Anything from ArduPlane v2.69 HIL and up seems to not want to work correctly. When connecting to MP 1.2.50 with v2.69 - v2.73 HIL firmwares (APM 2.0 board), MP doesn't see the RC controller and there's no way to config the "Radio Calibration" feature and in any of the sims you can't control the plane. So there's no way for me to test the new firmwares using the simulators. Also when using v2.68 in Flightgear, after flying an uploaded mission with waypoints, then uploading another mission the plane keeps circling the last mission's last waypoint or the waypoint it was heading before I upload another mission. So lets say the first mission has 5 waypoints, the only way to get the plane to fly the new mission waypoints is to make more than 5. Once uploaded the plane will then fly to waypoint 6 then to the others but will not fly waypoints 1-5. The only way to get the the plane to fly all of the new mission's waypoints is the power down/reset the APM. Has anybody experienced the same issues or knows how to fix this?
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I finally found the documentation, especially this:
http://plane.ardupilot.com/wiki/tecs-total-energy-control-system-fo...
I have to hand it to these guys - they've done a great job of documenting these tuning procedures :-) It's fun to experiment to try to figure it out all on your own but there are so many interacting variables that it finally just becomes a frustrating waste of time if you don't have a good explanation of what each parameter does.
I haven't had time to go through it all yet but I think this will solve mucho problems.
I should clarify - by "porpoising", I didn't mean it oscillates quickly which is what it will do if Servo Pitch P is set too high - I know this value is ok because I increased it until the pitch control was very under-damped and then reduced it until the plane quickly recovers from manual step inputs. But the problem seems to be with the new energy/altitude algorithm. It causes the plane to over-shoot its altitude target which then causes it to move the elevator and drop the throttle too much and overshoot in the opposite direction again. No matter how I change the PIDs, it still does it - just maybe a little slower with a little less altitude change but still constantly going up and down by about 20 meters.
Taylor & Jonti,
Did you figure out what the problems were? I've got MP 1.2.62 and the radio cal doesn't work there either.
I can fly the PT60 plane in X-Plane ok although even that has a problem - it's unstable in Circle and Loiter modes as it continuously porpoises. I tried tuning the Energ/Alt PIDs, Nav Pitch AS PIDs and Nav Pitch Alt PIDs with very limited success.
I have noticed the same problem v2.68 works but anything later just doesn't. For me sim to ardupilot data looks ok but the ardupilot to the sim usually puts out crazy things like -1 -1 -1 for yaw pitch roll most of the time; reversing servos doesn't do much. I haven't put in a receiver (i have 2 ardupilots and the other is in a plane). Computer Joysticks don't work anymore so I can't control it by a rc transmitter via the DSC port through a dongle to the computer (I've tried vJoy (soundcard based), aeroFly1.1, and a few others too), this used to work but not any longer.
Also I've been getting "Failed to get Firmware List: Unable to connect to the remote server" today when trying to change the firmware so at the moment I can't change the firmware with MP.