Hi,
I got my APM 2 board 1 month ago and have been using it for HIL simulation and it has worked fine, I was just finishing assembling my Bixler today and was just finishing to install all the electronics when the APM2 suddenly stopped working, what I think happened is that one of the pins around JP1 or Uart0/2 (see attachment) got shorted to one of the balance plug pins on My LiPo battery, at least when I was putting the APM on its place, it suddenly lighted up the LEDs without beeing connected but then I saw that the balance connector on the battery must have came in contact to one of those pins and fried something, now if I connect my LiPo to the BEC and the BEC to the APM and put jumer J1 on (which should power up the board) nothing happends. but if I connect the APM with USB to my computer then I get the GPS lock LED blinking (no GPS lock because I am inside) blue LED (C) is blinking and yellow LED (B) is on then I have both the orange RX and TX LEDS blinking very fast and the green LED which is close to the RX and TX LED is on. but if I try to connect to the board using APM planner I get the message shown in the attachment "no heatbeat packet received"
what do you guys think went wrong? is this fixable? I am electronic engineer and I have access to professional soldering equipment and tools at my work, so I should be able to do something, but I just dont have a clue what is wrong with the board... any suggestions? please... :)
Replies
I was just checking the Eagle files, both board and schematic, on the attachment I marked the JP1 pin which should be connected to VCC refering to the schematich, how ever if I measure it with my multimeter I get no connection between this pin and VCC. but there is one other thing, the chematich shows that this pin should be connected to VCC but it is not routed on top or bottom layer, is the PCB more than 2 layers? is it on a hidden layer?
not connected.PNG
and if I try to upload firmware to the APM I get the message "cant detect your APM version. Please check your cabling.
If I go to device manager on my computer then I can see the "Arduino Mega on COM 5" so there is something working
downloading firmware.PNG
device manager.PNG