Diagnosing my new 3DR hexa, I noticed in the CLI, it reports COMPASS INIT ERROR.
Running CLI's compass test prints out "not healthy". I also built a second APM1.x today, no issues and it too reports the same error. The 3DR magnetometer came with the kit. The other was pruchased a few months ago.
Checked my Y6 and coworker's hexa which I built and no issues, compass works fine and the test pass.
Do I have 2 defective magnetometers? Is there a way I can check it with the volt meter or some other tool? Both I received from the 3DR store.
Replies
OK, now here's a possible board issue... but good thing is I got the second APM to work!
Here's the story:
I noticed the altitude was printing out -2147483648 for a value in MP, though GPS lat-long looked fine.
Running the CLI test on compass--it showed not healthy (ok been there done that). But now, showing alt: it was the same as in MP: the alt was the large number (i.e. null, signed 2^32 basically), temp was 0, raw temp and press were 0. Weird I thought, so off I go to desolder the compass again to the point I just say s'd it just buy a new oil pan.
Instead of a glob of solder on all 4 pins, the compass was still lightly soldered at this stage. By chance I hooked it back up to the USB and started the CLI and viola the compass initialized successfully and the baro was working fine!
I re-soldered the 4 compass pins and bang: compass init error! slightly desoldered and success! Resoldered the gnd and Vcc and still works, so something is leaking voltage into the SDA/SCL pins. I did wiggle and probe tests and I'm pretty sure it's not a mechanical connection issue. Makes me want to use the i2c cable for all my compasses in the future rather than soldering directly.
(barely soldered at the top of SCL/SDA pins, noticed the amount of solder on Vcc/Gnd--having the same amount on the SDA/SCL pins caused the compass to fail initialization and likely shorted something out such that the baro stop working too)
Just got 2 new magnetometers. Tried one via i2C cable port (voltmeter shows power, continuity on i2c pins).
Still get a compass init error in the CLI, test show 'not healthy'... on both APMs
Everything else on both oil pan checks out. Is there anything else I can check? I cannot accept I had 2 bad APMs--one from the 3DR hexa kit and one purchase months ago.... Running APM firmware 2.5.3 on both. Now makes me think my original compasses were fine(!).
I'm not seeing any issues here. Did you solder on your compass yourself? If so, check those connections.