Hello,
I am helping a friend setup his quadcopter with APM2. We have updated it to 2.7.1. We calibrated ESCs, we configured the Transmitter. It flew okay with unbalanced props. We flew it this one time.
We took the frame apart to move his ESCs inside the frame. After doing this it would not fly correctly. Throttle would jump from idle to over 50% somehow. As a result it hit the ground (perfectly flat on the landing gear) a little hard and he broke two props by hitting the legs on my BBQ.
We assumed ESC or Transmitter calibration needed to be redone. We redid the ESC calibration.
When we went to redo the Transmitter configuration the APM disconnected from Mission Planner during the configuration. WTH, eh? The Connect button in Mission Planner didn't reconnect it.
We reopened Mission Planner and tried again. Connect button still did nothing.
Disconnected APM from USB and reconnected. Then the Connect button worked. After just a few seconds, the APM again disconnected form Mission Planner. Connect would not work again until another unplug then replug into USB. However, the next time we got "USB device not recognized".
Unplug, plug in..."USB device not recognized". Unplug, plug in..."USB device not recognized".
Unplug, plug in.... Installed correctly (in Windows Device Manager), but Mission Planner won't connect.
Unplug, plug in.... Installed correctly (in Windows Device Manager), Mission Planner tries to connect but times out.
Each time we unplug it and plug it in again we get one of these three results. I have recorded several videos of this issue. Please check them out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClA7FffSrdA
We never get a flash of the Rx light on the APM any more.
We tried another USB cable and that did not help. Tried another USB port. There is no USB hub...
Another AMP2 (mine) connects perfectly. This shows that it has to be an issue with my friend's APM2.
If I connect to my working APM2 i see mostly Tx light and the odd very short Rx light blink. Likely a command or request from Mission Planner.
Replies
One thing that I've seen when USB connection and MP does that is that I reboot the computer and it goes fine again! :)
Strange but somehow super Windows gets confused. happen for me often as I test several boards when assembling them but I dont know what is causing it... Once it starts doing that no APM boards would work fine until I reboot the computer...
Try that first as I see your APM healthy (red/blue seems happy)
Also if you see no red/blue led try to let the APM powered on for like 2-3 minutes without connecting it... it may be doing things like formatting the memory card... after a short while it will start blinking happily again.
Not that it matters, but Mission Planners I am using is v1.2.4 mav 1.0.
We also tried the Reset button on the board. It made no difference. I suspect a hardware issue.