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I have been working with the 0.56 release this summer and have found the following anomaly. This system will hold a good course for a period of time which may be minutes or hours. Eventually, the course begins to drift to port. The commanded course remains the same and the system is actively steering but it progressively goes further and further off course. I get these results whether in nav, gps, or compass mode. When I moved to 0.56, I carefully copied all the gain settings from 0.24 which continues to work well.
I like the new features in 0.56 but holding a course is more important. Has anyone else experienced this or have any insights or suggestions?
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Are you running on the same hardware? Did you revert back to 0.24 and the problem stopped??
How does the commanded course compare to the reported course?
Did you try locking the compass calibration once completing a circle. maybe it performed an update that was actually wrong.
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this is most likely the issue.
You need to ensure the compass calibration is unlocked and complete a full 360. At this point the calibration should update with new bias and the points fall on the sphere. Now the heading displayed should change by 90 degrees or so when you turn 90 degrees and make sense (it may still have an offset you can manually enter)
Once this looks good I would try locking and trials. This is true for both versions.
Before calibrating be sure to level the sensors to the boat.
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what does it show for compass bias figures? Maybe a hardware problem but can you even maybe plot the data using the pypilot scope?
It can be difficult to calibrate dismounted. A likely reason one version may work but not the next would be alignment. Be sure to level the sensors once mounted to the boat and the boat is sitting still.
Another issue is possible magnetic interference from metal objects. Is it possible somehow this could have caused issues testing version 0.56 and it didnt occur when testing 0.24 making a false conclusion?
I am a little confused how the older version would work but not the newer, the logic is not much changed in steering only interface improvements, but if you can verify this it would be helpful. It seems like your observations could be correct but are not scientific. Myself and several other people have verified the new version as working and there are actually still a few minor bugs (some fixed in github but not 0.56) but nothing related to steering as you describe.
