A few users, myself included, appear to be having issues calibrating accels and/or arming when using APM 3.2 on a Pixhawk. I see posts here and there, but thought it may be best if those having the issue could all 'check in' to one post so that the developers can see how widespread the issue is and gather data.
My Pixhawk will arm occasionally, and will even fly successfully. Occasionally however it will not arm and I will receive the pre-arm error "Accels not healthy". A few days ago I was able to arm and fly thorugh one lipo, then after landing and swapping batteries I could not arm due to this reason. I have attached the logs from the successful flight, as well as the failed pre-arm logs, to this post.
As you can see from these images there is something amiss with IMU2. This is a snippit from the good flight, showing values for AccX on IMU1 and IMU2:
and here are the same values on the second attempt, pre-arm.
In the 3.2 release thread a few users had mentioned the issue and Randy advised to set the log_bitmask to "131070" so that it will log everything including the pre-arm checks. I encourage others having the issue to do the same and share the logs and experiences here so that we can find out what is going on here - is there a bad batch of Pixhawks in the wild that only now show the hardware errors due to something new in 3.2, or is there an issue in the APM software?
Replies
Log from my pre-arm fail today with bad accel health. Quad had been in car at 2 celsius for the night. Shows same difference between IMU and IMU2 AccX readings. Also Y and Z axes affected.
Hobbyking clone board.
Hope this helps.
2014-12-28 14-19-08 22.bin.log
Yup - been having this with a FixHawk ever since late beta.
Most common was compass inconsistent but a variety of other messages all of which do not go away with recalibration etc. Sometimes swapping battery means you can fly, other times not.
Something changed in the code - must have - to make this occur. Even Randy said he gets the errors sometimes.
Is it happening to anyone with a 3DR Pixhawk?
I have been running 3.2 for months now and never seen your issue. Reviewed several logs and not seen any issues. Have had problems with GPS drift though due to buildings and take off issues due to early bugs that have been corrected.
Is yours an official 3DR pixhawk? Also, are you in a warm climate?
It was 25 degrees Fahrenheit or -3 Celsius. I left the copter outside for about 10minutes before I armed and flying.
Tried it again today at 17 degrees Fahrenheit or -8 Celsius and left it outside for 30 minutes. No issues. This is a real 3DR Pixhawk. I would say that the Barometer is not very accurate for showing temperature. It showed that the temperature was 8 degrees higher Celsius than it was out and that while flying high in the air the temperature went up. Shouldn't the temperature go down the higher you fly?
Not sure about the baro - but this falls in line with my theory that this is affecting clones/third party boards only.
It's probably some component heating up the interior of the case.
The baro temperature won't neccesarily correspond to the outside temperaure. Especially as it is normally packed in foam or something similar.
That's not a sign of a fault.
Right, but it would be nice if the temperature was correct as I think it should be. Even if I left the unit outside for half an hour the temperature is still high. I have notice other peoples logs show high temperatures as well.
I am working with a MS5607 barometer chip and it is dead on for the temperature. Not sure why the Pixhawk is not as well.
With the temperature off it can effect altitude calculations being off as well.
Also is the number displayed allowed to go negative. If the value is unsigned it is possible that it is showing a negative number go up.
Nobody really looks at the temperature when there done flying to see its right.