My unit (std quad, 2.0.37, sonar, mag) has been flying very well lately- I have hun a lot in stable, alt hold, loiter, simple with generally good results - now seems very easy to fly (except maybe not Steven Colbert!- check out UAV on 7-28 episode). I decided time to mission up.
I picked a large area and set a simple takoff-2 waypoint- land,
I then flew a while in alt hold, then ran mission, then more althold, then ran the mission again. It kind of worked, but not consistent yet.
The first run took off pretty well and headed for the wp. It took off much higher than 5 m, tho, and then sunk to closer to 5m. It seemed to hit it after a little wandering and headed off to next very quickly and seemed to overshoot then search quickly along with some scary oscillation. I held my breath and it then started looking to land and I brought it down. The second run also took off too high, had a lot of oscillation on first wp, then then another fast overshoot almost too close to the ground, more osc, and I took control after it seemed to make second wp (log attached)
For those considering missions, find a large area with no trees- even though it is not a large mission, be ready for it to test the field limits, I wish it was able to do this in slow, controlled speeds (I remember video of guy who got his unit to hit several wp at about 4 ft hi in a very slow controlled fashion). These missions are much more exciting, to say the least (and can test your faith).
I would love to hear tales of those brave beta testers. And thanks to programmer extraodinare Jason!!
Replies
http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/wiki/AC2_Sonar
Mounting it on the ArduCopter body will lead to noise that makes alt-hold very unreliable.