Finishing up APM2.0 Support

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wingspinner
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Joined: Wed May 09, 2012 4:26 pm

Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by wingspinner »

Hi Folks,

I'm in the final stages of finishing up and testing support for APM2.0 in multiWii. My questions are as follows:

1. What is the best method to get this out to others for testing
2. How does one get a commits permission or at least the capability to start a branch for online reviews
3. What is the preferred method for review and getting such things integrated in the trunk. Who are the key players?
4. Which directory should I be working with under trunk for the basis of the code. Currently I'm working with "multiwii_shared" is that correct?

Appreciate the help.

Thanks,
Ron
(WingSpinner)

Alexinparis
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by Alexinparis »

Just for curiosity:
AP team decided to build a nice board dedicated to AP code.
I supposed people buy it to run AP code on it.
Why is the reason for running multiwii on it ? just a fun challenge ?

So for the questions:
1 - the best way is to publish your code and communicate on it so that other can test it.
2 - you can PM me and give my an @email if you want an access to multiwii googlecode repository. This way you can start a branch and communicate easily on it.
3 - before integrating anything in the trunk, it must work. And there must be an interest for the community. no formal rules and no money.
4 - multiwii_shared is the most up to date code, but it not bug free.

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UndCon
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by UndCon »

With the Oilpan the MultiWii was running OK so why not?

//UndCon

PatrikE
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by PatrikE »

I have a Brand New APM2 to test with...

wingspinner
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by wingspinner »

Alexinparis wrote:Just for curiosity:
AP team decided to build a nice board dedicated to AP code.
I supposed people buy it to run AP code on it.
Why is the reason for running multiwii on it ? just a fun challenge ?

So for the questions:
1 - the best way is to publish your code and communicate on it so that other can test it.
2 - you can PM me and give my an @email if you want an access to multiwii googlecode repository. This way you can start a branch and communicate easily on it.
3 - before integrating anything in the trunk, it must work. And there must be an interest for the community. no formal rules and no money.
4 - multiwii_shared is the most up to date code, but it not bug free.


In answer to your first comment about the APM, 3DR makes the APMs and they are a "for profit" company owned by Jordi Munoz and partnered with Chris Anderson. Chris and Jordi will both confirm the "for profit" nature of the business. Despite that, 3DR and AP appear very intertwined which might explain why you have the perception you do. I quote some of this from their website so it's not new news.

WRT - Why run multiwii on it? Why not? Why run multiwii on any board? I don't understand why you ask that. Is there some reason not to?

For me, it's as you say - a really nice board that's compact. It has a full suite of sensors including a GPS. It can support up to 12 ESC's and it's Arduino compatible so it's not dedicated to AP code by any means and I happen to have about 5 of them in various configuration of copters and it's pretty trivial to get it running. I thought it would be fun to take a few hours to get it MW running and try it out with without having to swap out all my hardware and if there were interest I'd give it to the MW community. If not, doesn't really matter to me although I have seen a number of posts from people asking if there is APM support.

With regards to your answers, #1 was my question but you answered it with #2. However, I'm a bit puzzled with the comments about "rules", "money", and questions. Never had anyone say those sorts of things to me before when I was offering free code to an open source project. Is there some sort of politics going on between MW powers that be and AP powers that be? Certainly dont' want to be involved in that.

In the interest of full disclosure, I've also been trying to develop some stuff for other open source projects and recently also AP - specifically some fairly simple support for UltraPWM (because I have an XA650V8 and don't want to change ESC's and others have requested it also) as well as some improvements for helicopters (I'm trying to get an FPV traditional heli going also). I'm not part of their official "dev team" though - which has made a very small project into an unexpectedly larger challenge and I'm contemplating just posting a patch for those that want to use it.

I got the impression that it's a bit more laid back with MW. I'm not looking to like take over development (of anything). I just want to do interesting and fun stuff that's useful to me and others.
The only minor challenge I've had is the MPU6000 and the MS5611 baro use SPI which isn't a big deal - took me one evening to write all that. Now, my only minor question is at the moment, not being all that familiar with multiwii, it seems apparently you don't read the gyro/accel on any particular time basis nor do you use interrupts. It seems you just loop through as fast as all the other tasks will allow and you block for some period of time waiting for samples but if they don't come quickly you just zero them all out and continue? Is that how it works? It's a different approach than most so just confirming.

