My Ardupilot 2.5 board experienced a fairly hard crash in my plane. I can see that the board is physically bent near the USB port (very slightly, but visible nevertheless).
When I connect to the APM, it does not see the dataflash card. When I press down on the chip, it sees it, so I guess one of the legs detached.
My question is, is it worth it to try and fix this? My basic soldering skills does not include re-mounting surface mount components!
Is it an option to try and find someone that can reflow the board? It seems to still be usable as an APM board, sans logging now, but I'd be weary of using it in something expensive. I am considering using it as a Quad controller board with some limited (in visual range) use of the Autopilot.
Any other suggestions?
Replies
You can probably repair it, if you can find someone who can use a reflow to get the flash fully seated its worth it IMHO. Have you tried testing the accels, magnetoms, compass....etc....as well have you tested the rails input and output. I would go through it head to toe, and then if its just a bent pcb with no breakage and a bent up dflash you can most definately use it again with confidence once repaired.