Developer





During the alpha testing phase with the "APM Copter V3" code
i immediately reported to the Dev Team that the Loiter mode was very accurate but is not allowed to fly normally, like with other system as DJI and Mikrokopter, Zero-UAV, etc.
We preferred to make the Loiter mode that would serve to accurately reposition the multirotor, and to help beginners to fly slowly and safely.
An italian friend and developer, Sandro Tognana, collected my challenge and started to develop a flight mode as I wanted, in line with the other famous flight control board.
Another awesome programmer, Julien Dubois, has joined our team and has worked actively to implement the complicated wind compensation.
After several months of development and testing are pleased to present the "Hybrid flight mode", in two words a "flyable Loiter" with wind compensation, the code virtually switches from "Loiter" to "Alt-Hold" and viceversa when you exit and enter a sticks deadband (configurable), considering of course the compensation of the wind, therefore complies with the tuning of your multirotor.
You can configure some parameters but already with the default works perfectly, my video speaks for itself.

This new mode is currently being debugged (in alpha phase), it is therefore not available to the public, of course, will have to go into the hands of APM Copter Dev Team who will decide whether to adopt it in an upcoming release.
The results in my video are great, sorry but the audio is bad because it was very windy today, however, is clearly seen as a "Hybrid" works, is almost perfect.
In the second video by Julien you can see the Hybrid in action vs a "DJI Phantom 2" quad with "Naza 2" inside, imho Hybrid work better than the "GPS Position Hold" of DJI, especially on braking.
The tests were carried out on APM and VR Brain, but of course will work on any board that installs "APM Copter" as PX4 and Pixhawk.
I will keep you updated on the "Hybrid" developments, i'll open a discussion about this with other APM Copter developers to assess any changes in the code.

I want to say thanks to Sandro and Julien for their great work!

Bests, Marco

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Comments

  • Has this made it into released code yet? Is it a problem if my ground station says unknown mode?
  • i wasnt able to use this mode,

    i have created a similar mode using my transmitter, going to test it tomorow and see if this is any good.

    you can check my video on what is it i have done,

  • Hi Marco. I am unable to use Hybrid Mode / PosHold with my Walkera QR-X350-Pro (APM Copter 3.2).  Loiter works fine, but it does not change into the mode in Mission Planner when I activate PosHold.  Nor does it work flying. 

    Any idea why?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  I noticed a few other people posted experiencing the same problem with their QR-X350-Pro.  Thanks for your great work, Brother!  ;)

    - BaNe

  • this is sweet.   awesome work guys.

  • PosHold is only available with 3.2 beta firmware.

    have you upgraded your pixhawk with beta version?

    Try rebooting your pixhawk after loading the new firmware and before tryed to set it up.

  • I have latest MP 1.3.7 and Pixhawk firmware. Today I connected and checked flight modes but PosHold is missing.

    What could be wrong?

  • Thanks for the fantastic new mode guys.

    Agility of AltHold but with wind compensation and smooth braking back to Loiter when sticks released + auto coordinated turns. No problems taking off and landing in this mode (did this several times this weekend).

    This really pulls it all together - very very good.

  • Thank you Tom i really appreciated guys. :)

  • Developer

    Right!

  • Marco, could you rename the title of this blog?

    eg: hybrid (pos_hold) flight mode....

This reply was deleted.