I bought one of the Hobby King APM 2.7 boards last week and just got everything put together. As I understand it, the change they made was adding a capacitor to prevent the "bad gyro health" problem. Otherwise it's the same as an APM 2.5. I can't get it to arm though. I installed the firmware for my quad. I went through the mandatory hardware configuration with no problems. Calibrated the radio and then calibrated the ESCs using the all at the same time method. The motor tests works as it should. The artificial horizon in Mission Planner looks good. I don't have a GPS or external compass installed yet. No errors show in Mission Planner. I had to reverse some channels to get the PWM inputs right, but I'm pretty sure they are right. All of the modes are "stabilize" now which mission planner confirms on the artificial horizon screen, so that's good.
When I power up, the board does its initialization then flashes the red LED (single flash) indicating it is ready to arm and the ESCs do their battery check tune. But I've tried every direction of moving the throttle stick to try and arm it, and nothing happens. One odd thing I see is that the yellow and orange LED are lit at the front of the controller, and there is another red or orange LED that blinks there too. Do those mean anything? What else do I need to do to find the problem?
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so if the calibration radio is out of range, then APM does not want arm? really strange, why the reason? anyone can explain?
Paul Mayhan said:
I believe I have solved the problem. I did some reading and found an offhand comment that the radio calibration should show around 1100-1900 PWM. I had turned my throws all the way up, showing 900-1250 or so. I turned my throws down on the radio and recalibrated to get them all right at the recommended range, and the quad will arm now. So it looks like the APM controller has a little quirk that it wants to see the PWM that it's designed for. And if it doesn't see it, it doesn't work.
Hello Paul,
How did you do that? I been having the same problems for more than two weeks and it still doesn't arm.
Did you go to the radio calibration and moved the sticks no lower than 1100 and no higher than 1900? and then clicked on "completed" just like that?
Your answer will be very much appreciated,
Victor
Buddy it sound fishy but one thing is for sure and that is that I'm really disappointed in the APM controllers. Its the most annoying controller on the market. I've never seen a controller that has got so much software issues and hardware problems like APM. I've tried to get my setup right and didn't succeed in the last month on any forum with answers. I doubt that APM themselves knows whats going on with there controllers.
Hope you get right cause it seems like this APM thing just not going to get right.
Check your battery failsafe and also throttle fail safe settings.
I did turn off the pre arm check. Does that cover everything, or is there another check that would keep it from arming?