Developer

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!

You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!

Join diydrones

Email me when people reply –

Replies

  • Paul,

    I've torn down my rolling spider.

    It seems that Parrot's  using kind of ARM Cortex-A9 combing a on chip M0 mirco-controller. 

    For a 40 grams quad, it carries on board sonar together with barometer, the camera is kind of tiny cell-phone type.

    All the on-board parts are highly integrated and its performance is really impressive.

    3DR really need that tech to be competitive to Parrot and DJI, i'll keep my attention to see if I could help.

    Zhang

  • Yes, open field with clear view. My first flight (first battery) was absolutely fine at the same spot then replaced the battery and got this error. I will set the logging and send it if it reoccurs. 

    Thanks,

    Robert

    • Developer

      Robert,

      Thanks for the report.

      This is a fairly common issue people are hitting with AC3.3.  It's the EKF that's not happy probably because the GPS velocities are jumping around.  We're going to add some better reporting of this into AC3.3-rc4.

  • Well my experience with new 3.3-rc3 firmware is somewhat strange. I lost MAVLINK communication completely. I cannot connect to Pixhawk either using USB cable nor telemetry with the latest MP. When I flash 3.2.1 stable firmware, all works fine. When I flash 3.3-rc3, communication is lost using the same settings. Can anyone confirm the same problem please ?

    • I had the same problem until I loaded the MP beta version.

      • Oh will try tomorrow then. Thanks for a tip.

        • Unfortunatelly MP 1.3.25.2 does not fix the problem for me. Sad.. I cannot use new APM firmware on Pixhawk now.. How can this be possible ? Noone else reporting the same problem ?

          • works now finally.. just uploaded other FW, then back this new APM beta and it works.. strange though..

            • Developer

              Michael,

              Sorry for the troubles.  So the issue will likely be related to the "Serial Manager" changes.  These allow moving around what each of the serial ports are used for by changing the SERIAL*_PROTOCOL parameters.  They should default to "1" for those channels that will be attached to radios.  There's also some new SERIAL*_BAUD parameters as well that allow changing the baud rate of each port.

              So I'm not sure exactly which parameter was wrong but I suspect that by loading another vehicle firmware all the parameters were wiped out and reset to the factory defaults whichever one was wrong.  By the way, there's a button on the MP's full param list which can more directly reset the parameters to the factory defaults.

  • Is there any reason why the multicopter descends quite low when I start Autotune? It did it with RC1 and now the same thing with RC3 I I raise the throttle it will ascend but really slowly.

    Tried an autotune today even though there were some wind and when I repositioned the quad it descended even more and that didn't really work out to well ;-) Nothing is broken so I'll be able to do a new test but is it supposed to descend when I enable the autotune like that?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uWQyOFsJf0

This reply was deleted.

Activity

Neville Rodrigues liked Neville Rodrigues's profile
Jun 30
More…