Hello Folks !
I'm new here, glad to join this community. It's been a while I'm struggling with issues regarding my drone, I've been looking for hours around so here I am asking for some hints.
I am building a quadcopter with a Multiwii & Megapirate AIO Flight Controller. I would like to control it from a groundstation.
This is why, instead of a regular RC transmitter / receiver, I purshased 2 Xbees series 1.
One is connected to my PC through a sparkfun USB Explorer Dongle (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11697), and I modified the wiring on my board to attach a SparkFun XBee Explorer Regulated board (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11373) hosting the other Xbee (this little board manages the voltage for the xbee and has a PWD, DIN, DOUT leds to check if things work well). As for the controller, I connected a logitech extreme 3d pro joystick to my PC.
When I open Mission Planner, I can definitely configure my joystick using on the config/tunning tab. I can also connect my board to MP, and on the flight data tab, I can totally see my gyro in action, with the horizon line tilting as I move the board.
BUT problems are :
1 - I loose my joystick. No response whatsoever from the Flight Data / action / joystick screen
2 - And appart from the horizon line tilting it's like my RC don't work at all. If I run the Initial Setup / Wizard for instance, on the RC calibration step, nothing changes.
Few things I remarked :
- on the SparkFun XBee Explorer Regulated board hosting the Xbee on the flight controler only the DIN led blinks up. No DOUT. I checked the TX/RX connections though and they seem to be ok.
- On the terminal tab in MP, if I connect through the wire to the board, I see a nice text. However, if I connect via the XBEE port, the text is only composed of random letters and signs. I supposed it had to do with baud rate, but I double checked the Megapirate APM_Config.h and the rate I set is :
#define SERIAL0_BAUD 57600 // Console port (115200 par défaut)
#define SERIAL2_BAUD 38400 // GPS port (38400)
#define SERIAL3_BAUD 57600 // Telemetry (MAVLINK) port (57600)
And I checked I set 57600 on MP. I also tried differents baud rate but no luck.
- also, I sometimes test without connecting the motors / battery. I don't know if that can be a problem when I deal with RC / joystick.
If you have any idea, I'll be glad to hear it. Thanks a bunch guys, have a nice one !
Beauregard
PS : I attach my config settings
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