Copter-3.6.0-rc1 available for beta testing

ArduCopter Copter 3.6
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23

Brandon,

Here’s the wiki page on SmartRTL. From a user point of view, there’s not a heck of a lot of parameters to play around with. Just the accuracy and number of points. The number of points can be increased up to 500. It’s set conservatively to 150 points because more points takes more memory and we need to do some more testing to see what is a comfortable number. Of course, it shouldn’t be dangerous to set the number too high. It’s just unlikely to work.

What we also need to add to the wiki is info on what happens when you run out of points. The short answer is that a message will be displayed on the ground stations’s HUD and you won’t be able to switch into SmartRTL.

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Hi Luis,

I’ve created the wiki describing how to upload the ChibiOS firmware now. The fmuv3 firmware is the one to use for the Pixhawk1 and Pixhawk2/Cube boards. The only real difference between the “fmuv2” and “fmuv3” is that “fmuv2” has a few less features so that it can fit onto the older Pixhawks with the 1MB limit. The ChibiOS builds are all below 1MB so even the fully features firmware fits on the older Pixhawks now.

Re OctaCopters on DShot, my understanding is that we want to enable DShot for the main outputs (which actually are run from the Pixhawk’s I/O chip) but it hasn’t been done yet. I’ve added an issue here.

P.S. when was the last time we heard of a piece of software getting smaller?!

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25

Alan, Roman,

Thanks for the report, we will look into it and fix it!

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Winston,

I’m not sure if Pixhawk mini is supported in Copter-3.6 or not. I know work has been done to add support but I think it’s not included yet. I’ll double check with @tridge.

Edit: I’ve checked with @tridge and the Pixhawk-mini is supported.

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So, if you fly “too long” you’ll eventually not be able to Smart_RTL anymore? Why wouldn’t it just kick out the “oldest” point, thus when yo Smart_RTL it’ll backtrack all the points it has and then switch to regular RTL at that point? Also, what is “too long” does it plot a point every X seconds or something? It would be useful to be able to guage what a user would need to set in SRTL_POINTS based on the amount of time their system can stay in the air. Also, so they can gauge how much memory they need.

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oh, feeling like the invisible man…

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Hi where do we make testing notes for ChibiOS?
having issues connecting with the sik radio using CHi after reverting back to 3.6 Nut the Radio connected.

31

G’day Brandon,
I’d suggest opening an issue in GitHub and then drop a link into the ArduPilot/ChibiOS gitter channel. Thanks for testing!

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Brandon,

… re ChibiOS issues, it’s probably best to create new threads in this Copter-3.6 forum so we can discuss and investigate before creating an issue. Jumping straight to creating an issue is probably OK but normaly we like to verify the reports before creating issues.

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Chris,

Re the analog sonar “flyaway” issue (only possible if sonar has been misconfigured), it’s not resolved in Copter-3.6 I’m afraid.

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Sounds good… The new 3.61 flew nice today thank for all your hard work guys!

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LordNeeko,

Re SmartRTL’s behaviour when it runs out of points, yes, it could certainly be improved. Another idea is to automatically increase the “SRTL_ACCURACY” parameter from it’s default of 2m to something larger (like 3m). This would also likely make it suddenly free up a lot of points.

Yet another idea is to improve reporting of the number of unused points to the user and/or allow a failsafe to be triggered as SmartRTL become unusable (i.e. triggers SmartRTL when it runs out of points).

In the end it just comes down to developer effort on the feature to make it better.

In any case, I hope is that with a bit more testing we can increase the default number of points a lot so most people won’t bump into the problem.

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36

Roland,

Re Pixhawk-mini and D-shot, we will need to complete the port to ChibiOS for this board I think. I’ll check with @tridge on that because he and @bugobliterator are the ones who have the best idea of how the ChibiOS work is coming along.

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@alainlive, @Roman_Kirillov,

I’ve just tested landing gear on a Pixhawk1 and it appears to work but of course that doesn’t mean that there’s no problem. let’s take this discussion over to this new thread.

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http://www.sendbox.fr/e6d7163948afa863/8_23-04-2018_10-29-48.bin
I went back to 3.5.5 to test the platform works, so maybe a problem in 3.6 rc1?
thank you for your excellent work

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Totally understand it’s a first iteration.

So instead of a X per second it’s after you’ve moved a distance of SRTL_ACCURACY? That makes more sense for sure.

If someone has battery or THR or whatever failsafe set to SMART_RTL, and the mode isn’t available, does it automatically transition to RTL already?

40

Lordneeko,

Re SmartRTL’s saving of points, it saves up to 3 per second but not unless the vehicle has moved at least SRTL_ACCURACY meters from the previous point. So for example, if the vehicle was moving at 10m/s it would save the points at 3.3m intervals. After 50 points are saved it goes back and simplifies them into lines again using that SRTL_ACCURACY… it will replace a string of points with just two end points if all the intermediate points are no more than SRTL_ACCURACY from the line between the end points.

Re the failsafe, Yes, if SmartRTL can’t be used, then regular RTL will trigger instead.

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41

Ok good stuff. I tried to figure all that out by reading the code, and I did notice the 3hz update rate, but I never could find the code which would revert to RTL if Smart_RTL failed.

However, at your word, I may try to add a few updates based on this information to the wiki.

42

ChibiOS Testing; Copter 3.6.0-rc1
Flew 7 flights on 450 Quad with MRo Pixracer-R-14. I just loaded the ChibiOS over the prior Nuttx install of 3.6.0 rc-1, with no issues. All parameters left as they were under Nuttx. ( Thanks for the Wiki Guide! ).

No issues in flight; Stab, Alt-Hold, Loiter, Pos-Hold, circle, mission with RTL, and RTL, and SmartRTL on CH7 , plus a low battery failsafe triggering a SmartRTL, and again with a normal RTL Also did an Auto tune. All worked with no issues, same as with the Nuttx 3.6.0-rc1 tests I did this last weekend as mentioned above.

I did not try a Auto tune with the rc-1 NuttX, but I think this Chibios AT was the fastest I have ever had a 3 axis AT complete! Under 3 minutes.

Only issues were Beta MP ( 1.3.56 ) kept reporting “Bad Gyro Health” and “Bad Accl” during Pre-Arm. After Arming I did see " Bad Gyro Health" during flight flash on the HUD portion of MP. There were no such messages in the “Messages” Tab of MP. What was weird is that when disarmed my PC announced the “Bad Gyro” message, but when Armed it showed the message on the HUD screen, but no voice announcement.

I am chalking this up to this as a Beta MP issue as this point. Watching the CMD window in Beta MP, I did see a few “unrecognized messages” or something like that, roll by. But I need to watch that again on a TLog to get exact wording.

It was taking a lot longer to get initial GPS lock under this ChibiOS build. ( MN8 GPS). I saw no such long delays under the NuttX version using the same Beta MP. This occurred over the last 2 days at varying times of the day, so I don’t think it was a sat position/count problem, has 12+ …

I did notice the start up notes seemed shorter in duration, but still the same notes, just sounded a bit shortened. And the ESC beep were almost immediate after plugging in battery. Guessing that is all because of a faster OS.

Other than the slow GPS lock and odd MP behavior, everything else worked well.
Again thanks for all the work everyone put into this .

Joe

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43

Hi Randy.

I will start testing copter 3.6-rc1 on my 210mm quad.

Thank you very much.