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.
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?