Anyway, I'm onboard with the program as long as there aren't some sort of politics going on.

Cheers,
Ron

wingspinner
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by wingspinner »

UndCon wrote:With the Oilpan the MultiWii was running OK so why not?

//UndCon


Oilpan is fairly different from APM2.0

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Hamburger
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by Hamburger »

Ron,
take it lightly.
In the recent past the developers had to bear with
- code theft (MWii is GPL open source) through a chinese no name entrprise,
- new users petitioning and otherwise trying to enforce their points of interest on the developers.

We are a solid base of long time developers but we are less accustomed to dealing with this latest breed of contacts. The social and technical structures are tuned to a well meaning, positively inclined group of developers and users. We have just begun to find our way between our goals, our actions and the widespread thoughts, ideas and demands of this broader range of users (like rest of the universe).

So go for it; register with Alex and publish your branch (derived from _shared). It is the MWii way and we all have gone that route.
Hamburger

Katch
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by Katch »

I'm in support of this. Don't currently own an APM but it's a board that has always interested me.

I think the porting of MWC to different hardware platforms is a positive thing. It attracts new developers and new points of view which lead to positive evolution of code and new features.

LenzGr
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by LenzGr »

Katch wrote:I'm in support of this. Don't currently own an APM but it's a board that has always interested me.

I think the porting of MWC to different hardware platforms is a positive thing. It attracts new developers and new points of view which lead to positive evolution of code and new features.

Fully agreed. I'm currently working on porting MWC to the ArduIMU v2 (flat), it's a great learning experience (and I'm almost there!).

wingspinner
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by wingspinner »

Hamburger wrote:Ron,
take it lightly.
In the recent past the developers had to bear with
- code theft (MWii is GPL open source) through a chinese no name entrprise,
- new users petitioning and otherwise trying to enforce their points of interest on the developers.

We are a solid base of long time developers but we are less accustomed to dealing with this latest breed of contacts. The social and technical structures are tuned to a well meaning, positively inclined group of developers and users. We have just begun to find our way between our goals, our actions and the widespread thoughts, ideas and demands of this broader range of users (like rest of the universe).

So go for it; register with Alex and publish your branch (derived from _shared). It is the MWii way and we all have gone that route.
Hamburger


Hamburger,
Ok, thanks for the note. I guess I'm still twitching from my recent experiences getting run through the wringer with the AP team who seem to have a similar situation.

The two issues you point out - code theft, and "new users" have nothing to do with someone simply wanting to contribute some code that expands the usage of your software. I mean asking if one can submit some code is not a precursor to "code theft" - one can simply download it and if you control the trunk how can someone "force their will on you". I mean you guys own all the permissions and are in full control of everything so you simply don't accept their code or ban them from your forum if you don't like what they are doing. So those are simply not issues as far as accepting code contributions. My feeling is it's more along the lines of "we can't just say no because we are supposed to be open source but we really aren't that interested in the contribution".

WRT your note, I too have been a developer of both open source and commercial for many years myself but I'm writing the code for myself and for fun - not looking to take over anyone's job. The only reason I made my original post was to try and make my contribution within whatever system you have in place so as not to step on any processes that are in place - not force anything.

Quite frankly, while I appreciate your kind note (it was more of the kind of response I originally expected), your description of the group along with the initial reply from AlexPairs leaves me feeling that it's an uphill effort. I"m only in this for fun plus I have limited time and I don't have the inclination to go where there is resistance. So I apologize if somehow I didn't follow the right process. In any case, I've already sent a PM to AlexParis and for now I'll pass on the offer to put my code up as a branch. Perhaps at a later date if the MW team is interested.

My suggestion is that, in the future, if you guys really do want non-team contributions it might be good to just take offers at face value and welcomely and only after there is clear evidence to indicate there is a problem take action.

