UPDATE:
Please note that the initialization of Gyros was requested to move to the Arming function. This had the unintended consequence of making the Ground Station report erroneous attitude until the unit is armed at least once. This is changed already in the next version 2.0.39 which is still in development. Thanks.
This is a nice update and is recommended for everyone. I've gotten a half dozen flight in with it and have had good success. I'll be incorporating some of the ideas mentioned in the suggestions post over the next few versions.
What's new:
I reworked the startup so it's much faster. Also, a feature a lot of folks wanted, calibrating the IMU at first Arming is in there. If you hand launch, please do your first arming of the motors on the ground.
I enabled a mode filter for sonar. Not too thoroughly tested performance wise, but it does work. (note, if you rely on the rangefinder class, you must rework your code to be compatible.)
RTL bugs are squashed and it's flying really well now.
Added a special filter in the PID for the derivative term to get rid of the alt hold and loiter issues from noisy sensors.
Added a completely experimental mode called circle. It will by default spin the copter in a 10m circle from the point at which it was engaged. And it will Yaw towards that point at all times.
Yaw while navigating happens at quarter speed, which was problematic before.
Roll and Pitch Imax are higher 5° than before (.5°)
Logging seems to work now. Please erase the log after installing.
Everything else is mentioned on the SVN.
Comments
AH pid's in 37 and 38 are the same but there is a difference.
http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/acm-2-0-38
Interesting. I was hoping that filter was the end-all. Could you try the older PIDs?
THROTTLE_P 0.3
THROTTLE_I 0.04
THROTTLE_D 0.35
Also tested v38. I find that sonar althold was better in the previous version but I still have to check if the PID's were chaged. I used default in 37. For stability no problems at the moment. Loiter also gave we bigger and bigger circle compared to the v37 yesterday were loiter worked very well even with a breeze.
I uploaded .38 this morning with Mission Planner and went through a complete setup. Came from 2.37. The first things noticed was a Horizon display all out of whack, but slowly it returned to level after I moved it a little by handle. The second issue was the QC would not take off level, so I had to re-level it through CLI setup.
Using default PIDs
1) I found Alt_hold with Sonar very good.
2) RTL has the same issue from past versions (for me)... on selection of RTL the QC pitches 45 Deg to home and races back to me. Very un-nerving. I have to abort.
3) Loiter works well for a minute, but like the past, starts making larger and larger circles until I have to abort. This was in very little breeze.
I am puzzled at this since I am very thorough in my setup and cal. and wait for good GPS lock. But I am very grateful for the community and this enjoyable project.
Great news of the new version.
Yesterday I did a RTL test with 2.0.37. Quite some wind and the nose was pointing away from me. I changed from loiter to RTL and the quad turned very agressive its nose towards me and came flying at quite some speed, overshooting its homepostion and then turningagain very aggresive. When I say aggresive, it really banks to the right. Nevertheless, I could certainly see that the quad knew the home position.
In the new code, what are the different parameters like RTL speed and etc??
In the middle of all the alt hold issues, had a magnetometer failure, removed it, cleaned it up and re-installed and now its working fine. The key to this APM stuff is reading all of the manuals, posts, blogs and other data and then trying stuff repetitively until it works. It can be a puzzle, but I truly enjoy troubleshooting and this is the purest form of that - and I don't understand at least half of what I'm doing, so it's truly entertaining for my wife (who is getting quite good at flying the quad).
Yup, mounted my sonar on an arm last week, didn't see improvement - but I've not had sonar problems before loading 2.0.037. Haven't done the shielded wire yet. I'm seeing funny noise on the baro in test, sonar looks very steady, but baro is very unstable in test on the terminal (sitting on the desk here inside, it's showing +20cm to 85cm to -37cm back and forth), so I suspect it's impacting the sonar at "medium altitudes". At low 2m or less, sonar hold is OK, at baro altitudes, alt hold is simply inop, just doesn't exist, that's why I suspect a baro sensor problem, will know more tomorrow.
http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/wiki/AC2_Sonar
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