Here are some instructions and suggestions to assemble the ArduPilot Shield. But remember: You can always do it your way. You can buy a complete kit here.
First i recommend to solder the headers (either female of males) in the Ardupilot board, do not matters if you put the females header on the shield or in the ArduPilot board. I personally recommend to put the female headers on the active board, in this case ArduPilot. If you have male pins and you make contact with something you may cause a short circuit and toast it, otherwise with the female headers the board is "protected".
After soldering the headers on the Ardupilot board, place the opposite headers on top of it as indicated in the picture. In this way the pins will be right aligned and you will be able to remove it easily.
Then place the ArduPilot Shield on top and solder it. Be careful of not add too much soldering or the liquid solder may go to the button and you will be unable to remove the shield (happened to me once!)
Ready? Come on hurry! The result is a nice and well aligned shield. ;-)
Now you can solder the pins for the FTDI connector. Remember you can buy the official FTDI cable in our store, here. Has a long cable and is very practical on field when you are testing.
Now get some servo extensions like in the picture. You can buy them in our store too here
Now cut them slowly and painful, no mercy please! You will use both ends later.
Now solder the female side of the servo extension to the board. This connector will go to the receiver. I recommend to cut them as short is possible to void the big ball of wires inside the airplane. I personally like to remove the Power and Ground cables to the other connectors, leaving just the signal to eliminate the "big ball of wires", or at least leave two with Power and Ground to add some redundancy.
Now turn the Ardupilot and solder a jumper wire from "digital 8" to the "mux3", in order to enable the throttle control!The color of the wire is your choice, white looks nice with SparkFun logo. ;-)
Did you remember the redundancy thing? Well i extremely recommend to add hot glue or something to holds the wire in the bottom of the board. The everyday use will fatigue the wire and eventually will broke. I have learned this the hard way. One day the receiver rudder cable failed and i was unable to manually control it (i was flying!!!!), i was expecting to finally lost my EasyStar forever and definitely jump to Funjet and never came back, but the Autopilot was working fine, because the failure was from the receiver to the multiplexor. Anyway, i just switch to RTL mode and EasyStar was flying around me and luckily at that time i was controlling the throttle manually so i cut the throttle and ArduPilot land the EasyStar nicely. Chris once mentioned: that the human variable is the problem.
Now is time to solder the Infrared sensors. This is up to you and you can use anyway you want. In my case i developed a custom and redundant cable (locked!).A little bit of help with the FMA sensors:
The "Only For Girls" pin is not used.
You have a picture of the complete cable here with the FMA connectors. ;-)
Now take the other end of the servo extension and cut one cm of the power line (red wire).
Solder it in digital pin 6, this will be used as the "Remove Before Flight Plug" used to set home position. You can use any bind plug like this one or make you own (Also available soon).And you can also add any external reset button as indicated in the green arrow. Also available soon in our store.
Now an extra precaution: Please zoom the picture and look the silver hairs at end of the connector. This is a potential threat! You must cut that little metal hairs, if not you may burn your boards! I also learned it the hard way. ;-)
You can add now the Power Divider Cable, in order to know the voltage of your battery, this cable must be connected in the positive pole of your LIPO.And finally you can use a servo connector to plug your radio modem. That's what i did! This way is to noisy, modems require a lot of current, it will work but can cause some problems. I suggest to feed the radio modem with a direct 5V lines not coming from the GPS ports.Here you can get 5V for the radio modem:
Schematic:
[UPDATE]: The IR port labels are wrong, they suppose to be A0,A1,A2,5V,GND.[UPDATE2]: Assembly pictures of ArduShield V2 can are here.Good Luck!
I just tried my first time with my Shield v2, and it is reporting the battery Voltage too high - about 14.4 V from a 2 cell LiPo, which should be about 8.3 v. Any ideas?
Nigel, I'm not sure--I don't have that setup. But if you run our sensor test utility it will be clear which pair of sensors are the "Z" sensor in an XY. As long as they are vertical, it doesn't matter which one is up.
Chris, One more question which I posted before but no reply. I could not get a Z only IR detector, so I'm using an XY one instead. Can you confirm that the correct way to mount this (in the same left hand side of fuselage position, is with the cable connector forwards & upwards?
Thanks
Can we have an update for v2 shield? The reset position has moved. Should I connect the reset switch to the RST hole & the "-" hold adjacent & in the direction of air pressure sensor?
Thanks
hi, i have also got a new Locosys. I was using it to build a groundstation for a university project. I see the Locosys is set up at 57600 baud rate. I was wondering why when we choose NMEA mode in ardupilot vesion 2.2.3, it changes it to a baud rate to 38400. I read something about 57600 (5hz is to much for ardupilot).
Could someone clarify this. Sorry if the above doesn't make any sense as i'm new to this. I am using the new ardupilot code with the Atmega328 (red board)
Just for your information, Jordi: all numerous items I got from Hong Kong in envelopes arrived undamaged in Europe. I even received 5-6 lipos packed in an envelope! Another time it was a 320g outrunner which was in a box inside an envelope... but maybe HK post let through more bulky envelopes than in the US.
You must not be out of pocket for my purchases....please PM me.
john@space14.freeserve.co.uk
It is such a pity that for hobbies we have to pay extra charges, unlike a business where the extra charge can be passed on.
This is a problem when, in the UK, we buy from the USA, there are other charges. If the goods are over $30 we pay VAT (value added tax) so because the ArduPilot Shield was $32.50 I had to pay another $18 tax !!
I will go now and order the cable for the Shield board and the Pitot tube...makes the order worthwhile.
It should be under $30 so I should not have to pay extra duty.
Comments
Thanks. I don't understand why it does not matter which way is up. I'll take a look at the code, but any hints would be well received..
Thanks
Thanks
Thanks
Could someone clarify this. Sorry if the above doesn't make any sense as i'm new to this. I am using the new ardupilot code with the Atmega328 (red board)
Regards,
Mikil
Thanks for the reply.
You must not be out of pocket for my purchases....please PM me.
john@space14.freeserve.co.uk
It is such a pity that for hobbies we have to pay extra charges, unlike a business where the extra charge can be passed on.
This is a problem when, in the UK, we buy from the USA, there are other charges. If the goods are over $30 we pay VAT (value added tax) so because the ArduPilot Shield was $32.50 I had to pay another $18 tax !!
I will go now and order the cable for the Shield board and the Pitot tube...makes the order worthwhile.
It should be under $30 so I should not have to pay extra duty.
Thanks
John
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