Frame Class on rover 3.3

I just upgraded a boat from 3.0 to 3.3. I was still using 3.0 because it worked so good. So I reviewed all the parameters on 3.3 ( lot more ) and changed my frame class to 2. At that point my boat and Mission Planner seemed to think it was a Hexacopter. It seemed to cause a lot of problems with my bench testing. I have reset it back so it thinks I’m a Rover and all seems good. Has anyone else experienced this? I realize not a lot of boat users out there but it didn’t seem to work except for giving me the boat image on Mission Planner.

David

Hi David,

When you say, the MP seemed to think it was a Hexacopter, you mean it appeared as a hexacopter on the map? If so that’s very bad and indicates some kind of problem with the firmware download. I’ve just downloaded “ArduRover V3.3.0” using the MP’s Install Firmware screen and it’s installed the correct version. Which flight controller are you using? Also any chance you have a dataflash log? I will be able to see from the log which firmware is on the board (you can also check directly by looking in the top left corner of the mission planner, it should say, “ArduRover V3.3.0 (2d0a474a)”.

EDIT: sorry, I missed the part where you say it appears as a boat on the MP so the correct firmware must be loaded… maybe just some more explanation about what you’re seeing will help me find the cause.

P.S. you probably already know but just in case, you can revert back to 3.0.1 from the Mission Planner’s Install Firmware screen. there is a “Pick Previous Firmware” link on the bottom right and then “AR 3.0.1” appears in the list about half way down. Select that line and then the numbers under the Rover icon will change and you can reload the old firmware. It shouldn’t be necessary to re-do parameters, the old ones should still be there.

I’ll try and change the Frame Class again today. When I changed the Frame class to 2 I rebooted the Pixhawk 1. The boat appeared on Mission Planner. Manual mode became Stabilize. In the full parameter list under Frame Class instead of the Rover or Boat choice it said Quad, Hex, etc. I’ll try again today and report back. Its set back to Rover now and all seems O.K… Can’t wait to play around with Smart RTL. Very handy for a boat.

All is good now. Only thing I did was upgrade MP to the latest version but that doesn’t seem to be what the problem would have been to me. I’ll give it a couple hour workout on Thursday with both R/C controller and joystick thru MP. My previous NAVL1 parameters are the same and I will see and read about what the new ATC parameters are about. Also noticed RTL can be at a different speed than Auto mission. Code just gets more versatile as time goes by.

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David,

Great. So that definitely sounds like the Mission Planner was confused about which parameter descriptions it should use. Luckily that would mostly be a display issue and should affect the way the vehicle operates … for the most part… of course it could lead to nasty problems if it led you to set a parameter incorrectly to go into an unexpected flight mode. anyway, hopefully it was a temporary issue that’s fixed in the latest version of MP.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgqdUNhfFlnDgbNaP5D1cjfKD7CX-g

Here is a log of my tuning. The last third is where I made a lot of progress I thought. It started out as a very lazy boat. If you have a chance to look over it and give any input that would be great. There was rain coming and I had to cut tuning a little short. I never got to a point where the boat was twitchy when it was supposed to run a straight line from WP to WP. Some parameters probably can go higher and I may have adjusted some that made no difference. I’ve got a video of the whole ordeal I should have ready in a day or two. The WP course was fairly short but I’m pretty sure if I was to run a survey grid on like a 10 acre lake it would do well. Thanks for all the hard work you have done and to the rest of the Ardupilot team.

David