My Brain is Melting, usual newbie help required please.

Posted by alex corbett on March 9, 2013 at 6:18pm

Hi Everyone,

I've been happily flying and being flown by my apm2 tricopter since pretty much it came out. I've never dabbled in altering or writing code.......until now.

I'm trying to sort    this    out.

Randy has pointed out the required alterations to the code, I just cant carry out these due to lack of experience and brains.

I've got an arduino ide from    here    and read that i need extra libraries from here  

I'm still having trouble.

I've gone through the ide and linked the path to the arduino folder with libraries etc.  do I need to put the specialized arducopter relevant libraries in there too. If so, can i do them all at once or individually. ( do i need the repository from    here   if so how??? url sends me to google search is command line url?!!!

I imagine once I've sorted this i will need the 2.9.1 code, cant see this in the downloads are, My head is starting to hurt just writing this up.

Basically I just need someone to give me a step by step, or at least some pointers.

Any Help would be much appreciated.

Alex

 

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Tags: arduino, code, compile, frsky, how, ppm, to
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Replies

  • Nate Miller March 13, 2013 at 10:14am

    Oh, and don't do a code checkout. That's a bit more than you need at the moment. Just download the 2.9.1 .zip from here

  • Nate Miller March 13, 2013 at 10:13am

    Just saw this - sorry it took so long to get your problem solved. Here's a step by step to compile arducopter code (I'm going to assume windows)

    • Download the arduino ide
    • Extract into documents\Arduino IDE. The folder structure should be Documents\Arduino IDE\arduino-1.x.x\*lots of stuff here*
    • Put a shortcut of Documents\Arduino IDE\arduino-1.x.x\arduino.exe on your desktop (right click -> send to -> desktop (Create shortcut)
    • Download the arducopter code from the website
    • Extract it into Documents\Ardino
    • There should now be two folders in your Documents\Arduino folder. Once called ArduCopter, another called libraries
    • Open the arducopter folder. Drag ArduCopter.pde to the arduino.exe shortcut you made on your desktop. This will open arduino for you
    • On the top menu bar, click Tools -> board -> ArduinoMega 2560 (if your using ardupilot 2.x) or ArduinoMega 1280 (arduipilot 1.x)
    • Plug in your ardupilot
    • click Tools -> Serial Port and select the correct port for your board
    • ctrl + U will upload the code to your board

    Here's where things get just a bit tricky. You need to edit your configuration file to match your hardware, frame type, etc. Using your favorite text editor, open both APM_Config.h and config.h. DO NOT EDIT config.h. Just use it for your reference. Look in config.h and see what options you have using the #define statements. Determine what you need to define and do it in APM_Config.h. A few of the more important ones

    • #define CONFIG_APM_HARDWARE APM_HARDWARE_APM2 (if you're using ardupilot 2.x)
    • #define DMP_ENABLED ENABLED
    • #define FRAME_CONFIG  TRI_FRAME
    • #define SERIAL0_BAUD 57600 (or whatever your wireless modem uses)
    • #define INERTIAL_NAV DISABLED (I don't know what the default is for tri-copters. Maybe you should do ENABLED and see what happens when you fly)

    This will probably take some playing around to get it exactly right. After you've uploaded new code, always take your propellers off and to a pretend flight where you hold the TRI and move it around to make certain everything behaves correctly.

    Best of luck, and welcome to playing with the code. It's load of fun, and super powerful. I'll be here if you run into any troubles.

    Nate

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