LED Problems & Trouble Loading Code to Ardupilot

Development Boards Arduino
1

Our team has been trying to get the Ardupilot 2.7 code loaded onto our board but for some reason we are not being successful. The anomalies we have been getting are the following:

  1. Once the board is powered for the first time after soldering everything together (powered using an ESC which is connected to a battery) the yellow STAT light and blue GPS LOCK light come on solid and then stay solid without ever flashing in sequence like the manual indicates they should do coming right from the factory. The Red POWER light is functioning correctly, it comes on solid and remains solid at the same time that the other two lights come on.

  2. Following this power up procedure we still attempted to load the Ardupilot 2.7 code onto the board (even though the LED’s were not functioning correctly) and we keep getting the following error message:

Binary sketch size: 23776 bytes (of a 30720 byte maximum)

avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00

avrdude: stk500_disable(): protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x51

From reading other forums on here we have noticed that this appears to be a rather common error. We have checked all of the common possibilities that could cause this error (e.g. soldering joints, selecting the right board, plugging in the FTDI cable the correct way, etc) and still we cannot figure out how to get the code to load.

Please let us know if you know what the problem is. We have tried our setup process on two boards now and have gotten the exact same result both times (those 3 LED’s all going solid right away once the ESC is turned on, then the code not loading). The only thing we HAVE NOT verified from the list of common errors is that our FTDI cable is working properly and hasn’t been corrupted.

Here is a summary of what we are using:

  • We are using the “regular” Ardupilot

  • We do not connect anything else to the board (no shield, no GPS, no sensors)

  • We are powering from an ESC

  • When the power is applied, the LEDs go on and stay on

  • We have tried 2 different Ardupilots with with the same results

We have checked the Vcc to see what voltage the ESC is providing, it is providing 5.6 volts. This is acceptable.(right?)

Any help at all is appreciated. Thank you.