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I would like to make a plea to the GPS protocol developers of ArduPilot and ArduPilot Mega. Please make the blue light mean something.

Since the beginning of the AP project, the blue light has had exactly two states. On = GPS Lock, Off = No GPS Lock. Any other blinking is purely fictional....aside from telling you the AP hasn't crashed or has no power.

Would you please, please, please, please, please make the light toggle on and off every time the AP gets a valid message without GPS lock? We all know it can take 5 minutes sometimes to get lock and if we're sitting there either looking at nothing or looking at a blinking light assuming it's actually talking... we may be wasting our time for GPS lock that is never coming.

It's very simply code and would go a long way towards helping troubleshooting, development and even debugging the code. The blink rate will indicate the Hz / 2 if you're toggling. It will also show you when you're not calling the GPS update routine fast enough. It will give instant feedback to the user and the developer that the AP understands the language being spoken by the GPS (protocol selection and baud rate selection).

There are so many pros and no cons.

Who do I need to beg for this?

Here, I even wrote ALL of the require source code changes. This goes on about line #410 of arduimu.pde and you'll have to add int toggleMode=0; somewhere above.

Download text file: BlinkyNoFix.txt