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APM not recognising receiver output - is it broken?

Posted by Andrew Bailey on January 1, 2011 at 2:41pm

Help please...

I have spent a very frustrating day today trying to set up my Arducopter with the new motors (the optional 880kv ones from FahPah) and new Hobbywing Platinum ESCs. The APM was working fine with the original ESCs and motors.

The problem is that, having wired everything up and initialised the EPROM I then tried to calibrate the radio and the configurator would not recognise any signal from the radio. I have checked everything, the receiver will drive a servo on all channels if attached them directly, but plugged into the APM does nothing at all. Even with the ESC's unplugged I get nothing. I have tried two different receivers and have rebound each of them multiple times.

So far as I can tell, the APM is working fine otherwise. I can see it in the Serial Monitor and the gyros and accelerometers are doing what they should. I can upload new sketches and it all seems to be working normally.

I am worried that the APM is broken. Have I inadvertently damaged it?

I am running the RC2 code.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Andrew

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Replies

  • Andrew Bailey January 13, 2011 at 8:39am
    Update on this problem. It seems like the APM was indeed faulty. A new one plugged into the Olipan worked just fine and my upgrade quad is flying. Thanks again to everyone who helped me on this.
  • Andrew Bailey January 2, 2011 at 12:03pm
    Thanks everyone for taking the time to look at this for me.

    I have separated the Oilpan from the APM and connected to the APM directly; still does not work. At least this means that I probably only have a bad APM, not the (expensive) Oilpan.

    I am going to order a new APM which should have arrived by the time I return from holiday on the 10th. I will report back once I have soldered it up and tried it out.

    Andrew
  • Developer
    Randy January 2, 2011 at 6:52am

    Andrew,

         I'm afraid i'm out of ideas.  Better contact Chris and/or Jordi and point them at this chat.  Maybe they have some other ideas.

    -Randy

  • Andrew Bailey January 1, 2011 at 6:00pm
    Just noticed a couple of things in the CLI.

    1. If I do a 'Calibrate min throttle value' it returns a value of 1200 irrespective of the position of the throttle stick

    2. If I do a ''Motor tester with AIL/ELE stick' it immediately comes up with repeated
    'Left Motor
    Right Motor
    Left Motor
    Right Motor
    Left Motor
    Right Motor'

    etc. without any movement of the right stick. Moving stick makes no difference at all. So it is as if the CLI is seeing repeated left AIL and right AIL inputs.

    Don't know if this helps at all....
  • Developer
    Randy January 1, 2011 at 4:03pm

    The CLI ESC calibration routine only works with the FahPah ESCs.  For other ESCs you'll need to calibrate them using whatever instructions came with the ESCs.  this will probably involve connecting the ESCs directly to the Receiver.

     

    As a test that you haven't broken anything, how about switching back to the original motors and ESCs that were working fine?

     

    If you have a voltmeter can you check the voltage comiung out of the ESCs?  probably best to check the voltage coming out of the power cable that comes out of the power distribution board.

  • Sebastian Gralla January 1, 2011 at 3:21pm

    can you run the motors through the configurator?

    if not, check your connections (did you interchanged in and outputs?)

  • Taylor Cox January 1, 2011 at 3:18pm
    Have you calibrated the ESC's using the CLI?
This reply was deleted.

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