I finished assembling the board, installed the Arduino IDE, installed the drivers for the FTDI basic board (Sparkfun), removed the solder bridge that goes with the ESC option and soldered the one for the battery input, connected the FTDI board to the Ardupilot board, and powered up. I get the red "power" led on, and the blue "GPS lock" led and yellow "Status" led flashing. I am not sure this is correct, and I am afraid I may have fried something. The two flashing leds are showing the same code: looks like MMS in morse code. (dash dash dot dot dot),Ignoring that, I try to load the software. It compiles without any problem. When I select "Upload to I/O board" it pauses for a few seconds and then tells me that the Serial Port (COM7) is already in use by another program.There are no other programs using that por. When I unplug the FTDI board from the USB port, the COM7 serial port disappears from the Device Manager list, and re-appears when I plug it back in. That tells me that the only the FTDI board is using that port. Incidentally I am using Windows Vista. Any suggestions?Thank you, Pedro
This doesn't have anything to do with ArduPilot--it's an Arduino/FTDI board installation issue. (those lights blinking on ArduPilot are just the LED test routine that Sparkfun loads at the factory.
Can you install Arduino on another PC? I think you've got some serial port conflict on the one you're using.
Chris, Thank you for the promt response. It didn't work. I tried COM8 and COM13 and get the same error. In both cases, the IDE correctly detects the new port number. Are there any lights supposed to be on on the FTDI board? When I connect it, two LEDs flash very quickly and then turn off. Also, the LED blinking on the Ardupilot board is normal? I should add that I don't have the GPS connected.
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Can you install Arduino on another PC? I think you've got some serial port conflict on the one you're using.