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No satellites found, how to determine which unit is broken, uBlox GPS or Pixhawk?

Posted by Mathias on July 9, 2014 at 3:44pm

Hi,

Had a small tip over incident yesterday while landing in windy conditions. My GPS mast broke. Nothing big and had it fixed today, To my surprise I can't get a GPS lock after the incident. The uBlox blue GPS led is flashing as it is locked but in apmplanner2 I can see that GPS HDOOP is 0.00 and satellites_visible is 0.00. I don't know the exact meaning of GPS heading but that value is not zero and if I rotate the GPS that value changes so that parameter seems to work.

If I connect with apmplanners terminal and run the GPS test it only prints dots even though the uBlox GPS led is flashing blue...

My question is, how do I determine which unit it is that is broken? Seems like the GPS is working since it is flashing blue and unfortunately to me it seems like I somehow have broken the Pixhawk GPS df13 connection fitting...

I haven't opened my Pixhawk I guess that's my next step. If broken maybe I can solder the GPS fitting back.

All help/suggestions appreciated.

BR Mathias

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Replies

  • Mathias July 10, 2014 at 1:44pm

    O.K good idea. Smartphone guys may be able to solder a new socket housing.

    Do you have a link on how to use serial 4 instead?

    -Mathias

  • Mathias July 10, 2014 at 3:32am
    Found the problem. The GPS socket on my Pixhawk is loose. Pressing down on it and slightly forward(Pixhawk forward dir) and instant GPS lock.. These sockets seems VERY fragile. I wonder how to fix that!? Soldering, buy a new unit?

    -Mathias
    • gervais > Mathias July 10, 2014 at 9:25am

      Smartfone repair shop is able to solder that. Or use Serial 4 instead of the GPS port (which has to be assigned with the MP, check the full param list)

  • James Overington July 9, 2014 at 4:11pm

    Does MP report 'No GPS' or 'No Fix'? 'No GPS' = no connection to GPS, 'No Fix' = communicating with GPS OK but waiting on a fix.

    I have had two Ublox GPS die in a similar way after a crash where the GPS was pulled out of the APM. Both units appear to be working and achieving a fix (as indicated by the lights) but there is nothing on the serial pins (measured directly at the Ublox module)

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