Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Anthony Dao on June 23, 2012 at 9:21am

I have the same issue. The lockup can happen in manual or stabilize mode. I can duplicate the problem by rocking the board back and forth when I'm testing on the workbench. It would freeze up and then a minute later or something it will return back to normal.

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3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on June 23, 2012 at 10:16am

Sounds like a brownout. Move to a higher capacity BEC.

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Permalink Reply by Brian Mahaney on June 23, 2012 at 12:05pm

I switched the esc. this seems to have solved the problem. thank you.

Brian

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Permalink Reply by Brian Mahaney on June 23, 2012 at 5:54pm

I had a mostly successful flight this evening. after changing the esc, I did some testing on the bench. there were no problems so I decided to try some flight testing. Rtl worked flawlessly. Same with stabilize.  That was my intended test for the flight but decided to test th auto as well.  auto did not kick in, but since that was not on my initial test plan, Im going to call it a good night.

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Permalink Reply by Brian Mahaney on June 24, 2012 at 6:39am

UPDATE:  I flew again this morning.  I tested auto.  I found that my problem last night was that auto was set to different switch setting than I thought.  The plane hit all the waypoints beautifully.  I'm a very happy drone builder.

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Permalink Reply by Anthony Dao on June 24, 2012 at 9:11am

This is good news. APM2 is awesome and of course so is diydrones.com.

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Permalink Reply by Anthony Dao on June 23, 2012 at 12:30pm

@Chris

I didn't solder all the pins on the GPS board to the APM. So that may have caused the problem.

Bad news now. While trying to diagnose the problem I hooked a power supply with 12 v to output rail (I meant to set it to the recommended 5.3V +/- 0.5V), immediately I removed power, but  PC rebooted in response to the > 5V USB power input. After PC reboot the APM2 device isn't recognized anymore. The APM seems fine, GPS light, boot up sequence lights is good, etc. but I don't see the usual TX and RX lights blinking, the APM doesn't respond to the RC channel signals anymore,  I can't change mode.

Anyway I want to know if I could have done damage to my APM, or because of the high voltage, it corrupted the firmware? Please help me to diagnose. Since the USB isn't recognized anymore I can't reload software. If I did damage the hardware what should I do? What parts are typically damaged if 12V gets to the board?

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Permalink Reply by Tom Pa on June 24, 2012 at 1:07pm

The processor is rated 5.5vdc max. It has been stated anything over 6vdc will damage the board. 12vdc on a 6vdc max board should destroy it.  Sorry. Nothing another $200 should't fix.

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Permalink Reply by Anthony Dao on June 24, 2012 at 3:41pm

I ordered another one, but I think the MUX got damaged based on other discussions. I plan to rework the board, I will order a new MUX and mount it to see if that fixes the problem. I already reloaded the firmware via the ISP to the ATMEGA32U2, but that didn't fix the problem, so it must be a hardware issue.

I will use the new APM2 as reference to repair and diagnose the broken APM2. It's a learning process, at least in the future I could know how to repair the APM2 when something goes wrong, and help others.

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Permalink Reply by Andre on June 29, 2012 at 2:46pm

@Brian

Did you fly with std settings with the Rtl and auto flights

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Permalink Reply by Brian Mahaney on June 29, 2012 at 3:35pm

yes, all standard settings.

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Permalink Reply by Itzik Ronen on July 1, 2012 at 4:26am

Hi,

Sorry for jumping in the middle with a different problem and setup:

A very dangerous bug:

From time to time during automatic takeoff, the plane (not multirotor) became unstable and the “ball” looks very chaotic wail the plane is not moving at all.

Any ideas how to fix this

Thanks for helping,

Itzik

 

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