Time has finally come!! ArduCopter Alpha 1.0 is here
We have been talking about this release for a while while it's been in development and testing, but it's finally ready for daylight. Its been long and exhausting 4 months or so that we have been doing this project, there has been a lot of long nights and will be more. But today is a huge milestone: on behalf our whole team, I'm happy to release our first official ArduCopter Alpha 1.0 release for our users.
This code has been tested over multiple ArduCopters, they all worked out of the box after proper installation eg. EEPROM reset and calibration and we have not found anything alarming but I am sure that there are bugs lurking behind the corner. If you are afraid of bugs, then better to wait till we are in beta but if you think you can handle some small issues this is now ready for ou to play with.
What you need to know of this release are:
- This is an First Alpha release so there might be some bugs waiting, we just haven't found any yet.
- New orientation system: Always mount your APM/IMU aligned by Front/Rear Arms eg. in + configuration. X mode is switched from software it self and you are not allowed to rotate your APM on frame.
- Before switching to X mode, test your settings and Artificial Horizont on + mode. When X mode it activated from software, Artificial Horizon on Configurator shows AH incorrectly (this will be fixed later on Configurator itself)
- On X mode, your original "nose" rotates 45° to CCW eg Front becomes Front/Left
- New variables and default settings so RESET your EEPROM by doing Initial Installation procedures
- Unzip file and copy all Libraries from this zip file to your Arduino/Libraries folder and replace them if you had some of the libraries already installed. This Alpha release is designed to work with Libraries included on ZIP file.
- Zip file contains Arducopter_alpha_RC1 folder where all firmware codes are and also libraries folder is there.
Alpha 1.0 Features:
- Acro / Stable modes, changeable by switch input from radio
- + and x modes, changeable from software code, APM orientation always as +
- Magnetometer support (optional, default is off)
- Finetuned PID controllers on stable mode
- More cleaner code
- 200Hz main loop
Sorry guys, no GPS features yet. We have some issues with it so we temporary took it out. We try to find it out as soon as possible. This is built on the APM code, which has full scripted GPS navigation, so as soon as we turn it on ArduCopter will have full UAV functionality.
For feedback please use #47 ticket on our issue tracker in here.
If you find bug or expect that you have a bug, please open new issue for us so we can look it. But before opening issues, try to reproduce your problem 2-3 times at least. If you can reproduce it, post an issue for it.
Also if you have code proposals of feature proposals you can post them too as new issue. But again before posting, check our wiki pages to see if someone has proposed it already of it or proposed feature is already on issue lists or on our software roadmap.
General help can be found from our Wiki pages at GoogleCodes ArduCopter Wiki
Happy flying guys/gals and don't do anything that I would not do :)
File download: ArduCopter_Alpha.1.0
(Current and future files can be found from wiki download areas too, http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/downloads/)
Comments
Most of us are using Mode 2 radios eg. Throttle/Rudder on left stick, Aileron/Elevator on right stick.
Only mode 2 radios can be used with this code... this is correct?
Sorry if this is a dumb question...
This summer, I got one of my students to write sort of a "PID Playground" using the Processing language. I think she did a nice job. The goal was to make a one-dimensional, horizontal-only simulation of a quadcopter that is controlling its position using a PID controller. That way, my students could try different values for (Kp, Ki, Kd) and get a feeling for how they might affect the behavior of a vehicle that moves this way. I put a copy of it here:
http://unthusiasm.com/copter_pid
If you click in the square black box, the copter will try to fly over to wherever you clicked. There is a link there to download the source code. You can get Processing at http://www.processing.org and run it locally on your computer. The default is (Kp, Ki, Kd) = (1, 0, 0), which just oscillates around the position you click. Changing Kp substantially will change the amplitude of the oscillation. (Kp, Ki, Kd) = (1, 0.4, 0) will make it oscillate with increasing amplitude. If you plug in (Kp, Ki, Kd) = (0.3, 0, 1.0) it will fly over to the point and settle in without oscillating.
There are active constraints on roll angle and horizontal speed, and if it is spending a lot of time at those limits, small changes in coefficients will have no apparent effect. You have to hit Return after you change a number in the interface. There is no aerodynamic drag, so once it hits its top speed, it flattens out and coasts. I would be interested if any of you more experienced people think it is representative of their experiences, tuning PIDs. Feel free to debug it, remix it, or make it more realistic!
Disclaimer: It is extraordinarily unlikely that the PID values that work well in this program would work for a real helicopter. Feel free to modify the math and fix that! ;-) The purpose of this software is to let people find out what gets better or worse when they increase or decrease certain parameters. Hmmm, maybe I should get a lawyer to look over this...
Do you mean flying in X mode with IMU pointing between two arms? I would be interested in such a change.
yes i want to fly in X
i just looked at the code, it isn't hard to change it back (for my purpose)
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