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3D Robotics

ArduIMU 1.8 released--supports APM libraries, new MediaTek

Posted by Chris Anderson on October 15, 2010 at 4:00pm

Good news: ArduIMU 1.8 has now been released, which is now built on the same libraries as ArduPilotMega and ArduCopter. [Update: this has now been revised with bug fixes as 1.8.1. See this post for more.] That means that it's got all the latest Ardu* enhancements, including support for the most recent GPS modules (including latest MediaTek firmware), our custom FastSerial communications and magnetometer support. If you've been having trouble with GPS modules not getting lock, please upgrade to this latest version.


You can get the new code here. Note that since it now uses libraries, the installation process is different. Please follow the instructions here. Arduino 0019 or higher required.


If you encounter a bug or other problem, please file an issue here. The developers aren't regularily following comments on blog posts, so the past way to get bugs fixed quickly is through the issue tracker.


Special thanks to Doug Weibel for the port and to the whole APM team for the libraries, which are really paying off now that we're extending them to all the Ardu* projects.

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Comments

  • Tommy October 16, 2010 at 9:05am
    Thanks Happy!
  • Paul Mather October 16, 2010 at 8:52am
    The MTK init routine (found in AP_GPS_MTK.cpp) does appear to set the MTK GPS to 4Hz on startup. So you should be good.
  • Tommy October 16, 2010 at 8:34am
    Hi Happy,

    Where could I set the output rate of GPS? I am not sure whether my MTK GPS has 4 Hz output or not.
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson October 15, 2010 at 10:31pm
    Jean-Louis: Set "#define USE_MAGNETOMETER 0" for now. We'll fix that Magnetometer bug this weekend.
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson October 15, 2010 at 10:22pm
    We run the GPS processing loop at 4Hz (uBlox speed). Anything faster than that, such as the MediaTek's claimed 10Hz, is actually just interpolated data and adds no additional real information.
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson October 15, 2010 at 10:20pm
    Happy: We'd love you to help with the NMEA parser. That library has been woefully neglected in favor of the binary modules, but it's time we fixed. You've got commit access to the ArduCopter SVN repository where the libraries are kept. If you can just commit your changes, we'll test and incorporate in the zip file.

    Thanks!
  • Paul Mather October 15, 2010 at 10:01pm
    It also appears that anything faster than 8Hz from the GPS will not get processed in time.
  • Ground Loop October 15, 2010 at 9:13pm
    Is PERFORMANCE_REPORTING still for Ublox only, or is it supported on other GPS platforms?
  • Ground Loop October 15, 2010 at 9:12pm
    My thanks to the folks that worked on this!

    Built just fine here. Should be a fun weekend.
  • Paul Mather October 15, 2010 at 9:04pm
    AP_GPS_NMEA.cpp has a series of typos in it.

    Every line that says "parseptr = strchr(parseptr, ', ')+1;" is incorrect.
    It should read "parseptr = strchr(parseptr, ',')+1;" without the space after the comma. In 0021 the strchr apparently will take a string and there are no spaces after any commas in NMEA.
    INCORRECT.IT
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