After updating a few flight controllers that were running ArduCopter 4.2.X to the latest 4.3.1, the initial GCS connection and loading of parameters takes much longer than usual. I am connected directly via USB cable on baud 115200, which would take around 5 seconds to load on 4.2.X versions, but now takes up to two minutes on Mission Planner and seems to outright give-up on QGroundControl (it returns a “Vehicle 1 did not respond to request for parameters” message).
On Mission Planner I have been able to work around by connecting, waiting until it begins loading parameters, pressing “cancel”, and then navigating to the Config > Full Parameter Tree and pressing “Retry now” or “refresh” if some parameters already loaded. Then it takes only a few seconds to load all of the parameters.
I am using a version of Mission Planner from within the last month and using the latest QGroundControl on mobile.
I have not experienced that, maybe just do the MissionPlanner beta updates??
Do you have one of the “ENABLE” parameters on a RC switch or in LUA scripting? This came up recently:
In the release notes there’s only this:
“Log download speed improved for boards with “block” backends”
Interesting, but no, I only have an RC switch set to 19 (gripper) and another to 153 (arm/disarm). After updating to 4.3.1, I did add the gripper RC switch option, but I’m not sure how that would cause the slow loading. I will try with it removed anyways and then followup.
I am more concerned that the issue also seems to be happening on QGroundControl, but because it refuses to load all of the parameters, all of the available vehicle settings are completely missing. This effectively makes it unusable. Maybe this is due to a difference in how QGC handles waiting for a response / timeout.
Could this be an issue with how the parameters are saved, or the flight controller bootloader or flash memory?
Could it be an Antivirus/antimalware issue on the computer you are using?
I’ve not noticed this issue with any recent firmware versions and there’s no similar reports.
I’m not saying it’s not a real issue, but I can’t see it being common.
I downgraded back to 4.2.3 and parameters loaded without issue again so I don’t think it is antivirus or anything like that. You’re right in that it may be specific to this setup, unfortunately. For context: I am using the Pixracer flight controller.
I discovered that part of the issue with QGroundControl was that I had installed an outdated version (4.1.1) from the app store for Android. On QGC’s downloads page they list it as being “temporarily unavailable” on the app store, so I downloaded the APK directly from there and it is now the most recent version (4.2.4). I can get the flight controller to connect quickly on APM 4.2.3 and QGC 4.2.4.
I now also have the latest version of Mission Planner, with same behavior as before.
EDIT: I tested with my own Pixracer using Copter-4.3.2 with a gripper enabled and the parameter download using a USB cable was extremely quick. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem, it just means that I couldn’t reproduce it. An onboard log might help us narrow down on what the issue is.
Thanks for the insight and apologies for the delay. Not sure I am even able to reproduce the issue now, it seems to have disappeared. Re-tested with the board powered over USB (without anything else connected) on 4.3.1 and then on one connected to a drone on 4.3.3 without any issues.
I will try to see if I have a log from when I was experiencing the issue and share when I get the chance, if you are still interested in exploring that.