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
Using AC3.3-rc8 for the first time, I had a catastrophic failure. In my video here, you can see me doing a manual tune at about 20' alt, when it suddenly locked itself to about a 45 degree angle to the right, not responding to controls, and started sliding down that angle. I then cut the power, which is when you see it roll left and crash. I panicked a little, but couldn't let it continue. It also reported that it was suddenly over 4000' alt, and warned me with Tower audio (connected through Bluetooth, not APM radio) that it was over 400' as it was going in.
Attached is my Pixhawk log in .BIN format. I am not good at diagnosing from logs, so any help is appreciated. My copter is broken with parts on order, but I will not fly again with rc8 until I understand better what happened.
98.BIN
Rick,
Sorry for your crash. Catastrophic failure is the right term. The MPU6k was unhealthy right from the beginning and some very bad data was returned by the barometer. I think if you'd had telemetry attached you would have seen a "Bad Gyro Health" and/or "Bad Accel Health" warning. My guess is it's a hardware failure, if this was a board purchased from 3DR between June 2014 and Feb 2015 you could likely request an RMA of the board and have it replaced.
There's a couple of things we need to do as a result of this:
1. add an arming check that the IMUs are healthy. There's a pre-arm check but apparently the IMU went bad sometime after boot-up but before arming. So we could have prevented the vehicle from even taking off.
2. ensure the EKF baro glitch protection is working and that the system can deal with this crazy data. In this case NaNs appear in the logs which means that the system tried to consume the bad data. NaNs are extremely bad because they spread like a disease if any part of the system tries to consume them.
Thanks for the report, there will be some additional protections in -rc9 to catch these failures.
I uploaded the firmware at home and was powered off for the trip to the field. Could this also be the cause of the board seemingly not booting up sometimes? I power it on and the minimOSD either has no display, or does not come out of the "No Mav Data" stage, even after pushing OSD restart button. The board was purchased in Aug 2014, so I will contact 3DR. Thanks for your help, Randy.
Rick,
Yes, it's certainly possible. If the SPI bus is knocked-out (like this appears because both baro and MPU6k go bad) then the board might not boot because we have a "Panic" in the baro driver. We should remove that so the board does boot and you can see what's going wrong with it but that's the way it is at the moment.
When you contact 3DR it might help to tell them that I said that it appears from the logs to be an MPU6k failure.
Thanks for the report. We put a couple of fixes in yesterday and Paul should tackle these other issues (#1, #2) found shortly.
Thanks Randy,
I did quote you so that they would know what was wrong. Sounds like my log was useful for future development, so that is good. Nobody got hurt in my crash, and hopefully these new functions will make it safer. That is good. Thanks for your help.
Rick
Thank you for sharing ;)
I get same message on original Pixhawk
Thank you for sharing this ;)
I have this board:
http://www.goodluckbuy.com/px4-pixhawk-lite-v2-4-5-32bits-open-sour...
I have tried it with AC3.2.1 and all was fine.
I have tried it with AC3.3 rc7 and rc8 and I have problems:
Why with rc7 and rc8 I have the problem and with AC3.2.1 I didn't have it?
Attached a log. I hope that is the right log, actually I'am not so sure. If it don't seem the right log tell me and I will post another one (Hopefully the right one).
2.log
@Andrea Zamuner Cervi,
By any chance did you perform a compass calibration? I know it's not in the notes above, but there has been significant software changes since 3.2.1 and it may clear up upon a recal.
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