dRonin 2016-04-09.2 Release ("Tanto").

This is the second major release of the dRonin flight controller firmware. It feels like we've made a lot of progress– and we hope you agree! Significant effort was put into usability, reliability, and the upgrade process, and new features like HangTime (low-power stabilization) are a lot of fun.

Please see our new documentation at: http://dRonin.readme.io

Jump ahead to: Changes / Errata & troubleshooting / Download files

This software is provided without any warranty. Use at your own risk!

Note (2016-04-28): This is a minor hotfix to the prior 20160409 release. Support is added for inverted SBus on Naze32Rev6 and Lux; behavior of PPM on Naze32 is improved; and an old defect preventing bootloader use on some Windows systems with ACPI buttons was corrected. There's no need to upgrade from a prior 20160409 if you're not experiencing these issues.

Major changes since last release:

• Upgrade simplified for all targets except Naze32 and PipXtreme. To upgrade, just start the ground control system and then plug in the flight board, and carefully follow the on-screen prompts. Further information is in the documentation. Note: you may receive some warnings about objects changing and fields being added during the upgrade process; this is normal.
• HangTime allows controlled maneuvering for a limited time at zero throttle in multirotors. HangTime should be used with switch arming and power settings that are well under hover power. See the HangTime documentation for more details
• Intelligent clipping management added to improve vehicle performance when motors are near minimum or maximum speed. In these cases, an "Actuators" alarm will fire that is visible on on-screen displays (Brain, MWOSD).
• The Naze32 rev6 flight controller is now supported.
• Telemetry and configuration subsystem is now considerably faster to connect and more reliable.
• Many modules are now automatically enabled or disabled based on port configuration.
• Further improvements to CCPM helicopter flight modes and configurability.
• Support for the Storm32 Brushless Gimbal Controller across most targets.
• Support for sending GPS data across MSP protocol to MWOSD.
• Support for OpenLog across most larger targets.
• Support for non-inverted SBus, for ports that do not have an integrated inverter or for radios that send non-inverted SBus.
• Significant improvements to performance of altitude-hold mode.
• Additional port types and configurations are supported on the Revolution, Quanton, and Colibri flight controllers.
• External magnetometers supported on the Revolution flight controller.
• New failsafe flight mode to allow deliberate triggering of failsafe behavior with flight mode switch.
• Improvement to board hardware configuration for Lumenier LUX and simulator targets.
• Retrofit of USB subsystem in ground control software eliminates a major cause of crashes and hangs.
• Included minimal version of Android GCS (as an .apk file for side-loading).
• Vehicle setup wizard now follows best practices-- no standard PWM output, enables spin while armed behavior.
• Freed resources-- CPU, memory, and flash-- across all flight boards
• Board-specific ADC pin names display in GCS to improve battery module usability.
• Ensured consistent support for receiver and telemetry protocols across ports on all targets.
• Renamed targets for usability: "revomini" is now "revolution", "coptercontrol" is now CC3D.
• Acro+ insanity factor is now configurable on the expert stabilization configuration pane.
• Actuator curve fit default value changed to 0.9; it is now configurable on the expert stabilization configuration pane.
• "Apply" button removed from most screens of GCS in favor of a single "Save" button.
• Significantly improved dialog to import saved UAV configurations.
• Bugs where objects could fail to save in the UAV Object Browser were corrected.
• Input wizard is much less likely to falsely detect axis activity.
• Various other usability and look and feel improvements to the ground control software.
• MWRate and Throttle PID Attenuation are now deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
• Development infrastructure and upstream libraries upgraded: Arm 2015Q4 tools, qt-5.51, STM32 Libraries.
• Ease of configuring Windows development environment improved.
• Python API augmented to have additional functionality to read configurations and to more flexibly handle logs.
• Windows installer now ensures that old files from previous installations are removed to prevent erratic behavior.

Errata & Troubleshooting

• Windows: If you are unable to communicate with the flight controller after plugging it in, please see this procedure for a possible solution.
• Windows: If using older Intel integrated graphics, you may need to follow this procedure to start GCS.
• Windows: If you receive the message "The program cannot start because MSVCR120.dll is missing from your computer," you must download the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime to proceed. Please download the vcredist_x86.exe version of the package. This is not usually necessary because most computers have installed software that requires this before.
• OS X: the application is unsigned; it is necessary to open Applications, right-click on dRonin GCS and select Open on the first launch.
• Linux: you will have to install .udev rules for the device. The .deb package attempts to do this automatically. To do this manually, download the udev permissions file and then run sudo cp _package.udev /etc/udev/rules.d/45-dronin-permissions.rules && sudo udevadm control --reload-rules . Also please ensure your user is in both the plugdev and dialout groups.
• Naze32: support is still early. There is no support for flashing boards in GCS. The procedure to flash a Naze32 is here.