Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Damon Pipenberg on July 3, 2009 at 9:15pm

Jerry,
Sorry for the confusion, most of my reply was aimed at Bryan, who has been having trouble with the GPS LED.

In your case, I see no reason why RTL would not work, but it sounds like you need to do some more ground testing to make sure that the control surfaces move as they should. I think that there might be a minimum distance from the launch position that the plane has to be for RTL to work, but I don't have the code in front of me so don't quote me on that.

Of course, assuming that you are experienced flying RC, you could just manually fly up to a safe height, switch to RTL and see what it does... even if RTL isn't working, the stabilization should still work.

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Cuervo on July 4, 2009 at 4:02am

Jerry,
I was thinking along the same lines. How to get around the configuration utility to do some flight testing. One idea was to turn on the fake bearing (line 9-1 in the .h file) and hard code the flying altitude. Basically, the same idea as using RTL.

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Cuervo on July 4, 2009 at 4:13am

Sounds like your'e having good success Damon. How far have you progressed with your Ardupilot? Can you upload through the shield with the GPS attached? Are you able to read/write from the configuration utility?
No, I didn't have the jumper in before I turned on Ardupilot.
Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Paul Har on July 4, 2009 at 12:13pm

I had a lot of trouble with the config tool, I have 3 ftdi cables which configure as different com ports and I was forgetting to tick the box in the port settings as I was changing ports, for me this I think was my! main problem with config utility it works now

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AdminPermalink Reply by Thomas J Coyle III on July 5, 2009 at 4:54pm

Hi all,

If you are using the Adafruit FTDI cable to communicate with the Ardupilot, make sure that you have the latest FTDI drivers (2.04.16) installed on your PC.

Originally I could only upload with the GPS disconnected when using the Adafruit FTDI. An update to the latest FTDI drivers resolved the issue with the GPS being connected and not being able to upload. I did notice that the FTDI cable will not always reset the Ardupilot and will appear to hang though you will not get the usual upload problem message. All you have to do is manually reset the Ardupilot and the upload should proceed as normal.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
TCIII

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Permalink Reply by Jerry LeDrew on July 5, 2009 at 5:09pm

Bryan I just tried Damon,s suggestion by bending the pin 6 a side ....It reads ok but only writes the lat portion of the colum ....But to load the scetch file I have to reconnect pin 6...

Regards VO1ET Jerry.

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Permalink Reply by Earl on July 8, 2009 at 3:30pm

Works EVERY time now IF......
Ya got to hold yer jaw right !!

1. Pin 6 of FTDI on board bent out of the way.
2. Put finger ON reset button.
3. Point head north!
4. Do a read OR write operation and just before the read/write progress bar is all the way to the right, push and release reset button.
5. read or write success !

Works EVERY time now.

This is with Sparkfun's FTDI board. Either 3.3 or 5v model !
Earl


(Ya can SKIP step 3)

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Permalink Reply by Earl on July 8, 2009 at 3:52pm

Now for another part of the story...
I static zapped my autopilot board. The add on board is ok tho.

Here is where it gets unbelievable.

I have the the AutoStation board. It uses a 368 chip! Sooo.....

I loaded the autopilot 2.2.3 software on it and BINGO, the software WORKS.

I need to explain by WORKS. I hooked an LED between D7 and ground. Thats the gps lock light.
The gps data output goes to pin 2 input line of the XBee connector. (No XBee)
FTDI cable on its normal place. Run the ground station softeare (Labview based) and Bingo again. Choose the port the FTDI cable is on and watch the readings. For the battery monitor, I but a 100k pot from + 5 to ground. The center wiper I connected to analog input #A5. When I vary the pot, the battery monitor on the ground station varies !
You can do the same for the pitch and roll #A0 & A1 if you want to watch the pitch and roll on the ground station.

I was going to use (and I did try) a sparkfun 168 board, but the 2.2.3 code is too big for the 168. Anyway, don't be afraid to EXPERIMENT around.

Earl

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