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
I've got a lot of kinks out of my setup now.
3.3 and Tower beta release play very nicely together. Tested 'Follow Me' this afternoon. and got the Hero4 Gopro slung on the FeiYu 3d Mini gimbal for the first time. Just downloading the video to see how it handled things but first impressions are really good.
Muppet here was testing circle mode and the vehicle just clipped a tree. Explosion of leaves and twigs, airframe tumbled out of tree at least 90 degrees rolled over, lost about 2 metres altitude. Flattened out and ........... stabilized. No harm done!
Now if I can get Airborne Projects to update their Mavlink and the Lua Scripts I can go back up to OpenTx 2.1.3!
Hi Kurt,
That looks very good. In order to do better than that you would need to give me the throttle curve of that particular propeller, motor, esc combination.
Hi Kurt,
Yeh, I looked at a bunch of thrust curves but they all use the same ESC. I am beginning to suspect that different ESC's produce a variation in thrust curve, some being flatter than others. That is why I didn't tell you to go higher on the EXPO number.
The only way to know is to do a trust curve measurement using the hardware you have. This is on the my list of things to do for my quad but I haven't got to it yet.
For the battery voltage stuff that is exactly how I do mine.
Hi Kurt,
It depends where your hover throttle is. If hover throttle isn't in the centre you get some pid gain scaling. Higher values increase the gain at the low end of the throttle range and decrease it at the high end.
I tend to drop the throttle deadband. It is only an input thing and doesn't change any tuning of the copter.
Hi Kurt,
Hahahaha, I know you aren't suggesting I am lazy, I am suggesting laziness on my part. I suck at doing documentation. Well, it isn't really laziness, there is just a bunch of things to do and I tend to leave the documentation until Randy asks for some words.
It is really Randy who puts in all the hard yards on the wiki stuff. This project wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today without him!!!
Only saying that I appreciate the helpful discussion.
Hi Kurt,
Autotune is done at hover throttle assuming you have set the motor expo correctly. So if you are hovering at less than 50% and you increase motor expo you will need to drop your hover throttle a little and drop your pid values by a similar ratio.
For throttle deadband, I tend to reduce it to half the default, maybe 30%. I don't go to zero or it will always be slowly increasing or decreasing in altitude.
Hi Wes,
Yeh, that is because I am a lazy dev and don't tend to do the documentation very well..... Sorry. We will get to it.
Ju
Kurt: did you try with less battery cells?, I have similar setup but 460kv motors (all RcTimer esc 40 octo and 17*5.5) but I fly with 3s and is a rock altitude hold.
My new cuad (710kv 14 props) loose altitude but perhaps it's need more tunning yet.
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