Best regards,
Ron

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shikra
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by shikra »

Ron - I think you are taking response the wrong way. maybe thats from other threads, but not something we see here....
Also remember English is not everyones first language. It can make a difference sometimes....

palton
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by palton »

I would like to see APM 2.0 support for multwii. Would be nice..

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dramida
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by dramida »

+1 for porting to apm2

tovrin
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by tovrin »

This is actually the nicest development forum ive had the pleasure of watching grow. hope you hang around Ron

Alexinparis
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by Alexinparis »

Hi,

Sorry if there was some misunderstanding.
When I say "no formal rules and no money", it's just to indicate everyone is free to create its own branch and it's obviously free.
There is no official dev team, and there is no hidden politics with AP guys ;)
APM is for me just another FC board where we can put some code on.

My first question is really a curiosity, because I thought that someone buying this board is oriented toward AC code.
Apparently, there is another public buying this board just because it's a nice piece of hardware.

wingspinner
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by wingspinner »

Ok, my apologies if I took it too seriously. I'm guess I"m just feeling like open source should be fun - not tense.

Let's do this. Once I have it complete and tested out on my own machines in a few days I'll give you guys the code and you can do with it what you will and if you want to give me credit fine but if not no big deal. In the meantime, if someone could answer my question confirming about how you do gyro/accel sampling I can finish up my code and send it over to you.

Regards,
Ron

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dramida
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by dramida »

As the sun is shining and sky are blue, your credits will be written in credits.txt

janeczku
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by janeczku »

Any update on the APM2 code? is it in the repository already?

jajlaney
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by jajlaney »

I realize it's been a year since the last post here, but where could I find your source code for running MulitWii on an apm. I am very interested

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Crashpilot1000
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by Crashpilot1000 »

Has anyone a working mwii port for apm 2.x? I just ask since I have an APM 2.0 collecting dust, since the orig soft managed to let me down once too often.... and I am fed up with that. BTW the 3.3V reg is still working, because I didn't flash their killerpoke soft.
Probably it is the most hasslefree idea to sell/trash it.....
Cheers
Rob

kataventos
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by kataventos »

Crashpilot1000 wrote:...because I didn't flash their killerpoke soft.
...trash it.....
Cheers
Rob


:mrgreen: funny, yesterday I saw your post on DIY_D (December 31 11:42am) ... you´r right, what a joke.
About your board... sell it 8-)

Cheers,
-KV

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Crashpilot1000
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by Crashpilot1000 »

@kataventos: I think Pixhawk buyers will have a very good chance to take a voltage - issue - bath again: http://en.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1 ... ce/ceft2vz . Maybe they should start to sell soap and call it *GLITCH*.

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Crashpilot1000
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by Crashpilot1000 »

@kataventos: Sorry for reviving that old thread but I could not resist: http://tinyurl.com/o697ha3

DermagraFX
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by DermagraFX »

Hi guys, Im new here and to the multiwii scene.
I realize this is an old topic, but I would like to get some info along these lines also. I have an old APM ver 1.4. Atmel 1280 with full oilpan. I have never actually got it to fly, although I have used the APM 2.6 and Pixhawk successfully.
I cannot for the life of me find the old files etc to try again with my old board, but I just found it again after many years and it actually has code on it and I can connect to an old configurator and it is working, but I do not know what version of code is on it and cannot connect with the mission planner of aNY flavour.
I just built a promini with 10 DOF board attached and it works well with 2.3 MW.
I would like to put maybe 2.4 MW on the old APM 1.4 and use all the functions of the oilpan etc with all the functionality of the GCS and autonomous wp with multiwii setup,
My question is, how possible and/or difficult is this going to be for me to do? Has anyone done it with any version of MW and the APM boards?

Thanks in advance. I look forward to setting this up and putting this anchor board in the wind.

copterrichie
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Re: Finishing up APM2.0 Support

Post by copterrichie »

Question please, was the code ever made public and available for downloading? If so, is there a link?


Thank you.

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