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Getting Started with ArduPilot.

Posted by Teejay on March 29, 2010 at 9:44am

Hi All,

While waiting for my EM-406A to drain it's batteries. (Seems that it's on binary mode...)

Already done with the Xbee connections. I managed to get a remote serial connection via the wireless link so... that's okay...

I was playing around with the ArduPilot board, and looking at the different features and functions.

Was wondering... is the attached 'screenshot' of my serial dump normal? Especially the line after "next_WP:#0" and I get a "no GPS, last 10s" in between the "+++ASP:0,THH:0,RLL:60,PCH:0,***
" lines, even on the debug/simulator mode...

As I have a EM-406A... once my GPS is thawed out... would I set it to NMEA (0) or SIRF (1)? And what's the cause of the EM-406A mysteriously going into 'binary mode'?

Many thanks in advance.

Regards,
Teejay

ardupilot_comchk.jpg

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ardupilot, em-406a, gps, newbie

Replies

Developer
Jason Short April 5, 2010 at 9:47am
Hi,

If you look at the string in raw format from the test app you will see this bit change from 0 to 1.
It's easy to see since it's at the beginning of the string
No Lock = A0,A2,0,5B,29,0,0, ....
Lock = A0,A2,0,5B,29,0,1, ....

You can see what the values mean here
```
No   YESA0     A0      Start Sequence

A2     A2      Start Sequence cont.

0       0        Payload Length

5B     5B     Payload Length cont.

29      29     Message ID

0        0       Nav Valid

0        1       Nav Valid cont.
```
Teejay April 5, 2010 at 4:11am

Hi All,

Now that the Easter festivities are done. I opened up my ArduPilot kit. And wired everything up together.

I have the blue shield board. And an EM 406 GPS.

Now... I left my ArduPilot rig (uploaded with the EM406_Tester file... and it's on the roof and linking up with it via the 900 datalink. And watching the progress via PuTTY

I am currently waiting for my GPS to get a lock. And getting a "no GPS, last 10s" for the last 5 minutes. Will leave the rig for a couple of more minutes to see if I get a good enough lock.

I don't know if my GPS is whacked or something. When I power up the board, there's a few seconds that the LED light on the GPS flash... so that must mean that the GPS is drawing power...

Really stumped... :(

-Teejay
Developer

Jason Short March 29, 2010 at 9:54am

Hi,
You want the 406 in Binary mode. It's much more efficient that way and easier to parse. In fact we only parse Sirf Binary for the 406.
The output looks normal to me. Can you try the 406 tester file on your Ardupilot? It should get lock and output lat and long *10,000,000 (You can't print floats from Arduino, only integers, so we leave off the ".")
Jason