I got a brand new APM1 recently. I soldered it quickly. But when I tried to upload the firmware the mission planner could not detect the APM version. I have not debugged it completely bit seems that it does not have the boot loader. It also appears that the atmega328 does not have the PPM firmware installed.
When I power the board without connecting the Oilpan, I can see that.
- The power led is on
- The mux and the PPM led is off.
- Arduino is unable to communicate with the board.
- The mission planner is unable to detect the APM version.
I have more that one APM1 and on the other APM1 I see that when I power the rails. The mux/PPM activity led's are on and Arduino is able to load arduino sketch on it. So my wild guess is that there is no boot loader on the mega2560. I will try to connect my Atmel Dragon and see if I can communicate with the chip later today when I get back home.
Has anyone else seen a case where the mega2560 is missing the boot loader? Or something else is wrong with my board.?
Thanks
Replies
Hello Peter,
I had the same issue. No boot loader in Mega2560 and no PPM firmware in the PPM chip. I had to flash both and now it works fine. I have AVR Dragon, which I used to flash the bootloader and the PPM firmware.
Hello,
I think there is more to the missing bootloader than you might think. I am in the same situation here. But when I finish putting bootloader and upload APM firmware. I notice that the LEDs in the bottom board are different. Usually with APM1, there are 3 LEDs that are always on, red, blue, and yellow. Now PPM and MUX LEDs are always off (Blue and Yellow LED in the bottom shelf). Only the red LED stay lid. So I connect Mission Planner to this APM1 to find that there are no radio input even though I connect the R/C receiver to APM1. My guess is that they might miss PPM/MUX firmware on these boards too.
Best wishes,
Peter
problem solved. i had to burn the bootloader for the atmega2560. i can now connect to the mission planner!!!
Im in the same boat, does anyone know where i can buy a AVR ISP MKII programmer? radio shack?
Hi All,
When you first received your APM1 did you observe a blinking LED sequence that 3DR uses to verify the operation of the APM1 when you first powered the APM1 up? If you didn't, it looks like a batch of APM1s may have gotten out of 3DR before they completed testing them. I just received a new APM1 two weeks ago, but have not had a chance to solder any of the headers on the board. Once I do, I will power it up with my trusty FTDI cable to see if the blinking LED sequence is present. If not I guess that I am in the same boat as the two of you. Fortunately I do have an Atmel programmer so I can burn the boot loader and the mux/PPM 328.
Regards,
TCIII
Same problem here. I just got the 2560 apm1 and after soldering all the pins replaced the old 1280 apm1. I have had no problem uploading firmware to the 1280 using Planner or Arduino 101. Neither works with the new 2560. I suspected a bad boatloader or a hardware problem. I sent a message to 3D Robotics requesting an RMA but have not heard back.
When attaching the USB, the com port is recognized. When uploading the rx and tx flash a couple of times, the blue light is on solid on the shield and the red solid on the APM1 2560. Once upload is initiated the rx light flashes occasionally and nothing gets uploaded. The planner gives me an error-"unable to detect APM version"
What is you Atmel Dragon? Is there an easy way of uploading the bootloader?