I'm currently running a APM 2.5+ board on a skywalker 1880. Due to tightly packed electronics, occasionally the compass will give out bad reading and the "BAD Compass Health" warning will show on mission planner's HUD. Despite the error, the plane still flies perfectly. The problem is it will be in a competition soon, and I don't want the message showing up during flight with judges watching. Does anyone know if it's possible to disable that warning?
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Success! I mounted the external gps/compass and now my magfield reading is down to 263 and change.
I noticed that after I cut the trace (I have a 2.5 board) that the onboard compass still has a little influence in Mission Planner. With the PCB on the table, and the external gps/compass connected, I rotated just the PCB and the compass follows it. It does drift back to the heading of the external compass but I thought that was interesting. Anyway, I didn't think it would matter since they are both facing in the same direction.
Loiter works as advertised. RTL works but I have questions that I post in a more relevant thread.
Thanks!
Bill
sory, just want to know, what your magfield before u mounted your ex.gps? my magfield now is 306, what should the value of magfield be?
Bill,
great news.
The heading change when the board is rotated is coming from the gyros. We mix the two signals, so very short-term updates come from the gyros but long-term it comes from the compass.
Thanks Randy, that eases my mind a lot. :-)
Bill
Hello everyone,
I have APM 2.5 on an FW550 Hex and also have a Bad Compass Health message in Mission Planner. My magfield is always fluctuating between 499 and 502 no matter what I do.
mag_ofs_x is -92
mag_ofs_y is 64
mag_ofs_z is -47
I have done the following to try to improve the reading
1. Calibrated the mag outside - no luck
2. installed a 2.5" platform for the APM - no luck
3. ESC are on the underside of the arms
4. Battery is on the underside of the bottom platform (4.5" below APM)
I have attached a pic of what it all looks like.
I have ordered the external gps w/mag from 3dr in hopes that it will solve my problem.
Anyone have more advice for me?
Thanks,
Bill
APM 2.5 On Hexacopter
These are not a real issue. It's a false positive during the start-up of the board before the gyros are initialised and become healthy. In AC3.2 we delay the reporting of the gyro health until after they've initialised so this message doesn't appear. AC3.2 will be out soon but if you can't wait, maybe raising an issue on the Mission Planner's issue list to ask for the messages to be suppressed for 10 seconds after connecting to the board.
Here is where you want to look to see about disabling certain checks, or all for that matter, when booting up the APM:
http://plane.ardupilot.com/wiki/arduplane-parameters/#ARMING__Param...
Those are only checks specifically for Arming, they will not disable the "Bad Compass Health" warning
"These warnings about a critical control system not working properly are very annoying. Can't I just turn them off??"
:/
I know it's not exactly the answer you're asking for, but having the same problem myself plus bogus home-arrow readings, I just disabled the magnetometer altogether. Once the plane is moving the GPS will give all the directional info needed - to the APM and to the pilot. Unless you're doing auto takeoffs and need precise initial ground tracking from the compass....
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