"As I said above, we're using a Vectornav VN100 as the IMU, more specifically a AHRS. This has 3 axis of accelerometers, gyros, and magnetometers on a single PCB, and has a microcontroller on-board that implements an extended Kalman filter to…"

"David,
I believe that there is a separate problem with the EM406 GPS. I'm afraid my software fix will not fix that problem. For now, it seems that the accepted fix is to disconnect the GPS during uploading.

I am using the u-blox GPS, not the EM406,…"

"David,
Have you tried uploading with the GPS disconnected? Please try that and report back with your results.

If that fails, try disconnecting the shield and connecting the FTDI directly to the AP.
Damon"

"Jordi - not a problem, glad to help. I'm still confused about one thing - what pin does the official DIY drones cable bring out, DTR or RTS? From the schematic on FTDI's site, I thought that it was RTS, in which case the Sparkfun board should work,…"

"I should explain a bit about what I've done here. I determined that my problems with uploading were due to the cable not resetting the ArduPilot. You should note that not all problems with uploading are due to this - as Chris mentioned above, you…"

"Jordi,
Thanks for posting the source. I changed the function restart_Ardupilot in form.cs to the following, and now both of my FTDI cables work properly - I have a 5V sparkfun cable and a the TTL-232R-3V3 cable. I didn't mess around with different…"

"Ben,
Thanks for the tip. I'll try that out when I receive my replacement AP. I tested the broken one, and the voltages are exactly the same, but that doesn't mean much since it is already fried.

The humidity varies a lot here, but during summer its…"

"I should clarify how I have my ArduPilot setup. I am not powering the AP separately. I have a 3-pin female to female lead to connect the receiver to the CTRL input on the AP. This connects the power buses on the receiver and AP. I then use jumpers…"

"Jordi,
The board I have has a 74ACT157 chip on it, which I believe is CMOS. Your schematic however, lists a 74LS, and that is also the part listed in the build instructions.
I"m pretty sure that all of the channels of the mux are dead.

Anyways, it…"

"No, I did not. I decided that since the battery voltage would be under the max voltage of the devices, it would be ok. I'd expect this to cause other problems, such as drifting A/D values as the battery voltage decreased, but I doubt it would fry…"

"I'm setting this up in a glider, thus I don't have an ESC. My plan is to use a 2-cell LiPo battery with a 5V regulator connecting it to the receiver and ArduPilot. I figured that a 4.8V battery would be safe to use for testing before I made that.…"

"No, I don't think this is the consensus, I haven't heard of many people having this issue. That said, if you want to power it with a battery (and not through an ESC), it is probably a good idea to put a regulator in between. I've been planning on…"

"One more bit of info - using the Sparkfun 5V FTDI, when I have the shield connected and do a write, it will say "Something is wrong" at the end, however the write still seems to work (the data is saved and can be recalled using a read). Without the…"

"This computer has XP SP3. I'll try it on some other computers when I have a chance and see if anything changes."