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DeveloperPermalink Reply by Randy on September 1, 2012 at 4:45am

It's possible that the GPS is getting a 2D lock but not a 3D lock and that is why it's blue light goes solid while the APM doesn't (it won't go solid until it gets a 3D lock).  It's a bit unlikely that this is the problem though..sounds more like you APM is not getting any messages from the GPS.

I wonder if loading one of the GPS example sketches onto your APM would allow you to check whether the GPS itself is getting a lock.  I think this would work..

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Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on September 1, 2012 at 5:24am

Thanks Monroe and Randy. I have the MediaTek GPS. I have 4 of them.

I don't think it's a 2D 3D issue because MP reports zero satellites and doesn't even change the map. What is really strange is I was flying this with 2.5 (or maybe it was 2.4) for the longest time with no problems. Thinking back, occasionally I might have seen a solid blue on GPS and 0 sats in MP so I would just restart APM and that usually solved it. Since my last flight last week, it just stopped reporting any sats.

I have 4 of these GPS units and last night I took one out of my zerpherII that I know was working last time I flew it a month ago. I put it on either one of the APM1.4/1280 and still same problem.So this morning I decided to check the zepher. I put it's GPS back on and turned it on. Connected via xBee and all is well! I had to open up prior version of MP1.2.0.0 with mav.9 since I had arduplane 2.3.4 on it. So I know that is working and I'm guessing if I reverted to 2.4 then they others would work also.

I'm going to upgrade the zepher to 2.6 and hope it doesn't get the GPS problem. Then revert to 2.4 on the others. 2.5 would be better if I get GPS working on it?

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Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on September 1, 2012 at 6:39am

Yes definitely aware of that. I fly about 5-10 times per day if weather permits and this really came out of the blue. I'm starting to think it's a 2.6 issue with the 1280 boards which I know are not supported anymore but I'm trying to revert to a previous version to solve it. BTW, my APM2 can even get GPS indoors under a rebar full roof but the ones with the APM1 need to be outside.

Now I'm having trouble uploading with arduino1.0.1 which is probably because I never use it :) I guess there is not a way to use the MP to install older versions? Anyway the error I'm getting is Sketch too big and Binary sketch size: 128,882 (of 126976 byte max)

Something I'm doing wrong or do I need a special version of arduino to upload?

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Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on September 1, 2012 at 5:30am

OK it detected a 2560 in the zepher so I upgraded to 2.6 and GPS is working fine! Now I will revert to 2.5 or 2.4 on the others to see if their GPS comes alive again :)

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Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on September 1, 2012 at 6:55am

Satellites magically reappear in the sky above me after reverting to 2.4 :) I would like to try 2.5 but couldn't get that to install!?!

Now the red light is flashing as it waits for a 3D lock but it got 6 sats in under a minute and now has 3D fix.

I think what started all this was a loose molex connector on my GPS that I only noticed AFTER i upgraded from 2.4 to 2.6 and since 2.6 has a GPS problem with 1280 boards, I didn't catch it. Now the molex is resoldered on and both boards back to 2.4.

Let me know if it's possible to install 2.5 via Arduino or if I need a special version.

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Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on September 2, 2012 at 11:58am

Well to end this story, with a little bit of guessing as to what happened. I think the molex connector was working it's way lose which is why MP didn't report the sats. Then I did an upgrade from 2.4 to 2.6 not realizing that 2.6 has an issue with GPS and then went trying all my GPS units and cables. In the end it was just 2.6 and going back to 2.4 solved it along with resoldering the molex connector. Today after a very nice flight 1km away, I lost radio contact at about the same time I lost video and telemetry. Last thing I heard was changing to circle mode. Then I waited a couple of seconds to see if it would return but it didn't so I put it in RTL but not sure if it got the signal or wait till the 20 second limit to switch to RTL but for some reason it didn't happen and I lost it. It's not somewhere in the forest making company with a couple other lost craft :) Now I need to start my scratch build :)

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DeveloperPermalink Reply by Randy on September 2, 2012 at 6:24pm

F11,

     Well, that's a real shame.  There have been some stories of people recovering their frames even a year after they're lost (someone in Colorado handed Jason back his quad after a year and it still worked!)...but I suspect that's the minority of cases.  :-(.

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Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on September 4, 2012 at 3:24am

I live inside the largest urban forest in the world and it eats planes :) I've got two planes and a quad so 3 apm1's there plus some other equipment. I need to use a locator system before i lose more. Usually RTL is reliable but I think in this case it either stalled from a head wind when entering circle mode and crashed before the RTL kicked in. I hit it on my tx after a few seconds but I don't think I had good signal so it might have just went down before the RTL could do its magic. I'm thinking circle mode should take care of any throttle increases necessary but maybe it got down below the stall speed. I think also if I messed with the controls at all during the circle mode I could have caused it also. Since the telemetry was down I couldn't really know what was going on. Now I have a Yagi on its way to increase my xbee range along with a dipole for the plane side. Know of any low cost locator systems or maybe with the Yagi it's good enough. Within an hour I went to a good high location with my laptop to see if I could connect via xbee but no luck.

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DeveloperPermalink Reply by Randy on September 4, 2012 at 8:07pm

I'm thinking about trying to make a telemetry system that uses the mobile phone network using either this IOIO board from sparkfun, or the 3dr phone drone...don't hold your breath though 'cuz i have a few other things on my plate at the moment.

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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Hai Tran on September 5, 2012 at 10:50pm

I upgrade my APM1 (1280) from Arduplane 2.5 to Arduplane 2.6 and now Mission ground reports "No GPS"  and my airspeed sensor doesn't register any speed.

Same hardware, same configuration, just different software.

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DeveloperPermalink Reply by Randy on September 5, 2012 at 11:58pm

Hai,

    Maybe a good opportunity to take advantage of Chris's reduced prices on the 2560?  We officially stopped supporting the 1280 well over a year ago..i think it was 2 years ago.

    http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/apm-1-boards-now-at-clearan...

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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Hai Tran on September 6, 2012 at 9:37am

LoL but I had a APM2, and it suffered total loss of R/C twice, one X5 went in mid turn, and a second flew away on downwind leg.

According to another post, it was caused by Arduplane 2.5 code.  So with my APM1 I thought I better upgrade to 2.6, and it doesn't detect the gps or airspeed sensor, weird.

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