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3D Robotics

APM Mission Planner now loads firmware to the board--no Arduino required!

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 12, 2011 at 10:30am

3689393859?profile=original Finally, you can now use ArduPilot Mega without ever having to touch Arduino! Michael Oborne's terrific Mission Planner will now check for the latest code online and load the firmware directly, with no Arduino compilation process required. I've updated the APM 2.0 beta instructions to show how to use it.

 

You can still use Arduino if you want to fiddle with the code, but most people won't need it at all. No need to even have it running on your machine!

 

Right now it only supports the default configuration, but in the next day or two it will allow you to choose other common configurations, such as Xplane simulation mode.

 

 

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Comments

  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson March 13, 2011 at 8:07am

    Frank: magneto orientation is currently defined in the APM_Config.h file if you're using non-standard configuration, as you are. We won't support that in the firmware autoloader, but it might be something we could add to the CLI. 

     

     

  • Frank Toorenburg March 13, 2011 at 4:39am

    Thank you Chris. Will there also be a possibility to define the orientation of the magneto, I am using the Spakfun.

    Looking forward to the final 2.0 the Beta is already great!
    //Frank 

  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson March 12, 2011 at 9:22pm
    @Frank: if you're loading the code this way, you won't have to do any of that anymore. Give us a few days to neaten everything up. All this will be smooth and seamless in the final 2.0 release.
  • Frank Toorenburg March 12, 2011 at 8:59pm

    If I use the APM Planner to upload the the firmware to which loacation I need to point the APM Source Location under the Option Tab? (there are no 'arduino' files any more)

  • Darren March 12, 2011 at 7:44pm
    no thats not happing in flight gear then? It still hasnt finished downloading :(
  • Phil Cole March 12, 2011 at 7:32pm

    Darren, the same off into the distance and back thing happens with my system when I'm doing Xplane HIL too. Trying Flightgear was on my list of things to try.

     

    It seems to be a fixed offset on each mission, but the offset is typically different session to session.

     

    The other thing was that I was going to look at the HK logs in the recordings I made, but I can't actually find the files despite being able to play them back. The jumps are in the playbacks as well.

    I'd also seen the -ve altitudes, but not in the last few days prior to the beta release.

  • Darren March 12, 2011 at 7:10pm

    well, looks like flight gear will take all night to download... must have slooooow internet tonight

    so will have to check that out tomorrow...

  • Darren March 12, 2011 at 6:36pm
    one more item, in that last pic, you can see the blue trail where the APM all of a sudden skews off into the distance as if the gps has said its now miles away. and instantly returns, this actually affects the apm directional guidance in HIL and i see very brief corrections and return to normal flight. I dont know if its my 'puter, or xplane, but its done this for the last several sim runs.. next is loading up flight gear to see if it has same issue. ill report back in a few min.
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson March 12, 2011 at 5:08pm
    Yes, we'll return to relative altitude. It was an experiment but it seems to be confusing people. We'll undo with the next beta version.
  • Developer
    Michael Oborne March 12, 2011 at 4:50pm
    the elevation graph is curently incorrect because the alt's in the planner are now absolute... ie 100 = 100m asl not home = 200 + 100 as it used to be. if you set your home alt as 0, the elevation profile would be correct.
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