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!
Replies
Randy,
Flew my Y6B last evening just prior to a squall coming through the area. Test was mostly in PosHold and Loiter to evaluate GPS accuracy and RC7. Flight went well at low altitude so I pushed it up to 100-150ft and hovered her in the winds. She preformed quite well. After I landed I downloaded the logs and took a look at the vibrations. Both X/Y and Z were well within limits but I when I zoomed into any particular area, I noticed approx. every second or so a dead zone where date dropped out for a very short period of time then picked up as if nothing happen only to drop out again a second or so later.
Has this been discussed in this blog and if not, what is causing this to happen. I never saw or heard any motor cut outs or irregularities so I think this is in the software side of things.
I will later this evening post a screen capture of this and provide a URL to the log file.
Doug, this could be caused by your Dataflash microSD card not being able to keep up with the data rate. For rc7, the dataflash rate has been increased to 400Hz, so we can gather more data on the EKF performance. You should notice that the log files are also really big now. This is probably just going to be a temporary thing for rc7.
This should be no problem for the flying ability of the system, it's just missing data log data.
The standard microSD cards that come in the Pixhawk can't keep up. If you want to see all the high rate data, you need a better dataflash card. Apparently something with the UHS-1 label should work. But even that seems a bit variable. Some brands work, some don't. I'm using an 8GB Adata UHS-1 card I got for just $7, and it seems to be able to keep up.
Thanks Rob. I will look for a better performing micro-card.
What GPS is it? I have tons of Data drops on m8n units that are set to 5Hz. When I lower to 2Hz they go away.
This is related to vibration testing.
How do you do that? I mean, if GPS unit only has a single jack to connect to serial port on a PX4 - do you connect that directly to PC? What software then is used to adjust that?
I normally connect mine to a FTDI adapter and then use U-Center to make any changes then save it. You used to be able to press some keys in Mission Planner that would set up a passthrough which will allow you to connect via U-Center as well, but I don't remember the key combo.
@Thomas,
In case it helps, the speed up came from a change somewhere in the PX4Firmware or NuttX layer. Peter Sidrane and Lorenz Meier were the authors of the change in case that helps track down the change. I think it had something to do with disabling some memory violation checks. Those checks were suprisingly cpu intensive but the change itself (to turn them off) might be quite a small commit. This is all second hand information so I might have it slightly wrong.
Hi!
At first,i can print someting in the tera term, like this:hal.console->printf_P(PSTR("distance_cm %d \n"), sonar_alt).
Several times later, Pixhawk can't print anything with tera term or mp terminal interface. could you help me ?
FlyToSky,
This is a dev question I think so feel free to email drones-discuss@googlegroups.com or ping us on Gitter.
By the way, "yes", that should work - if you're connected to the mission planner at the time it'll appear on the mission planner console window (see checkbox on MP's Help screen). Alternatively the ::printf("distance %d\n",(int)sonar_alt) format can be used if you have a debug cable. Debug cables are hard to get but you can make your own with a 3.3v FTDI cable plugged into Serial4/5. This gives access to the "nsh console" on the Pixhawk but also display the output of the ::printf.
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