Building ArduPilot Mega on Mac

Here how I set up Arduino to compile ArduPlane and ArduCopter on the Mac.

Install Arduino

• Download the latest 1.x release from http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software.
• Unzip and install into the Applications folder.

Download ArduPlane and create a working directory

• Get the newest copy of Arduplane from the Ardupilot repository.  I grabbed version 2.34.
• My home directory is /Users/mh, and my working directory is /Users/mh/apm
• Change to the working directory and unzip ArduPlane-2.34.zip.
• You should see these directories.  There's some others that you can ignore.

/Users/mh/apm/ArduPlane-2.34
/Users/mh/apm/ArduPlane-2.34/ArduPlane
/Users/mh/apm/ArduPlane-2.34/libraries

Connect your APM to the computer via USB

• IF YOUR APM IS ON AN AIRCRAFT, DISCONNECT THE AIRCRAFT BATTERIES OR REMOVE THE PROPS!
• No kidding, the props can spin up unexpectedly and send you to the hospital for stitches!

Run Arduino and configure the environment

• Run the Arduino program.  Restart it if it was already running so that it can see the APM USB connection.
• Set the CPU type: Tools / Board / Arduino Mega 2560 (AtMega 1280 for APM1)
• Set the APM serial port: Tools / Serial Port / /dev/tty.*usb*  The name will vary, look for tty and usb.
• Set the sketchbook location:  Arduino / Preferences... / Sketchbook Location
• Set it to the unzipped directory; In my case: /Users/mh/apm/ArduPlane-2.34
• Quit Arduino and Restart.
• Double check that the above three settings are still good.

Compile (Verify) the ArduPlane software

• File / Open... and navigate to /Users/mh/apm/ArduPlane-2.34/ArduPlane
• Open ArduPlane.pde.  This will give you a window with several files opened in tabs.
• Click the Verify button.
• After a while, you should get a message like "Binary sketch size: 157,232 bytes (of a 258,048 byte maximum)"

Upload to APM

• Click the Upload button.
• You should see the APM serial light blink furiously
• You should get the message "*******"

Working on the Arducopter software

• note: There's some unorthogonality with the downloaded Arducopter zip file.  There's no intermediate directory with a version number.
• Grab the newest copy of ArduCopter from the ArduCopter repository. I grabbed version 2.5.5.
• Unzip ArduCopter-2.5.5.zip  in some scratch directory.  This will give you two directories, Arducopter and libraries.  libraries is identical to the ArduPlane version, so you can ignore it.
• Delete the directory ArduPlane-2.34/ArduCopter
• Copy ArduCopter to ArduPlane-2.34.
• You should see the directory ArduPlane-2.34/ArduCopter.
• In Arduino, open the file ArduPlane-2.34/ArduCopter/ArduCopter.pde.
• Compile and Upload as described above!

Working with git

• The Arduplane projects are hosted on Google Code.  Get a Google account if you don't have one.
• Instructions for checking out are on the ArduPilot source page.
• You don't need to grab ArduCopter separately.  It will be in the ArduCopter directory as described above.  If you do grab it, it will have a single file pointing you to the ArduPlane repository.

Using command line tools

• There are notes in README.txt
• tl;dr: cd ArduPlane; make configure; edit ../config.mk; make; make upload
• I had to edit the following entry in libraries/AP_Common/Arduino.mk to add the -C parameter.

upload: $(SKETCHHEX)        $(AVRDUDE) -c $(UPLOAD_PROTOCOL) -p $(MCU) -P $(PORT) -b$(UPLOAD_SPEED) -U flash:w:$(SKETCHHEX):i -C /Applications/Arduino.app/Contents/Resources/Java/hardware/tools/avr/etc/avrdude.conf