Warning: Do not press on the headers of the UAV DevBoard

UAV DevBoard pilots:Be careful not to press on the pin headers of the UAV DevBoard, especially the gyros.It turns out that is exactly what I have been doing several times a week, for many weeks. I do a lot of programming and I found it convenient to leave my board right in my plane while I programmed it. My board is velcro mounted, so to keep it in place while I pull away the programming cable, I have been pressing against the Y axis gyro.I discovered today that my Y axis gyro was not responding. I think I have made several flights without benefit of its signal.A little heat on its pins got it working again. My theory is that there was a cold solder joint that opened under the strain of my pressing on the gyro. I contacted SparkFun, and they recommended that we should not press on any of the headers. This is the reason that they cited for why they trim the excess off the header pins before they solder the pins. They also said that they would take extra care to make sure the gyros are well soldered into the board.In the process of losing the Y gyro signal, I learned that MatrixNav will provide adequate performance with only 2 gyros and 3 accelerometers. 3 gyros provides the best performance, but with only 2 gyros, the DCM algorithm managed to track well enough to keep the plane level and to return it smoothly to the launch point.Also, in the process of trying the board on a helicopter, it was found that vibration will open any cold solder joints.So, I have the following recommendations:1. Do not press on the headers of the UAV DevBoard, especially the gyros.2. If you have been pressing on the gyros while you remove the programming cable, run the roll-pitch-yaw demo to make sure all three gyros are still functioning.3. If you find one of the gyros is not responding, or if the board has been subject to vibration, or if the gyro connections do not look like they have been heated enough, resolder the pins that connect the gyros to the board and rerun the demo to check it.Best regards,Bill Premerlani

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XING March 31, 2010 at 12:43pm

Hi Bill,

I have currently bought a UAV v2 Development Platform for controlling a quadrotor. Can I know how can I get the gyros and accelerometer readings out from the board? I need to know the current orientation information of my quadrotor before I can adjust the speed of the motors. It will be the best if you could provide me with the coding on how to retrieve the orientation information (angles and angular rates) from the board.

Thank you and regards,
Xing
Gil January 12, 2010 at 7:09am

Hi Bill, i´ve got one question about the programmer pinout socket of the redboard, can you tell me which pin is what in order that i could make an adapter/extender so it can be programmed from the outside of the plane fuselage using my Pickit 2 ?
I want to give it a try with this programmer but first i need to compare the pinout references and make the adapter.

thanks in advance

G
Peter Meister July 23, 2009 at 7:16pm

Thanks bill for the recommendations, I have done this once or twice myself. Will not do it again.... :)

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Warning: Do not press on the headers of the UAV DevBoard

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