I'm not sure whats going on- I suddenly have several problems.
Yesterday and for many days before, copter and APMP were fine and flying beautifully, this morning I turn things on and I am dealing with a bunch of issues. No, I didn't crash.
I read up on the upgrades to new AC firmware code - using 2.0.1A currently, and decided 2.3 looked better, so I fire up APMP 1.1.19 this morning to upgrade firmware, connect to the copter via USB cable (known good) and the artificial horizon won't settle. Hmmmm. So I reset, level... ie, go through the entire setup process and its still acting like I'm swinging the copter around on a string. Inside or outside, connected via cable or Xbee, on a shelf or on the floor or hanging from the ceiling- same lack of stability. All accels and gyros jittery- some worse than others. Yesterday, raw sensor view showed effectively two lines- flat. Today, I get six lines all over the graph area.
So I continue on with the firmware upgrade- I get a few different message boxes (one about eeprom changes-115 to 1`18?, one saying it can't get APM version, one saying can't connect, check cabling) then it disconnects itself from APMP.
So, I upgrade APMP to the current 1.1.33 and try again- same reaction on the artificial horizon, same reactions to upgrading firmware- except it never finds the APM version and disconnects itself every time. BTW- nice updates and upgrades on APMP v1.1.33
I have tried the whole setup routine in CLI and it always goes smoothly and returns expected results. Sonar, compass, XBEE all functioning properly- IMU tests are all over the place. I Have tried deprecated versions of APMP and tried everything I can think of including careful physical inspection, connecting directly via different USB cables and via XBEE. I searched the forums (not much luck) and have put in a few hours so far today on these issues... Any ideas?
Am I missing something for upgrading firmware? Its always gone smoothly before now.
Replies
A similar thing happened to me when I upgraded. I ended up resetting and erasing all memory. I believe it is in CLI under the command 'setup'. Basically completely wiping the existing stuff on your board. Then I loaded from scratch and it was right as rain. Definitely give it a try before giving up.
By the way, it seemed something like what you experienced. Kind of like it didn't happen right away, but then I went in to do some setting and things were drifting all over the place while the copter was sitting still.
K, Well, I guess I'm over it. I have about $1500 US wrapped up in this project and apparently my APM just became junk for seemingly no reason. I am sad and frustrated and need to leave this behind me. I started this project only three months ago so everything is fairly new.
So, does anyone wanna buy the rest of my quadcopter stuff for $800 total? Be a good starter setup. Motors, Props, Esc's, HK frame (1 built, 1 still in box), 9x radio set with smartieparts usb prog board w/ backlight, micro servos, HD camera, 2- 5ah 4s LiPO flight batteries with 200w charger, 2- 900mah 2s LiPO electronics batteries with charger, box full of new props, lots of LED's and a bunch of extra small parts too. Someone please buy... Needs a new APM.
First choice was to fly and take pix. Too bad for me...