I was thrilled to get one of the latest Fah Pah (jDrones) ArduCopter kits, and I decided to go with the presoldered option for peace of mind. I was a little leery of the APM out of the box, as it was in a slightly ragged ziplock along with some other loose components and looked like it might have had a few miles put on it.
But I put it out of mind, carefully read through the manual, and constructed my ArduCopter over the last couple of days. I got comfortable enough with the code to try uploading the latest ArduPiratesNG code with my appropriate configuration specifics.
Unfortunately, I can't get serial communication with the APM via the USB port. I've tried three different USB cables with no luck, and I'm heading out to buy a new one now just to be 1000% sure it's not a cable issue. I know it's not a problem with the computer because I've been programming an Arduino Uno without problems for days. The APM hasn't been powered at all until I plugged the USB cable in for the first time today, so I can't imagine how I could have screwed something up on that end.
Really disappointing for something that I paid a premium to have delivered to me in a "Tested" state.
Any ideas on how to troubleshoot this? Could it be the bootloader issue described on the wiki?
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Additional info I forgot in the original post:
The APM gets power via the USB cable just fine, and all LEDs light up as they should for both the normal flight mode and CLI mode. But I get nothing in terms of serial comm, no indication of a modem being connected (like I see when I connect my Uno).