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, @Randy,
Special attention, please! I've burnt my pixhawk, when power it up with USB to make the px4flow module work.
I think my cell phone power bank generate a electronic spike when I powered it up, and in pixhawk the power from USB is directly connect to the MCU as depicted below.
So, if anybody want give it a try on pix4flow, don't power the pixhawk up using kind of boost-type power source.
A cell phone OTG cable is the best choice if you don't want to carry your laptop.
Hope that tip helps!
zhang
Pascal,
Make sure you reboot the Pixhawk after the firmware update. There shouldn't be any changes that affect the GPS data but there are some additional pre-arm checks that can make a "Waiting for 3D Lock" or "Waiting for Nav Checks" messages appear. If it's something else that you're seeing a dataflash log would be good.
I have a new hex frame and I have done now few flights. Again I'm seeing odd behavior with gps, it's relalt is not in par with barometer alt and it's reading also suddenly dropped 50m. Those readings used to be always the same when looking earlier flight logs with the quad. Also, with few earlier flights I didn't get good gps signal, only 6 satellites max. During this flight though I had normal reading there, 9-11 sats.
http://www.droneshare.com/mission/92966
VP,
You are very observant! What you're seeing is expected but we didn't include it in the release notes because it's a detail that most won't care about or even notice. In short the barometer altitude is tied to the "EKF Origin" which has been separated from the home position.
This was required to support the do-set-home and return-to-me features because the EKF position estimate and our navigation code was not happy if we keep changing their reference reference point as we updated the home position. For the most part everything the user sees is relative to their latest home position but internally most things are relative to the EKF origin. The baro alt, dataflash CTUN and NTUN messages are all relative to the EKF origin.
Here I attach the last log of flight with 3.3 rc3. I also believe that with the new version 3.3, pixhawk is more a bit a capable to the vibrations in certain circumstances. Also I attach photo of my system antivibration. If they need some kind of more do not hesitate to ask for it me. Regards
aggressive flight
aggressive flight 1.
autotune.rar
Thanks Paul, I'll do some reading :)
How do we calibrate the channels 9-12? I already set the parameters for those channels. but in radio calibration tab, only channels 1-8 can be calibrated for end points.
Erwin,
There's currently no way to calibrate those channels and from what I know it's not necessary because the RCX_MIN and MAX parameters for those channels aren't used. For example if using them for auxiliary switches, the pwm ranges are hard-coded so <1200 is low, >1800 is high. If using them as a passthrough to the servo outputs then there's also no scaling required (what comes in from the receiver is just directly piped out to the corresponding output channel).
-
504
-
505
-
506
-
507
-
508
of 558 Next