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3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on December 16, 2012 at 1:38pm

That's almost certainly your own code misbehaving. Load one of the standard firmware versions to confirm. 

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Permalink Reply by Christian Lopez on December 16, 2012 at 3:27pm

I'm getting some very interesting behavior, and I can't seem to trouble-shoot the reason for it.

Loading the standard Arduplane 2.8 through the Mission Planner, I can get a telemetry link with the USB through UART0, I can also get a telemetry link with a FTDI cable hooked up to the rx/tx Vcc/gnd pins of the UART0/UART2 (3DR Radio port).

When I am supplying Vcc and ground from the FTDI, but hooking up my XBee Sparkfun Adapter to the 3DR-Radio port, I get nothing through a transparent serial link. I noticed that the APM re-initialized when the adapter board is plugged in. I have checked the link, and the XBee's are paired correctly and talking to eachother in X-CTU.

Any thoughts? I have not been able to get my XBee modules (Pro S1 2.4Ghz) to work with the APM2.5 boards in general... is there a reason for this?

Thanks,

Christian

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Permalink Reply by Bharat Tak on January 21, 2013 at 12:02am

I had faced similar problem with APM 2.5.

- Telemetry was working with USB UART0 but not through the UART0/2 port(when powered by the PWR M&R port and Xbee unplugged, the AUTOMUX pad were as it is, i had not cut them)

- So, I thought I'd try to use UART2, so I cut the solder bridges on AUTOMUX pads and soldered the lower two pads as on the wiki. Then, I enabled 

// use this to enable telemetry on UART2. This is used
// when you have setup the solder bridge on an APM2 to enable UART2

#ifndef TELEMETRY_UART2
# define TELEMETRY_UART2 ENABLED
#endif

from the config.h file in Arduplane v2.68 firmware. Now, it was supposed to work with the USB plugged in, with telemetry on UART0/2 port. That did not work with the xbees either, so i tried the UART2 port available on the side of APM2.5, I was getting heartbeats at 1hz but no other data. I tried this without the USB and powered with the adapter, but the results did not change.

-Then, I Disabled the UART2 telemetry in the config.h file

// use this to enable telemetry on UART2. This is used
// when you have setup the solder bridge on an APM2 to enable UART2

#ifndef TELEMETRY_UART2
# define TELEMETRY_UART2 DISABLED
#endif

and resoldered the bridges to their earlier state(upper two pads, where we cut the wires), so the board was in its initial state(stock) and so was its firmware(no change). 

-Now I tried xbee telemetry on UART0 port on the side, not the default UART0/2, and it worked!

I cannot use the USB simultaneously with telemetry though, power it with an adapter.

So, I found that APM2.5 xbee telemetry works when

-Powered with adapter on PWR port  

-USB unconnected

-Xbee connected not on UART0/2 but on UART0 port(on the longer side of the board).

The google code wiki suggests that we can enable telemetry on UART2 also, by soldering the AUTOMUX pads as suggested(no suggestion on whether to ENABLE uart2 telemetry from config.h!, I happened to read the comments above that line and enabled it), but it still did not work.

Hence, currently, I am managing with just one port for telemtry, ie UART0, and it works fine for flying, but for HILS simulation I need to have both USB and Xbee telemetry(USB for FGFS etc and telemetry for someother communication i require). The two ports used to work fine on older APM1.4 boards, there seems to be some issue with APM2.5.

Could someone give proper instructions on using UART2 for telemetry with the USB connected ?

-Should we just change the "AutoMUX UART0" jumper on the bottom of the APM2.5 and not do anything to the config.h file ?

-Should we change the config.h file too ?

- Or should we follow the instructions on this page ?Instructions

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Permalink Reply by Bharat Tak on January 21, 2013 at 12:52am

I am sorry, a correction

I had faced similar problem with APM 2.5.

- Telemetry was working with USB UART0 but not through the UART0/2 port(when powered by the PWR M&R port and Xbee *plugged, the AUTOMUX pad were as it is, i had not cut them)..

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Permalink Reply by Christian Lopez on January 21, 2013 at 12:56pm

Interesting- I took a break from this problem to work on other aspects of my project. I'll be circling back around to the issue in the next couple days, and I will let you know if I get anywhere with it. I am hoping to utilize a debugging tool, so hopefully that will help pinpoint the problem.

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