Ardupilot and Aruimu

Posted by Evan Evans on August 24, 2011 at 6:21pm

 

Hi all,

I am a newbie to this UAV thing so I am on a steep learning curve, hence my questions.

 

I have an Ardupilot and an Arduimu set up in an aircraft and after lots of trial and error seem to have it working properly however I am puzzled by the behavior of the blue leds on the GPS, the Arduimu and the Ardupilot boards.

 

When I power up the setup all three leds are flashing, the Arduimu goes through its start up routine and settles down with the yellow led on and the blue one flashing as is the led on the Mediatech GPS. The blue led on the Ardupilot shield board goes solid blue at this time and stays on.

 

Eventually the GPS will get a lock and its blue led goes solid but the one on the Arduimu board continues to flash. If I re-start the Ardimu board it finishes up with both yellow and blue leds on solid. At this point the whole system appears to be working properly - control switch position 1, the controls only work with the transmitter sticks, control switch position 2, the controls work both with the transmitter sticks as well as moving while tilting the model nose up - nose down etc. and I think I would be happy to test fly it.

 

My question is does the behavior of the leds typical for this configuration? and what are the implications with regard to storing the home GPS point? When does it do this?

You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!

Join diydrones

Email me when people reply –
Follow

Replies

  • Moderator
    Graham Dyer October 6, 2011 at 1:41am
    Getting same error: 'ClassAP_GPS_MTK' has no member named 'GPS_OK', which files do I need to update?

    I am using ArduImu v1.8.2
  • Evan Evans September 6, 2011 at 6:53am

    Sorry Andrew I was probably mistaken there just talking off the top of my head, very late here and past my bedtime. Probably got mixed up with Arduimu software versions.

     

    Regards,

    Evan

  • Andrew Brygin August 25, 2011 at 1:49am

    Hello Evan,

     

     I use exactly same configuration: ArduPilot + ArduIMU + MTK gps,

     and kind of home-brewed OSD to visualize ArduPilot output.

     Sometimes I observe the same behavior: solid blue led on AP board

     (what indicates that AP thinks that it already gets required number of

      correct gps messages, and locks home position), and flashing leds

     on GPS and IMU. In this case AP does not have valid gps coordinates,

     and locks incorrect position as a home (I can see it via OSD).

     

     To get correct home position, I reset AP when GPS and IMU

     shows solid blue leds.

     

     I am going to provide separate power for the GPS module,

     in order to be able start IMU and AP only when GPS finds satellites

     and locks the position correctly.

     

     Another possible solution could be a change GPS_join_data()

     routine in order to set GPS_fix to VALID_GPS only if recieved

     coordinates are not equal to zero.

     

    Thanks,

    Andrew

This reply was deleted.