I am posting this hoping to give some mouthwatering to all you Multicopter addicts!
The DEV Team is working really hard to get up with a new release of the current Arducopter.
I was brave enough (toghether with other testers like Marco!) to try an (almost) totally untested clone from Tridge repo this Sunday.
The new DCM updates and the refined attitude control laws seems to be very promising.
The test were done with a Mini Quad (40cm), Medium Quad (55cm.) and a Hexa (65cm.)
Wether conditions were almost perfect (a little wind while flying mini quad), but it was dusk, so lightining conditions were not at the best.
This was the most stable flying copter I ever had. Controls were precise and reactive, but still giving a rock solid stability feeling. No drift even after very hard flying and an almost no hands with only STABILIZE mode.
All this was flown with only STABILIZE, no other mode was tested as it was out of my scope.
Enjoy!
Emile
P.S.
Please beware that this is an untested and not supported version. The current version in the repo has changed so I cannot guarantee that the flight will be the same. You need to know GIT, Arduino and other stuff to make it work.
Please be patient and wait for the official release, or if you want to test take your own risks.
http://youtu.be/yo7X0_ZZu_4?hd=1
Replies
Echo was Jason said.... Its incredible. People are always asking if ArduCopter is going to be as stable as some proprietary systems... I say hell yeah! And guess what, the devs do it for free. :-D I'm thrilled to be a part of the ArduCopter community. I call it radically accelerated evolution.
We were hoping this weekend, but it looks like we need to deal with a few minor issues regarding linear acceleration.
I can't stress enough what a monumental effort Tridge and the rest of the team and testers have put into this release. The level of engineering is staggering and the performance improvements are really impressive. It's a whole new copter in my opinion. The DCM fixes really help upstream things like Loiter because the angle hold is much more accurate.
Exciting times.
Any idea on timeframe for when the official release will be?