I have been using my Arducopter fine for a while now, it worked amazingly with the 2.0 Firmware but ever since i have upgraded to the 3.0 firmware i have had problems
Today i went out to the field to work on some mapping for vineyards
(in which i have done in the past with Arducopter very successfully)
and set a basic rectangle plan with mission planner using waypoints
for some reason now it wont take off calmly or slowly rise, now if i dont manually fly it to about 20 metres and then engage auto it will fly off at a horrid angle and crash into the first thing closest to it
Also when i do manually fly it up to 20 metres and then engage auto it will fly to the first waypoint no problems but then it will go to the second waypoint and start to lose control
(this is on a completely calm day no wind whatsoever)
it will start doing big circles until i hit manual mode and try my hardest to bring it back
I will upload some logs so hopefully one of the many guru's on here can help me out with what is happening :(
Replies
When you upgraded to 3.0 did you mount your APM on vibration-damping foam/gel? That's absolutely required. You'll also need to do the accel calibration as part of that.
Also, you may want to upgrade to the GPS with the built-in external magnetometer (coming back in stock this week), which will help tremendously in reducing the effects of magnetic noise, which is the #1 cause of navigation errors. Big circles ("toilet bowling") are almost always due to magnetometer problems, either poor calibration or more often noise from the APM being mounted too close to magnetic interference sources such as ESCs, motors, the PDB or even the battery.
Your APM 2.5 can be easily converted to use the external mag. Instructions are here.
Above you can see an example of what happened with the quad from GoPro perspective...