Hi!
I have currently bought an APM 2.6 board and intend to use it for Hardware-In-The-Loop simulations in X-Plane 10. However, when I flash the ArduPlane firmware I get a message from mission planner telling me "bad gyro health" and the sensors seem non-responsive. I've read some other threads about this issue and I gather that it is a rather common problem with the APM board. Yet, I have not found a fix for this. I've checked the 3.3 V regulator and it seems to be working fine. To my understanding, gathered from other forums, the problem is that the SPI bus rate have been increased to 8 Mhz with the recent firmware. How can I lower the SPI bus rate?
Also, different firmware versions give me different sensor problems. The ArduPlane 3.2.3 tells me "bad gyro health", ArduPlane 2.78 shows "bad GPS health" and ArduPlane 2.76 says "Bad Compass health". I appreciate any help I can get on this.
Replies
Hi,
I have gyro problem too. I just started to play with my HKPilot32 (pixhawk clone). Haven't flown him yet but just rigged up HIL with an ArduPlane 3.3 firmware and mission planner and x-plane 10.
I get bad gyro health only when connected in HIL mode. I set HIL parameter via flag, which great way for to set HIL!. It saves looking for HIL firmwares or compiling source. I checked I2C volts and I've got 5v showing. So looks like a new reg for me.
Sorry, doesn't really answer your question but may help someone else.
edit: This seems like a solution to my issue. I'll try this report any improvement.
http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/ac3-1-rc5-spi-speed-problem?id=70...
Cheers
Had another look at the i2c voltages. Turns out the voltages are fine. I was probing pin 1 & 4.
These pins should be 5v. Probe 2 & 4, 3 & 4, give 3.3v.
So the regulator should be fine. Maybe a problem with the HIL mode? As autopilot seems fine in standard mode.
One thing to add, when I'm in HIL mode, terminal CLI gives HIL_STATE and these characters. Is this because the pixhawk is not initialising?
Couldn't work out the bad gyro health issue when using Mission Planer and Arduplane. It's really strange that the problem only manifests while in HIL mode. I wish I knew.
However, I did manage to get HIL working with qgroundcontrol and px4autopilot. I suggest anyone having problems with HIL and arduplane, consider using PX4's autopilot instead.