Posted by Vince Grande on December 26, 2014 at 10:54pm
I have purchased a seraphi p quadcopter 5 months ago and have not been able to got it at all. It is a RTF model with gps,compass. I had noticed one motor did not turn on start up sometimes, and did an esc calibration. But after a while it stopped turning all together. The company send me motor and esc to replace myself and I calibrated it, tried to fly and it kept on flipping over. Then I plugged it to mission planner and tied the compass and acceleration calibration, which did not help. I tried to reinstalled the Quadcopter firmware and ever since the mavlink does not connect,says hear eat packettenot found, does nah hone know anything I can do,thanks
You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!
Now you say you are running 3.2 AC. So you are running the most current firmware.
Terminal mode was disabled in the 3.2 release due to not enough memory. I personally think that was a mistake.
OK....well, not much more I can add so I'll say good luck. FWIW, all of my stuff was made in China too. The main difference between yours and mine was that I bought all the components and assembled it myself so I knew what I was getting, for the most part. It still doesn't prevent the problems from sneaking into the build....Chinese quality is anything but that.
Vince Grande > Stu OlsonDecember 28, 2014 at 9:23pm
Well sorry Stu. I have tried all of them from 2.0 to this latest 3.2,,,,,so between messages I had tried again the latest one..which I had already, so no misleading intended,,,,thanks anyways, I am wondering if they have a specific firmware from themselves.....I will keep on trying as this board was communicating before I screwed up by updating....although never flew properly...thanks
Stu Olson > Vince GrandeDecember 28, 2014 at 9:29pm
You could always put a known APM board in it and go from there. The rest of the hardware shouldn't care and you'll have a known setup on which you can move forward.
Vince Grande > Stu OlsonDecember 28, 2014 at 9:40pm
is there a good one that you think I could purchase, I will be able to run the external gps-compass? And then I could use the mission planner firmware easier,
Stu Olson > Vince GrandeDecember 29, 2014 at 9:47am
The quad I built, and I've only built one so far, used an APM from RCTimer, the ArduFlyer 2.5.2 model. I bought mine from a US distributor, UAVObjects.com. It requires you to solder the header pins onto the board, using either 90 degree or straight header pins, which are supplied. I also used a number of other RCTimer items when I was building mine.
Given the plethora of GPS receivers on the market, I can't tell you if your GPS cable will fit the connector on the ArduFlyer. However, there are enough high quality photos in the below links that you might be able to determine that it will or won't.
This link, which is Part 1, gives you an idea of what is involved in setting up this APM.
I found them to both be extremely helpful, along with many other articles in the author's blog. Here is an index to many of them. Who know, maybe there is applicable info in there that might help you get yours up and going. I also used the heck out of the ArduCopter Wiki too.
One other thing....I would suggest using 3.1.5 AC for now since it still has an active Terminal mode available. That makes it easier to do some of the setups, etc. I'm running 3.2 AC myself, but when I built mine, I used 3.1.5 and I think it made things a bit easier in the long run.
Vince Grande > Stu OlsonDecember 29, 2014 at 4:23pm
Again I want to thank you for your time and useful info, I will look into purchasing this board. And will downgrade my mission planner also, it pisses me off to know that although not flying properly, my quad was connecting no problem to mission planner, my mistake to upgrade firmware to an unknown noard.Thanks and happy new year
Stu Olson > Vince GrandeDecember 29, 2014 at 4:29pm
Are there any identifying marks, labels, model numbers, etc. on your flight control board? I assume there isn't else you would have mentioned it....but thought I would ask, just in case.
If you decide to get the RCTimer flight board, let me know. I'll help you as much as I can. We can do it offline via e-mail or similar.
You can contact me at stu AT stu-offroad DOT com. Here is a pic of my quad.
Vince Grande > Stu OlsonDecember 29, 2014 at 5:02pm
Really that's your quad,awesome,great job, here vous been giving tickets for flying quads,up to $1000 fines. Anyhow here are some pics if board I took it apart to see numbers,,will send by email
Stu Olson > Vince GrandeDecember 30, 2014 at 12:11pm
Awesome....good that you found it....but like you said, hard to trust it in the air. Who would have thought that it was an electrical contact on the board?
