Greetings,
This is a strange one - I've searched the forums and have found similar posts, but none detailing an oilpan as bricked as this one..
I have had about a dozen fairly stable, good flights with my new 3dr Hexa.. Today I put an xbee 900 kit on, as well as a 1260 sonar, but hadn't plugged the sonar in yet. I brought the Hexa up 4-6 feet and hovered for about 5 minutes to get telemetry data, and brought it down for a soft landing. It was on and disarmed for about two minutes while I checked my laptop, and the motors started chirping fast. I at first thought low battery pack, and the esc's were yelling at me. I brought it inside, hooked the battery up to my charger, and it still had a good charge left.. I plugged the battery back in, and chirping started immediately. I figured out this means no throttle signal coming from the receiver. I checked my cables, all tight. I then noticed when plugging in again that the oilpan only had its' blue power light on, no ABC lights, or tx/rc lights flashing for the xbee.. The main board has its' red light on solid, as well as solid yellow, and fast flashing blue..
I disconnected the xbee, and checked for shorts, none. I tried to connect direct to usb, same results as with battery pack, red/yellow lights with blue flashing below, and just the power light coming on, on the shield. When trying to connect to MP, it times out saying no heartbeat packets. When trying CLI, absolutely nothing when hitting enter 3 times, other than the tx/rc lights blinking fast while pressing keys, on the oilpan. Nothing happens at all when pressing the reset button on the oilpan..
The fuses on both boards are good, nothing looks physically blown, solder points are all good (even re-heated them to ensure..) I'm at a loss..
Power is good, as the xbee gets power from the board when they are connected, and I connect USB, or battery. GPS blinks so it gets power as well (haven't seen if it still gets a lock outside..)
Looks like a brick right now, hoping someone might know of other things to try. Haven't found a way to do a hard factory reset, etc, via hardware - all I've seen is via MP or CLI..
Can attach photos if it would be helpful, but everything looks spot-on.. :(
Thanks,
Mike
Replies
I'm having a similar problem. My quad was working fine for several flights when last week I ordered a 3DR 900MHz radio and connected it up. When I plugged in the battery pack the motors armed but then wouldn't spin up. I noticed the ABC lights on the oilpan weren't on. I have the exact same light behavior. Solid blue power on the oilpan and solid red and yellow and flashing blue on the main board. The radio has power and says it's connected to the ground station radio and the gps has power. Everything looks fine (nothing blown) as far as I can tell. My knowledge on troubleshooting these kinds of things is limited.
I unplugged the gps and radio and tried to connect to MP via usb and the same light pattern and the MAVLink times out saying no heartbeat packets.
I then took the oilpan off the main board and reloaded the Arducopter 2.9.1 code using a FTDI cable. That went smoothly, but it didn't seem to change anything when I put the two boards back together and try to connect via usb to the MP.
And now I'm stuck
Thanks for any advice you have,
Spencer
If you have a USB FTDI cable you might try separating the two boards and trying to talk to the APM through a FTDI cable... You might try reprogramming the APM from the Arduino IDE, if you haven't already, using the FTDI cable.
It sounds like your boards are having communication problems maybe? What version of the IMU (oilpan) do you have? Foxtrap (F) ? Hotel (H)?
I'm right now trying to debug a communications problem on a Foxtrap 2.2.
-John