XBee RSSI light

Hi All,I am having an annoying problem with XBee. After upgrading to Arduplane 2.24, I am having trouble getting the Xbees to connect.When I hit connect on the GCS, I get the message that it is loading "mavlink parameters (sysparams 1, compid 1)" then it just hangs. The airborne XBee has the red RSSI light showing, which is usually bad news. I'm not sure what the light means, but whenever it shows, it usually indicates a problem.I have tried reflashing the firmware on both XBee's (900MHz versions with 1061 firmware) to no avail.When I run the multiserial test from the Wiki, the XBee's work perfectly and I see the message "Serial 3" on terminal window. No RSSI light is present during the test.Any ideas on what might be causing this?Anyone else have this problem? Seems to only have been happening since 2.24.RegardsJames

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  • Ok, it's starting to drive me up the wall.....

     

    Getting XBee's to work is never easy, but I had a working system until recently. Here is what I am seeing

     

    - Xbee on plane and ground sides have power lights and airborne XBee shows occasional flashing on ic light

    - I connect wirelessly using the latest planner (APM planner 1.0.74) over XBee at 57600 baud

    - I get the message "Getting Params... (sysid 1 compid 1)"

    - The ground station hangs and I get an error after about 30 seconds saying it can't connect.

    - During this time, the red RSSI light on airborne XBee comes on and then goes off then comes on again. When Mission Planner finally gives the error, it goes off. In the past, if I saw the RSSI light stay on, I knew I was in for a debricking, but in this case it goes off on its own.

     

    I am using APM 2.24 with 900MHz XBee's and 1061 firmware on both ends.

     

    On the ground XBee the green RSSI light is on on the adapter whenever APM is powered. I don't know the significance of this. I can't remember if it was normal before.

     

    APM is powered with a 3A UBEC using a dedicated LiPo

     

    I have tried

    - MultiSerialMega test - works fine and I can see "Port 3" in my serial window delivered by XBee

    - Various cables between APM and airborne XBee. I was using the new one from the store with the connector that holds all four wires. It worked fine until I started seeing this problem. I also tried individual wires and a home made cable. Same in all cases

    - Reflashing both XBee's with new firmware

    - Returning to APM 2.22, which used to work, but now seems to have the same problem.

    - HK GCS - in this case I can get a heartbeat but other commands fail (eg. getting waypoints)

     

    Can anyone suggest a fix? It seems like when APM planner tries to connect it gets past some initial connection state but can't get any data from APM via XBee. Perhaps the xbee transmit is failing (but the multiserial test works!!) - maybe it is not receiving request properly to APM.

     

    Please help.

     

    Regards

    James

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