Maybe if you ever decide to make an APM Rover, that would be a good candidate for that. Hard to fall out of the sky when it is already on the ground! :)
Vince Grande > Vince GrandeDecember 30, 2014 at 11:54am
Hey Stu, after taking the board completely out, I noticed that if I press on the atmega chip, the mavlink connects and downloads all the parameters,If I don't it dispconnects, so basically the processer is making bad contact...only works when I put a downwards pressure on chip. So I tried to heat it up with a heat gun to get the contacts to weld together.it works now, able to download firmware, but I wont trust it in the sky. So basically I know for sure its the board and will order 1 that should do.
Replies
You stated you were running 3.1.1 AC.
Now you say you are running 3.2 AC. So you are running the most current firmware.
Terminal mode was disabled in the 3.2 release due to not enough memory. I personally think that was a mistake.
OK....well, not much more I can add so I'll say good luck. FWIW, all of my stuff was made in China too. The main difference between yours and mine was that I bought all the components and assembled it myself so I knew what I was getting, for the most part. It still doesn't prevent the problems from sneaking into the build....Chinese quality is anything but that.
Well sorry Stu. I have tried all of them from 2.0 to this latest 3.2,,,,,so between messages I had tried again the latest one..which I had already, so no misleading intended,,,,thanks anyways, I am wondering if they have a specific firmware from themselves.....I will keep on trying as this board was communicating before I screwed up by updating....although never flew properly...thanks
You could always put a known APM board in it and go from there. The rest of the hardware shouldn't care and you'll have a known setup on which you can move forward.
is there a good one that you think I could purchase, I will be able to run the external gps-compass? And then I could use the mission planner firmware easier,
The quad I built, and I've only built one so far, used an APM from RCTimer, the ArduFlyer 2.5.2 model. I bought mine from a US distributor, UAVObjects.com. It requires you to solder the header pins onto the board, using either 90 degree or straight header pins, which are supplied. I also used a number of other RCTimer items when I was building mine.
Given the plethora of GPS receivers on the market, I can't tell you if your GPS cable will fit the connector on the ArduFlyer. However, there are enough high quality photos in the below links that you might be able to determine that it will or won't.
This link, which is Part 1, gives you an idea of what is involved in setting up this APM.
This link, which is Part 2, provides additional setup information about the same APM.
I found them to both be extremely helpful, along with many other articles in the author's blog. Here is an index to many of them. Who know, maybe there is applicable info in there that might help you get yours up and going. I also used the heck out of the ArduCopter Wiki too.
One other thing....I would suggest using 3.1.5 AC for now since it still has an active Terminal mode available. That makes it easier to do some of the setups, etc. I'm running 3.2 AC myself, but when I built mine, I used 3.1.5 and I think it made things a bit easier in the long run.
Again I want to thank you for your time and useful info, I will look into purchasing this board. And will downgrade my mission planner also, it pisses me off to know that although not flying properly, my quad was connecting no problem to mission planner, my mistake to upgrade firmware to an unknown noard.Thanks and happy new year
Are there any identifying marks, labels, model numbers, etc. on your flight control board? I assume there isn't else you would have mentioned it....but thought I would ask, just in case.
If you decide to get the RCTimer flight board, let me know. I'll help you as much as I can. We can do it offline via e-mail or similar.
You can contact me at stu AT stu-offroad DOT com. Here is a pic of my quad.
Awesome....good that you found it....but like you said, hard to trust it in the air. Who would have thought that it was an electrical contact on the board?
Maybe if you ever decide to make an APM Rover, that would be a good candidate for that. Hard to fall out of the sky when it is already on the ground! :)
Hey Stu, after taking the board completely out, I noticed that if I press on the atmega chip, the mavlink connects and downloads all the parameters,If I don't it dispconnects, so basically the processer is making bad contact...only works when I put a downwards pressure on chip. So I tried to heat it up with a heat gun to get the contacts to weld together.it works now, able to download firmware, but I wont trust it in the sky. So basically I know for sure its the board and will order 1 that should do.
-
1
-
2
-
3
of 3 Next