Copter-3.3 beta testing

Warning #1: an issue has been found with Tower's Pause button which can cause the vehicle to fly to an old position if the vehicle has not sent a position update to Tower in some time.

Warning #2: Copter-3.3.2 fixes a bug found in Copter-3.3.1's desired climb rate initialisation which could lead to a sudden momentary drop when switching from Stabilize or Acro to AltHold, Loiter or PosHold.

Warning #3: Copter-3.3.2 fixes an issue found in Copter-3.3.1 which could lead to hard landings in RTL or AUTO if the WPNAV_SPEED_DN was set too high (i.e. >400 or 4m/s) and/or the WPNAV_ACCEL_Z was set too low (i.e. <100 or 1m/s/s).

Warning #4: a bug was found in Copter-3.3 which could cause a sudden crash if you abort a Take-off initiated from a ground station. Video description is here. The bug is fixed in Copter-3.3.1 so we recommend upgrading.

Note #1: AC3.3-rc8 corrected a long standing bug in the HDOP reporting. HDOP values will appear about 40% lower than previously but this does not actually mean the GPS position is better than before.
Note #2: if upgrading from AC3.2.1 the vehicle's accelerometer calibration needs to be done again.
Note #3: set SERIAL2_PROTOCOL to "3" and reboot the board to enable FrSky telemetry like in previous versions.
Note #4: the wiki will be updated over the next few weeks to explain how to use the new features

Copter-3.3.1 is available through the mission planner. The full list of changes vs AC3.2.1 can be see in the ReleaseNotes and below are the most recent changes since AC3.3.

Sadly this version (and all future versions) will not run on the APM2.x boards due to CPU speed, flash and RAM restrictions.

Changes from 3.3:

1) Bug fix to prevent potential crash if Follow-Me is used after an aborted takeoff

2) compiler upgraded to 4.9.3 (runs slightly faster than 4.7.2 which was used previously)

Changes from 3.3-rc11:

1) EKF recovers from pre-arm "Compass variance" failure if compasses are consistent

Changes from 3.3-rc10:

1) PreArm "Need 3D Fix" message replaced with detailed reason from EKF

Changes from 3.3-rc9
1) EKF improvements:
    a) simpler optical flow takeoff check
2) Bug Fixes/Minor enhancements:
    a) fix INS3_USE parameter eeprom location
    b) fix SToRM32 serial protocol driver to work with recent versions
    c) increase motor pwm->thrust conversion (aka MOT_THST_EXPO) to 0.65 (was 0.50)
    d) Firmware version sent to GCS in AUTOPILOT_VERSION message
3) Safety:
    a) pre-arm check of compass variance if arming in Loiter, PosHold, Guided
    b) always check GPS before arming in Loiter (previously could be disabled if ARMING_CHECK=0)
    c) sanity check locations received from GCS for follow-me, do-set-home, do-set-ROI
    d) fix optical flow failsafe (was not always triggering LAND when optical flow failed)
    e) failsafe RTL vs LAND decision based on hardcoded 5m from home check (previously used WPNAV_RADIUS parameter)

Thanks for your testing!

Hi David,

The landing gear is semi-automatic at this point. It will not raise itself automatically yet, you must raise it manually. Eventually we'd like this to be a mission command. But we need more user input for use-cases, etc Making it go up automatically is slightly risky. When/how would we do that? Altitude? What happens if somebody goes to land on a hill far away? So all of this requires some work still.

However, the landing gear will lower automatically. You can of course use the switch, but then it will also deploy the landing gear in the descent phase of RTL, or anytime in Land mode. The main point here, is if you have a radio failsafe and don't have control of the copter, it will lower the gear.

Replies

- Developer
  
  Randy > Greg Fletcher April 20, 2015 at 1:00am
  
  Greg,
  
      Thanks for testing that. Indeed the descents in Loiter/AltHold do look more stable using AC3.3.
  
          place in video when descending with AC3.2.1 is here
  
          equivalent for AC3.3-rc1 is here.
  
     What was the WPNAV_SPEED_DN value set to?
David April 19, 2015 at 11:32pm

So with this update will it support automatic retract and deployment of landing gear? Or is this not necessary with the added channel support we can now assign the landing gear to aux ch9~ch12?
- Rob_Lefebvre > David April 20, 2015 at 5:03am
  
  Hi David,
  
  The landing gear is semi-automatic at this point. It will not raise itself automatically yet, you must raise it manually. Eventually we'd like this to be a mission command. But we need more user input for use-cases, etc Making it go up automatically is slightly risky. When/how would we do that? Altitude? What happens if somebody goes to land on a hill far away? So all of this requires some work still.
  
  However, the landing gear will lower automatically. You can of course use the switch, but then it will also deploy the landing gear in the descent phase of RTL, or anytime in Land mode. The main point here, is if you have a radio failsafe and don't have control of the copter, it will lower the gear.
Randy Bachtell April 19, 2015 at 5:04pm

I have posted two issues with 3.3rc1 with no response from the Dev team. Zubax GPS is not recognized on UAVCAN and APM Planner won't calibrate accelerometers. I have been in contact with Pavel from Zubax and he agrees that the CAN issue is an implementation problem with 3.3. I would appreciate a response even if to say it's operator error or too low a priority to deal with at this point. I have been flying 3.3 since release with no problems, flight is much better in auto and loiter with noticeable improvement of stability in other modes as well. Thanks for all the work you do for us.

RB
- Developer
  
  Randy > Randy Bachtell April 19, 2015 at 6:54pm
  
  RB, I personally don't have the Zubax so I don't have much of a clue why it wouldn' work but I've ping'd Tridge (who is as far as I know the only person on the dev team to use it) so he might be able to provide some advice).
  - Randy Bachtell > Randy April 19, 2015 at 7:04pm
    
    Randy,
    Thanks for getting back to me. Pavel is looking into it as well. As far as the APM Planner accelerometer issue, I have tried 4 different Pixhawks with the same results, when I revert to 3.2 calibration proceeds as normal. Probably a small issue with APM Planner. I submitted a github post on the APM Planner page.
    - Developer
      
      Randy > Randy Bachtell April 19, 2015 at 9:42pm
      
      RB,
      
      So according to Tridge, getting the Zubax GPS to work should be as easy and just plugging it in. To help debug the issue could you try this?
      
      set CLI_ENABLE parameter to 1
      
      Connect with the MP's terminal screen, Connect for PX4/Pixhawk and when the console appears type:
      
      test
      
      shell
      
      uavcan status
      
      Then stick the results here.
      
      By the way, while coming up with these instructions I had some problems getting to the console through the MP's Terminal screen but I got there eventually after trying varying combinations of the connect button and connecting/disconnecting the pixhawk. We might have an issue there we need to investigate with MichaelO.
      - Randy Bachtell > Randy April 23, 2015 at 7:37am
        
        Randy,
        
        After setting GPS_TYPE to 9 all is well on the UAVCAN Bus. Short test flight this morning with the Zubax GNSS and it works very well.
        
        Thanks for all your help
        
        Developer
        
        Randy > Randy Bachtell April 23, 2015 at 7:04pm
        
        Randy,
        
        Thanks very much for digging into that Zubax GPS issue and figuring out that we must set this parameter: GPS_TYPE = 9.
        
        As mentioned on the github discussion I've updated the parameter description for the GPS_TYPE param to be "PX4-UAVCAN" so hopefully for the next Zubax GPS user will find this more easily.
        
        DG > Randy Bachtell April 23, 2015 at 9:24am
        
        Randy,
        
        When you say the Zubax works very well, can you elaborate?

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