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
Paul, for logging set the LOG_BITMASK so that IMU is checked but FAST_IMU and RAW_IMU are not.
ok, thanks for the response. not sure if you looked at file 4 I posted there - that one had 0 hdop...
both GPS units are same m8n, but a different kind of chips is used, so one with hdop 0 usually has less satellites.
again, an issue that I have had repeatedly was related to very erratic behavior of the drone when HDOP=0 is showing.
What exact mask I need to use for logging to switch for 50hz?
Paul,
Tridge, Michael DuBreuil and I had a look at the 3.bin and 7.bin logs and all show missing GPS messages. So we think the cause of the missing messages is just that the SD card in that Pixhawk can't keep up with the 400hz IMU logging. about 20%~30% of all messages are missing.
Maybe you could reduce the IMU logging down to 50hz and do another flight so we can confirm the GPS rate is coming out reliably at 5hz?
The HDOP coming out as zero is a bit annoying, it means the config messages at startup are not getting through to the GPS. We likely won't be able to fix this for AC3.3 unless a lot of people start suffering from this problem. An alternative is to get the default config for the GPS fixed.
I guess you're using one M8 and another lower version Ublox (i.e. Ver6 or Ver7)? The logic for deciding which GPS to use is based on the number of sats (not the hdop) so if you're using an M8 which naturally has a higher used sat count, it's almost guaranteed to use the M8 over the 6 or 7.
A while back there was chatter about the X series of receivers from FrSky transmitting out of band and affecting some GPS units. Do you happen to have one such as the X8R? If so maybe moving the RX as far away from both the GPS and GPS leads as possible and see if that doesn't help mitigate the issue.
Before Mission Planner was displaying PDOP but instead of just changing mission planner to "say" PDOP they change ArduPilot to instead read/display HDOP and I'm not 100% certain they have it right yet.
I could be wrong, but isn't the GPS settings overwritten by the AC code when booting? So it seems the code itself must be edited to accept the desired changes.
They are unless you remove the RX pin from the GPS lead
Paul,
Ok, thanks for that report. I think what must be happening is the GPS must be restarting and the standard config for the compass is not to send the new hdop message. One way to fix it would be to connect to the GPS using u-center and default that message to on. A better solution would be for us to add support in the driver to set this message on if we find it's not appearing.
I realized a very bad autotune with both rc7 and rc8.
autotune_bad.png
Hi Pritam,
That is definitely a terrible tune on pitch!!!
Do you have a log?
I would suggest resetting your pitch parameters and redoing the pitch tune. You may need to increase the aggr to 0.1 for pitch. You can do just the pitch by setting the Autotune_axis to 2.
Sorry for the slow reply!!
I've had the same thing, low pitch stab and PID values from rc7/rc8 autotunes. Your PIDs don't look to bad, you could try increase the stabilize and see if it's better? Also your IMAX numbers are low, I think these were increased significantly in recent RCs.
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