Hi, New here so please be gentle.
I have a F450 quad and just replaced the APM mini FC with a Pixhawk lite.
First flight today and I am pleased but it will not go into loiter or poshold mode when armed.
Pre arm checks are on and ok.
HDOP of between 1 and 1.4
APM:copter V3.3-rc8
The copter does not actually have to be flying. I have a 3 pos switch for stabilize, alt hold and loiter. When the FC is not armed it will switch between all 3 and reports in mission planner. When it is armed it will not got to loiter.
I have just tried switching to loiter before arming then when I arm I get the message “pre arm need 3D fix” but flight data is reporting a 3D fix and an HDOP of 1.3
I tried downgrading to 3.2.1 this morning and I can now go into loiter or poshold when armed so it is looking like a problem with 3.3 on the pixhawk lite.
Further testing when I come home next week.
So yes GPS functions working well with 3.2 but not 3.3.
Just fitted my new retractable landing gear. Works well with 3.3 but not 3.2
So it looks like I can have GPS or landing retracts but not both
@Binarynut that looks to me like your transmitter needs to be set up so that a 2 way and a 3 way switch together combine to select 6 different settings. At the moment you can only select the three even settings.
I think that 3.3 requires a better lock than previous versions and that the GPS and MP wioll both report 3D Fix before the EKF is truly happy.
What is the Sat count? I now yuou have 3D Lock but…
The warning you got on the MP screen happens when the GPS lock is not accurate enough. I have been working aroung this by enabling the fence which seems to make the LED indicator wait until the EKF is happy and set its Origin before turning green (in all modes). I think it is the same as trying to arm in a GPS mode such as Loiter or POSHOLD etc.
Once the GPS has a good enough lock it will arm without problem. I think that the main LED also reports properly with the fence on as it does not turn green until it is happy.
I have been unable to get a good enough lock without SBAS (show SBAS with fast flashing greeen LED)
Randy describes it beeter in the 3.3 Beta Test thread but to solve your issue make sure that you have more than 8 Sats and try enabling the fence. You could also try raising the good HDOP value by a very small amount. I think the new default is 1.4. Just be careful not to raise it too much!
Hope that helps.
[quote=“Alex_Sydney”]I think that 3.3 requires a better lock than previous versions and that the GPS and MP wioll both report 3D Fix before the EKF is truly happy.
What is the Sat count? I now yuou have 3D Lock but…
The warning you got on the MP screen happens when the GPS lock is not accurate enough. I have been working aroung this by enabling the fence which seems to make the LED indicator wait until the EKF is happy and set its Origin before turning green (in all modes). I think it is the same as trying to arm in a GPS mode such as Loiter or POSHOLD etc.
Once the GPS has a good enough lock it will arm without problem. I think that the main LED also reports properly with the fence on as it does not turn green until it is happy.
I have been unable to get a good enough lock without SBAS (show SBAS with fast flashing greeen LED)
Randy describes it beeter in the 3.3 Beta Test thread but to solve your issue make sure that you have more than 8 Sats and try enabling the fence. You could also try raising the good HDOP value by a very small amount. I think the new default is 1.4. Just be careful not to raise it too much!
Hope that helps.[/quote]
Thanks Alex, that makes a lot of sense.
I will upgrade again today and get out in the garden to see how many sats I can find.
I have not investigated the fence yet so when I find out a bit about it I will give it a try.
Ian
[quote=“bassmanham”][quote=“Alex_Sydney”]I think that 3.3 requires a better lock than previous versions and that the GPS and MP wioll both report 3D Fix before the EKF is truly happy.
What is the Sat count? I now yuou have 3D Lock but…
The warning you got on the MP screen happens when the GPS lock is not accurate enough. I have been working aroung this by enabling the fence which seems to make the LED indicator wait until the EKF is happy and set its Origin before turning green (in all modes). I think it is the same as trying to arm in a GPS mode such as Loiter or POSHOLD etc.
Once the GPS has a good enough lock it will arm without problem. I think that the main LED also reports properly with the fence on as it does not turn green until it is happy.
I have been unable to get a good enough lock without SBAS (show SBAS with fast flashing greeen LED)
Randy describes it beeter in the 3.3 Beta Test thread but to solve your issue make sure that you have more than 8 Sats and try enabling the fence. You could also try raising the good HDOP value by a very small amount. I think the new default is 1.4. Just be careful not to raise it too much!
Hope that helps.[/quote]
Thanks Alex, that makes a lot of sense.
I will upgrade again today and get out in the garden to see how many sats I can find.
I have not investigated the fence yet so when I find out a bit about it I will give it a try.
Ian[/quote]
Things are looking up
In the garden running 3.3 the best I got was 5 satellites and hdop of 3.8
I downgraded to 3.2 and got 6 sats and hdop 2.9
Upgraded again to 3.3 and raised the good hdop value to 2.2 and now I just got 9 sats and hdop of 1.1. and the really good bit is it will now go into loiter when armed.
So, as you said, the good hdop value was stopping it going into loiter BUT it doesn’t explain why it did not work before when I was getting an hdop of between 1 and 1.4
Still at least it works and I can also use my new retractable landing gear now.
I noticed this on my pixhawk lite also. Have not put 3.3r10 of full pixhawk yet. I got 3d lock with 5 sats and could not change out of manual mode after take off. Flew around a bit and got up to 9 stats and I could then change flight modes to gps depended ones. I tried changing flight modes from my radio and the tower app and nothing with just 5 sats. So I think a feature not a bug. It is good that it is not dependent on sats you get just on ground it will let you change when you get up and away from obstacles blocking some of the sats.
Ok, so the issue here was the unclear failure message. This has been improved in Copter-3.3-rc11 so now it specifies what about the GPS is the problem (i.e. high velocity, etc).
Is there a fix?
What is the reason MAV is not responding to go to loiter mode?
I had 3.2 AC with Pixhawk, I did not have this problem.
I have upgraded to 3.3.2 and I experienced the problem, where MAV did not engage with Loiter, but gave me error (error mode 5 - loiter mode)
I have checked if there were some new parameters with GPS tuning, but I did not find anything useful.
How to proceed? Someone wrote in this thread, that there are maybe minimum numbers of satellites that AC requires to go into the loiter?
Hello!
I had a problem Pixhawk not entering Loiter mode with stable update of firmware AC 3.3.2.
Seems that 3.3.2 needs stronger requirements for position estimate.
Today I made a flight and when satellite count was 8, I was able to enter the LOITER mode (I also heard new musical tone). In the end, count of satellites was 11. AUTO mode also worked.
But it is just my guess If someone from developers knows this for sure, please update manual for the minimum requirements in 3.3.2 of AC
Hi
I have a pixhawk quad, running on 3.3. It has a Lidar Lite and a PX4flow, set up and working in the status.
If I try to ARM in Loiter it say’s it needs a 3D lock on the GPS. As you can see from the log, It has 10Sats and hlop of 1.1. This is a log that I did to show the attempted ARMing
As I mostly fly indoors I do not get any Sats. so I have EKF_GPS set to 3 so it will use the Lidar lite and the for the altitude. I have checker the Param and can not see anything else that I have adjust. It will arm in ALT HOLD both indoor and outside.
If someone from developers knows this for sure, please update manual for the minimum requirements in 3.3.2 of AC