Our ArduStation MEGA boards arrived today and I am truly excited to see how they work. Now starts small assembly job for them and then we can start doing testing for those.
Big thanks for Colin for his original ASM work, it's great to see what great minds can create.
New boards looks just awesome. Few connectors are missing but those are quickly soldered. These boards are from the first batch and we have them now small qty in stock. If there are any changes that needs to be made, we will do it and then first production batch will come.
Technical specs:
- MCU: Atmel 2560 with Atmel 8u2 USB "adapter"
- XBee footprint for telemetry with external pins
- IO: Buzzer, Analog, I2C, GPS
- SDCard holder for storage needs
- 128 x 64 pixel Graphics LCD
- 3 x TTL Serial output pins
- 2 x Servo outputs with internal/external power feed
- Encoder port for menus etc use
- Connection for I2C Keyboard
- 4 x LEDs for showing different statues
Jani / jDrones
Comments
Hi Tom, Paul,
Thank you very much for the donation offer- that's very generous of you both!! I'll pm you my email address for Paypal :)
I've managed to make the parameter downloading even more reliable now by telling the AP to stop streaming any data such as IMU or GPS data during the download. It received all of the parameters first time in all of my tests. I will soon make it more robust by making it auto retry if it times out.
The parameter download status was a bit sticky, it was meant to update the display every time a parameter came down, but this didn't seem to work out in practice. I moved the screen refresh into the 10Hz loop and the displayed result is much better now.
Your UBlox time wasn't being displayed as I forgot to assign gps time to the ASM object after receiving gps messages. This is now fixed. (I'm moving away from pages talking directly to the GPS, but rather through an ASM object in case the user doesn't have a GPS and wants to set the ASM location from the APM's GPS for example). I've also made it display meaningful text rather than 0, 1 or 2 as the status.
These changes are in the master branch on github, but I'll push them out with some additional updates for the next version.
Regards,
Colin
Jani thanks I will look at it with a meter when I power up. Maybe the new xbee module I was using from Sparkfun.
it was connected but it was the first time I had it on this unit. I will compare it to my old xbee pro module that I was using.
again for the info.
Thanks Jack
Check that you did not short anything on board as servos will not use power trough that diode.
Thanks Jani all I had was a telem radio and two small servos. It worked fine for quite some time then the servos started to jitter and then went dead. I will check the servos for problems before testing. I also will probably will use a external bec to drive the servos for my new antenna tracker. Thanks again I found the part and will have it in a few days, will let you know how it goes.
Jack
Jack that is 30v 1Amp Schottky diode. If you have burned that, I wonder what all you have connected behind there. ASM Electronics takes 50-80mA. With telemetry modems etc you can add around 200mA more. So 1Amp should be more than enough.
@Colin
Loaded up v0.5 using it with Plane 2.74b
Like Tom parameter upload sometimes sticky, sometimes doesn't get all the way to 294 getting stuck at 77 and others even if left for long time. Not had too long to play with it but seems to work better if ASM up and running before APM - might be chance. I'll try with different APM and radios over the weekend (currently APM 2.0 and XBEEs).
Other than that looks good and all starting to work, I really appreciate your solo effort on the code and like Tom would be more than happy to tip my hat towards a hobby fund if you stick at paypal up
Cheers Paul
Jani
found the issue it wasn't the regulator but this what looks to be a diode didn't have enough info to order one do you have a spec. on this.. Also Colin the ublox v5 uploaded great ublox works good but will have wait till I get my board fixed to do a full test.
Jack
No there isn't any diode on battery side as switcher does not need that. You can always try to inject +5v to SER3/XBEE port where it says +5V. That will bypass diode from regulator. By beware not to put over voltage or reverse polarity as that would be fatal for whole system.
Protection diode is just above regulator where jDrones text and jD circular logo is located.
sorry one more question is there a protection diode on the board for the batt side other than whats on the reg. Im checking the reg and tried 5v on the board after reg. and still have no board power.
Jack
There is a protection diode that won't allow USB current go to servo rail, so it is powered only from regulator side.
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