I’m using APM 2.0.10 on OSX, with a 3DR Iris. I have the system armed, and my flight plan has waypoint 1 as “takeoff”. But, putting the system into auto mode, doesn’t take off. Nothing happens. I have successfully experimented with going to waypoints, landing, and taking off again, and that seems to work. But “takeoff” as the first step (waypoint 1) doesn’t seem to work. Is there some trick to doing this? Thank you.
It’s been my experience, doing exactly what you are doing, first arm the thing, then put it in Auto. It will not start the mission though until you begin to raise the throttle. Sort of startled me the first time I experienced it. I suspect the reasoning behind it is if it began its mission with the throttle control stick sitting on zero, and you then happened to switch to a non-Auto mode, it would fall from the sky.
Thanks. I’ll try that, and it may work. But it’s not fulfilling what I’m after. I’m trying to run autopilot missions 100% RC-free - just from my ground station. Is this possible? I’ll still have the RC handy for emergencies, but would like to be able to have it powered off, from start to finish. Is this possible?
You can arm, fly missions and disarm via the ground station features of Mission Planner and the telemetry radio setup. Or so I’ve heard, but I’ve never tried it myself. But it is possible, I just don’t know the details.
I’ve done plenty of missions where WP1 is Take-Off.
APM does not support RC free mode yet. To start an auto mission you need to ARM, followed by Setting AUTO mode, followed by raising the RC Throttle. As soon as that happens everything is autonomous.
You can set the APM if that it loses RC contact that it will complete it’s mission before entering a failsafe mode for loss of RC signal.