3D Robotics

ArduPilotMega Beta code now live!

After more than a 1,000 commits and many thousand lines of code, the public beta of the ArduPilotMega code is now out. You can get it here. Note that the new libraries requires a slightly different installation process, so read the manual so you can put the libraries in the right folder. The code won't compile if you don't. Also, you'll need to be using Arduino 19 or higher.


New features include:

  • An awesome command-line interpreter (CLI) running on APM, which allows you to make most common configurations and setup without having to recompile the code.
  • The CLI also allows you to interactively test all your hardware components--no messing with Arduino code or configuration files if you don't want to!
  • Powerful new scripting commands and flight options.
  • New FastSerial code, replacing the standard Arduino serial code, which makes serial communications lightning fast.
  • The entire code has been re-architected to use libraries, which are shared across the ArduPilot projects. That way we can improve everything from GPS parsers to basic DCM routines and all the projects will immediately inherit the improvements. That not only means better code for everyone, but much easier maintenance for the team.

Speaking of the team, special thanks to the core APM dev team that put in so much work and creativity to get us here. These guys have worked tirelessly on this, with daily coding sessions and weekly dev conference calls, all year. This is a huge project, perhaps the most complex Arduino code ever written, and these are the stars who led it:

  • Jason Short
  • Michael Smith
  • Doug Weibel

With help from some ArduCopter team members:

  • Jose Julio
  • Jani Hirvinen

Config utility wizadry from:

  • Michael Oborne
  • Ted Carancho (ArduCopter Configurator)
And all this made possible by Hardware Ninja Jordi Munoz!

As always, please report all bugs and problems in the Issue Tracker. The developers can't respond to bug reports in blog comments and discussion forums.





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Comments

  • Moderator
    @Ground Loop I think I am right in saying that Sandro Benigno was responsible for all the 3D stuff, I hope I am and have not offended anyone else. Its amazing stuff eh!
  • Dear Team, congratulations for this wonderfull achievement !

    On behalf of the entire DIY community, I thank you all for your incredible efforts to make it happen !

    Hats off to Jordi for PCB design & Development, Jasson & Doug for the firmware development and Chris for supporting manufacturing so that anyone interested can have it and test !

    I wish all the best to the entire team, whose name could not be mentioned here, for the onward feature and functionality addition in the base firmware of ArduPilot Mega!
  • Developer
    Have you set your sketchbook preferences?
    Ardiuno is looking in your sketchbook for the libraries and they either aren't there or you haven't restarted Arduino.
  • Update to Arduino Ver 19 and try again.

    Joe
  • I'm having a compile problem:

    C:\downloads\ArduPilot\ArduMega_v1\APM_Beta1.0\libraries\FastSerial\/FastSerial.h:53:20: error: Stream.h: No such file or directory

    C:\downloads\ArduPilot\ArduMega_v1\APM_Beta1.0\libraries\FastSerial\/FastSerial.h:86: error: expected class-name before '{' token

    C:\downloads\ArduPilot\ArduMega_v1\APM_Beta1.0\libraries\FastSerial\/FastSerial.h:106: error: 'Stream' has not been declared
    __________________
    I'm using Arduino Ver 18 and the top directory name is as it was from the ZIP file - APM_Beta1.0. The only file I changed was the config.h file as per direction (I set GPS_PROROCOL to GPS_PROTOCOL_UBLOX)

    I don't know where Stream.h is supposed to come from - I have my preference sketchbook location set to APM_Beta1.0.

    Anybody else have this problem?
  • Great work gentlemen! I have had my system working on the bench by following along with your alpha development. It was nice to see the beta work the first time and give me the same results that I was observing on the last revision 1125 in the trunk with the exception of the air pressure fix (r1135 in the branches).

    joe
  • Very nice.

    I want to ask: Where do these bad-ass 3D renderings of hardware come from? Like the stack-up of the Arducopter circuitry, and the APM model above. They're the best I've ever seen.
  • Sweet new dohikeys.
    Good work guys. Thanks
This reply was deleted.