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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Morli on February 13, 2010 at 5:43pm

Hi Colin,
Exactly same story here until I figured out whats was wrong, Are you using level converters if your radios are 3.3v TTL ? you need to cross the rx-tx one side , I had similar issue , once connected via logic converter and respective power supply system , the data radios started working. My setup for airside( without the original radio development board

AC4790 data radio >straight 4 wire connections to LV side > logic converters>HV side> rx tx crossed> RS232 to USB breakout( you could leave this and connect to your AP serial port

note: Reduce power to lowest while bench testing else garbage,
Note the port no in ftdi side bar and you could use windows hyper term to test also.

Ground side( GCS) could use similar setup or you can use the development board with radio piggy backing.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Hoi on June 12, 2012 at 11:17am

Hey Morli,

I'm using the Xtend modules with the APM2 as well.  I haven't gotten it working yet (waiting for a "test" module to come in that I'll connect to the APM2), though.  I set the Baud rate for both the RF and TX transmitting to 9600 and the TX power level to 10 mW.  The APM2 has a 5V pin and the board voltage (as X-CTU tells me) is 4.95V.  Do I still need a logic level converter?  Or can I connect the wires as follows:

APM2                                    XTEND MODULE

RX ----------------------------------------DI (pin 5 on the picture)

TX ----------------------------------------DO (pin 6)

+5V -------------------------------------VCC (pin 2)

GND ------------------------------------GND (pin 1)

I do not have the APM2-side Xtend hooked up to a developer board (I have a RS232 to TTL converter, though), as it didn't seem that that was necessary.  Anyways, will the above configuration (with no logic level converter) work?  Or do I need the converter?

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Permalink Reply by steven jones on June 12, 2012 at 3:52pm

I have had successes with the Xtend Module using the logic converter from the Xbee pro interface PCB on my APM1.

as above reducing the Transmit power of the module is a must for initial bench test as i had issues with the APM directly powering the module.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Hoi on June 20, 2012 at 7:17am

Hey Steven, how did you configure the Mission Planner GCS to interface with the Xtend?  Still confused as to how everything needs to be configured on the GCS side.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Hoi on June 22, 2012 at 11:22am

If you're still interested, Colin, (or anyone else following this discussion), I'd refer you to my discussion -> http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/xtend-apm2-gcs-solution-and-more-...

I found a few solutions that work well.

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