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
Greetings, Ms Julien i totally understand i just want to check it out and be able to give you guys some help :)
guys if the weather permits and if i feel better tomorrow would be the day that i would give a full blown test to the apm 2.5 with hybrid mode running. thanks to Ms. julie, jay, and many other on this forum i would be able to run a full test tomorrow.
my name is bruce and i work on a hobby shop called extreme hobbies miami, i build quadcopters for a living pretty much i build like 4 to 5 nazas or phantom every day. so i hope i can be of some assistance to be able to test this new hybrid mode and be able to give my 2 cents .
once again thank you guys and see you tomorrow. ;)
Oh, that would be great if it's not to much trouble. I've spent all day flying APM in alt-hold and stabalize just because I don't like loiters "dead band" and flight characteristics. Then I flew one last flight for the day with NAZA and the difference is significant. I would really like to test and see how hybrid mode compares.
Ok after re-reading through everything I see you said the code you compiled for Bruce will not work for pixhawk. Would someone mind compiling the code for me for pixhawk? I've downloaded github software and I'm trying to figure out exactly what I need to download and compile but it's all very confusing for someone that has never dealt with code before. I will continue trying to figure this out.
Marco
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?
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.
my copter says thank you too, the loiter is rock solid,,, again :D but is till can fly if I need to... :) as Marco put it: "flyable loiter"!
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