Discussions

I've just released ArduPlane 2.71 for your flying pleasure.

As was described in the 2.71-beta thread, these are the major changes from 2.70:

• prevent control mode changes due to receiver input change when in throttle failsafe
• auto-scale analog input based on board voltage. This also removes the INPUT_VOLTAGE parameter, as it is no longer needed
• added TKOFF_THR_MINSPD and TKOFF_THR_MINACC parameters. These allow you to set a minimum ground speed or X acceleration before the motor is started in auto mode. This is to better support hand launching in AUTO mode, and bungee or catapult launching.
• added TKOFF_HEAD_HOLD option. This determines if auto takeoff will try to hold heading while climbing out. For a hand launch it is often better just to hold the wings level, instead of trying to hold heading.
• changed FBWB altitude control from elevator to lock in the altitude when the elevator stick is neutral. This fixes a problem with altitude changing in FBWB mode due to slight tuning errors. You can set the climb rate for FBWB with the FBWB_CLIMB_RATE parameter. It default to 2 m/s
• auto-detect when the compass is way off due to interference and switch to GPS navigation until the compass is healthy again. This is designed to prevent flyaways due to very bad magnetic interference.
• prevent servo output overflow on large PID gains. This is especially important for elevon aircraft
• changed default STICK_MIXING behaviour to use FBWA style stick mixing in AUTO mode. This prevents the pilot from causing radical turns if they don't know that the plane is in an AUTO mode. You can get the old behaviour by changing the STICK_MIXING parameter to 2.
• Added a software VTail mixer, enabled using the VTAIL_OUTPUT option.
• Fixed loading of missions with DIGICAM control commands, so DIGICAM control works again
• Don't trigger a GCS failsafe if the GCS has never connected
• Fixed fence MAVLink target IDs (fixes a problem with AndroPilot)
• Added HIL_SERVOS parameter to allow real servos to move in HIL mode
• Fixed an off-by-one in PX4 channel output (last PWM output channel wasn't sent)
• Fixed scaling of joystick speed when controlling a camera gimbal with a joystick
• Fixed creation of APM directory on SDCard on PX4
• fixed auto-config of uBlox baudrate for uBlox modules set to 9600 baud
• Fixed PX4 startup in FMU only mode
• Added APM/boot.log on SDCard on PX4

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to this release!

One thing that isn't in this release but will be in the next release is the new L1 navigation controller from Brandon and Paul. They are doing fantastic work and testing is good so far, but I wanted to get the new features above out first before adding the new navigation code. I hope we will release a 2.72 release with the new L1 controller in the next couple of weeks.

Happy flying!

Cheers, Tridge