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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      • after download .99 mission planner, my compass always get 0 0 0 and loiter always toilet bowl effect

        before this, my loiter stay 1 postion. maybe bugs in .99 mission planner?

    • My compass issues were with the .99 version of Mission Planner. Reinstalled .74 and compass calibrated.
      • Where did you get the .74 version?

    • no calibration helps...only thing I remember weird ;

      I try compass/motor calibration directly from Initial Setup page and only data I get was barometer is calibrated....when I try that now it say I need AC 3.2???

      Also when I arm I get msg Pre arm:Alt disparity

      Than I upload 3.1 everything is normal again

      and Mission planer giving me note that new firmware is availablet 3.1.2

      can someone confirm?

      • Erase command in terminal window did help,reset no...back to calibration....and 10 min later it is ok again...I am back on track...Thanks again,i was starting to have dark thoughts...

      • Emin Bu

        To stop the HUD from spinning, you need to reload the firmware, which you have done.  It would have worked if you reloaded 3.1.3 as well which I suggest you do.

        If you do a command line reset and then load 3.1.3, you will likely be ok. There is an important patch in 3.1.3 described earlier in this thread.

         

        There may be other causes for this, but if you want to see the HUD spin again, run Compassmot from the command line and it will cause the HUD to spin.  Lesson is don't run compassmot with a Pixhawk. The only way to stop the HUD from spinning if you do is to do a command line reset and reload the firmware.

        3.1.3 flies fine on my hex and quads. 

        • I also reloaded firmware until I realised you only need to change the compassmot parameters back from NaN to 0.  The HUD stops spinning after that.  It's a bit quicker than reloading everything.

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