I have had several instances of failure to connect with Planner and the aircraft in the field. Both times the airborne XBee was bricked. I was able to unbrick it in the field and flew the mission but this has happened often enough to be a real problem.
What causes the XBP09-DP (airborne unit) to brick in the first place?
What can be done to eliminate or minimize the bricking?
Thank you (in advance) for your help.
Replies
I think I'll give up on the XBees.
Our first 3DR Radio 915 set worked well on its first test. We will convert our other airframes to 3DR.
When you connect your battery, it causes a lot of voltage spikes. I have seen this regularly brick an Xbee on my buddies aircraft but the same Xbee would not brick under the same circumstances when we tried the same technique on mine. The only difference was the ESC; I had a Castle Creations ESC and he had one from China. There are a bunch of other variables that we didn't test but the ESC was the most likely culprit. To fix the issue, he would power up the aircraft and once the APM was initialized he would then connect the Xbee. This stopped the bricking but did not remove the root cause.
I continue to have zigbee's brick as well. It has been consistent with all versions of ArduPlane code, 3 different ArduPilot 1.4 boards, and a few zigbee units. I have tried building my own cable, using the diydrones cable, and soldering the 4 wires directly to the boards. The bricking continues...
http://store.diydrones.com/Xbee_Telemetry_kit_p/kt-telemetry-xbee.htm
Normally, that cable is available by itself. Now checking to see when it will be back in stock.