During the alpha testing phase with the "APM Copter V3" code i immediately reported to the Dev Team that the Loiter mode was very accurate but is not allowed to fly normally, like with other system as DJI and Mikrokopter, Zero-UAV, etc.
We preferred to make the Loiter mode that would serve to accurately reposition the multirotor, and to help beginners to fly slowly and safely.
An italian friend and developer, Sandro Tognana, collected my challenge and started to develop a flight mode as I wanted, in line with the other famous flight control board.
Another awesome programmer, Julien Dubois, has joined our team and has worked actively to implement the complicated wind compensation.
After several months of development and testing are pleased to present the "Hybrid flight mode", in two words a "flyable Loiter" with wind compensation, the code virtually switches from "Loiter" to "Alt-Hold" and viceversa when you exit and enter a sticks deadband (configurable), considering of course the compensation of the wind, therefore complies with the tuning of your multirotor.
You can configure some parameters but already with the default works perfectly, my video speaks for itself.
This new mode is currently being debugged (in alpha phase), it is therefore not available to the public, of course, will have to go into the hands of APM Copter Dev Team who will decide whether to adopt it in an upcoming release.
The results in my video are great, sorry but the audio is bad because it was very windy today, however, is clearly seen as a "Hybrid" works, is almost perfect.
In the second video by Julien you can see the Hybrid in action vs a "DJI Phantom 2" quad with "Naza 2" inside, imho Hybrid work better than the "GPS Position Hold" of DJI, especially on braking.
The tests were carried out on APM and VR Brain, but of course will work on any board that installs "APM Copter" as PX4 and Pixhawk.
I will keep you updated on the "Hybrid" developments, i'll open a discussion about this with other APM Copter developers to assess any changes in the code.
I want to say thanks to Sandro and Julien for their great work!
Bests, Marco
Comments
Marco for me its not an issue although it would be great to see a smoother transition between modes, like I said its nice to see the dji flyers be quiet now when I fly. I've already switched firmware on my smaller quad and won't be updating it until this mode is in the official release as its now perfect for my flying and IMO long overdue.
Marco
I've finally got around to testing the hybrid mode on my 700 quad, I'm very impressed with the position hold having flown for years with dji flyers and taking all the comments from them to switch my controller.There is a twitch on the motors when its switching modes out of loiter but its really not that bad considering the benefits, my flying buddies have now seen the quad in flight and the comments are now totally different as mine now holds better than there own setups.
Thanks for all the hard work you guys put in and I'd like to follow other posts in stating this should be added to the next official release.
I am just coming from flying DJI controllers to APM, infact I had my first APM flight today on a f450 frame. Alt-Hold was just like naza and very easy to pick up on, but the first thing I noticed about loiter was how awkward and unresponsive it felt. I always thought all "gps hold" modes flew like DJI. While trying to find a param fix I came to see this and wow this is great! I will test this out tomorrow on pixhawk and tell you my results. I'm unsure about compiling, I've just been reading. Would the version posted for Bruce work for me on pixhawk?
i do not know, but you can use apm_planner2 mavlink-inspector to find out mavlink messages.
do you know what is the mavlink message? I am using a teensy 3.1 board to convert mavlink to frsky/opentx telemetry than pump it to the x8r telemetry port to receive everything on the taranis. a good way to see your flight parameters w/o a pc. very useful for quick flights and trying out new options w/o risking radio modules.
hi,
in apm_planner2 i can add cpu load item to info view. see image.
hi,
beside the merging thread,i have a question left. three days ago i compiled hybrid loiter with defaults from APM_Config.h beside my hexa configuration. with this setup my apm run with ~95-97% cpu load. this makes me a little bit careful and not so enthusiastic because it feels like flying on the apm limit. today i compiled with disabled MOUNT, AUTOTUNE, CAMERA and CONFIG_SONAR. see attached diff. now the load is down to ~70% in hybrid loiter. IMO, today, flying my hexa feels more precise than three day ago with high cpu load. maybe only an psychological effect. can this be true or is apm flight precision independent from cpu load?
thx again for this superb flight mode. today, flying was a dream:).
/g
wolke
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