y axis and push that value into THR_MID. Better explained in the above link (sorry if this is not what you were looking for).
@Matt i appreciate the help but i am aware of that method, but Marco mentioned a seemingly more accurate way of getting THR_MID yesterday that i want to explore further, seeing as i am not being successful with the Logs. but thanks again!
Easy, takeoff and tries to keep in hovering perfectly your quad for more than 20 seconds (20 is better than 10) in "Stabilize" mode, lands and do a refresh parameter, go to "Full Parameter List", read the value of "TRIM_THROTTLE" and save it in "THR_MID", takeoff and see if it's ok.
Hi Marco
Why can't the code "adjust" it by itself? I mean, we have sufficient input for height readings and if the height stays within a small interval of y centimeters for x number of seconds (20 the best as you mentioned) then "adjust" the THR_MID value with the THR_THrottle value on that time period. That cycle could be running continuously and would only "adjust" THR_MID if the difference was inside a "safe" range.
I'm sure I'm missing lots of things, but if we have the computing power onboard (meaning the PixHawk) why not use it.
I actually wondered the same thing, it seems to me that THR_MID is a legacy leftover. i really have not found any other commercial Flight controller that requires a THR_MID. if all else fails the FC should refer to the Trim_Throttle, that would make more sense to me but i ALSO dont know all the ins & Outs of the code. just my two cents worth of thoughts.
@Randy just out of curiosity, Does NAZA or SuperX use a manual THR_MID param prior to flight? i havent seen documentation for it but i may not have looked in the right places for that information. Also thanks for your answer.
Yes, its probably possible to combine throttle trim and thr-mid. Its just about putting enough checks in place to ensure it *never* goes wrong. The thr-mid is used for manual throttle so we worry about any kinds of automatic updates to it.
HAHA i KNEW that TRIM_THROTTLE was good for something!!! thanks @Marco, thats very Helpful!!
Hi Marco,
I think there may be a misunderstanding.. Randy has stated the release candidate will release soon, not the final version. That RC represents the beginning of the final testing phase. He then hopes to follow up with additional release candidates over ~4 weeks to then be followed by the final stable version of 3.2.
Am I missing something?
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