Wierd Issues- User? Hardware? Software?

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. 

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  • Eric,
    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...

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