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Copter-3.3 beta testing

Posted by Randy on April 11, 2015 at 8:15pm

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!

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Tags: 33, apm:copter, arducopter, beta, testing
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Replies

    • Geert Pirens > DG May 28, 2015 at 6:10am

      what firmware do you use on your Teensy?

      APM MavLink to FrSky X8R S.Port converter

      MavLink_FrSkySPort

    • Paul Atherton > DG May 28, 2015 at 2:32am

      Try these values for your SR2 parameters:

      SR2_EXT_STAT = 10 
      SR2_EXTRA1 = 5
      SR2_EXTRA2 = 10
      SR2_EXTRA3 = 3
      SR2_PARAMS =0
      SR2_POSITION = 2 
      SR2_RAW_CTRL = 2
      SR2_RAW_SENS = 10
      SR2_RC_CHAN = 0

      (assuming you are using Telemetry 2 port for the Teensy.) 

      I posted discussion on this issue here: http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/amp-to-frsky-x8r-sport-converter?...

      Serial 2 protocol needs to be set to 1 for mavlink. Teensy needs Mavlink data streams on input side. 

    • Robert Szabo > DG May 28, 2015 at 1:21am

      I started having some reliability problem with the same since 3.3 throughout rc2-rc5. Re-flashed tensy/taranis and fine-tuned params and it is ok again. Some further discussions are here.

      Tensy led messages are the following: (no of blinks)

      1 - No MAVLink data

      2 - No Telemetry packets

      3 - Missing SYS_STATUS data

      4 - Missing GPS data

      5 - Missing VFR_HUD data

      6 - Missing RAW_IMU data

      7 - Missing ATTITUDE data

      I believe only protocol Mavlink (1) will work - however SRx params needs to be set.

    • heliroberto > DG May 28, 2015 at 1:10am

      Hi, I have my Teensie on Pixhawk at Telem 1 without any problems. I miss only the dates of hdop, all the other dates comes correctly.

    • Craig > DG May 27, 2015 at 10:07pm

      Wow somebody is making a killing on these lol nearly double the price of buying a 20 dollar Teensy and a few wires but anyway. You may have to enable the Telemetry on Serial 2 in advanced or tree view in mission planner.

      You may also need to click the button under "OSD" to enable telemetry to stream even if not detected.

      • DG > Craig May 28, 2015 at 9:18am

        Ah, well, there is a bit of code included. I don't care to spend hours constantly modifying lines of code when someone else did the work, "did" work well and looks good. If Droneshop wishes to continue selling their product, they need to support it. Peter King is a decent guy.

        Thanks for the info.

    • Richard Kennedy > DG May 27, 2015 at 9:47pm

      Yes me too. Exactly the same.. Droneshop and his lue script. Doesnt work for me in 3.3.. You can mess with SERIAL2_PROTOCOL to "3" one guy suggested using 2 instead of 3. Try that and see but it didn't work for me. Major bummer that lua script is nice. no mavlink needed anymore tells you all you need to know. pls let me know if / how you get it working in 3.3 it's a primary reason I haven't moved up to that. I use X8R fyi... 

  • Doug Walmsley May 27, 2015 at 11:07am

    Randy,

    I flew an auto mission today down the street and back at a max alt of 100ft.  Flight ran fairly smoothly and I did not notice anything squirrelly during the flight other than the OctoQuad rising and lowering as if flew down the street.  Our neighbor hood street dips downhill and I assumed the altitude change was because of the LiDAR unit taking readings.  I downloaded the logs and took a look at the Alt vs SAlt and noted both matched fairly closely.  But what I'm not understanding is that during two distinct periods of flight the LiDAR signals dropped to zero and back to normal readings.  The copter for the most part held a straight and level flight except for the turns but the X8 isn't designed to bank in turns therefore I wonder if it's an anomaly that these signal drop outs are related to the turning or something else.  Would you please take a peak and let me know your thoughts on this?

    3702012173?profile=original I've seen this before on my Y6B in a hover when it climbed vertical to near maximum LiDAR altitude.  Is there a correlation between the two?

    Also attached mission log.

    X8 is running Pixhawk with 3.3rc5.

    Thanks,

    Doug W.

    2015-05-27 13-22-25.tlog.jpg

    2015-05-27 13-33-18.kmz

    2015-05-27 13-33-18.bin

    • Robert Szabo > Doug Walmsley May 28, 2015 at 1:32am

      Similar behavior I reported earlier. I suspect my problem link to pitch/roll changes that take Lidar out of the 40m zone (as the sensor is not vertical when turning) and will test the same over the weekend. 

      Your altitude is fairly close to 40m too, so would be interesting if you see similar problem at lover altitude too.

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