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!

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        • Developer

          It looks like a brownout in that the logs just suddenly stop.  We don't actually have a way to distinguish brown-outs from catastrophic firmware failures although we're working on a way... but normally when the logs just end like this it's a brownout in these cases and the board voltage is indeed very high at 5.7+ volts.

          I think Jesus is correct when he says it will fall back to the power module if the power rail voltage goes too high.  Maybe you weren't using a power module?

          • No i was  not using a power module. I am running 12S, so i have the 180A atto pilot in there. but without a bec on the 5v and gnd wires to the pwr module port.

  • Here is the flight log. failure mode (drift) is in first flight. Video of the flight here. Thank you.

    log alien 1.rar

  • @paul riseborough

      Thanks for your quick reply.

  • Maybe a silly question?

    After dropping support for APM, why don't you declare the new line as 4.0.x version? On the long run, maybe we (APM users) will get some bug/security fixes and then 3.3 could lead to a lot of confusion?

    Best c.

    • Developer

      Someone else made that suggestion as well.  Personally I think the differences between AC3.2.1 and AC3.3 are not so large that it deserves the major version number increase.  For the APM boards, if we do a patch release we will call it AC3.2.2, AC3.2.3, etc so only the last (most minor) number would be increased.  We wouldn't call it AC3.3.

      • Developer

        Dropping the 8 bit support is not a good reason for a major revision number change.

      • - 8-bit dropped, 32-bit+ only

        - mainstream linux support (new for 3.3?)

        - EKF, EKF, EKF

        - SOLO support

        surely worth a major version bump - if not for this, then what :) 

        • Developer

          There is a good argument for bumping up the version, some others on the dev team are keen to do this as well but personally I like the idea of saving the major version bump for what you mentioned which is the main stream linux support.  It's almost there but I think it's still a fork of the main code.  Certainly there are a bunch of (non-critical) features that don't work on the Linux boards yet but more than that we really haven't sorted out an easy way to load firmware onto the linux boards.

          Also ideally I'd like to bump the version up in coordination with Plane if possible... and their move to Linux would happen at the same time because we share so much of the same code (most of the libraries)

          • Randy, you have a good point here.

            As my main job is a software project manager I think there is a need to somehow clearly distinct the two versions. As MS (and others me included) do when there is not enough reasons for a major version change, they name it X.5,

            IMHO a 3.5 version would be a clear enough distinction over the 3.3.

            Just my 2 cents.

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