AQ6 connection problems

[JussiH]

Flow control should be disabled on QGC, unless you set the Xbees to work with that.

Verification of bidirectional data is done by opening up 2 instances of X-ctu connected to each Xbee and using the terminal windows to send text back and forth between the 2 Xbees.

One should be Coordinator AT and the other one Router AT. I would update to most recent FW on both bees.

Go over all connections, could just be as simple as a cold solder joint somewhere. The intermittent nature of the problem could indicate that 1 of the Xbees or its antenna could have a problem.

[Trnquill]

Ok, thanks, I'll check every connection! I'll also disable the flow control. I don't know if my XBees had the option to set it as "Router AT", can't remember seeing anything like that in the setup parameters. The firmware is now the latest.

Unfortunately I can not test the ping-pong message sending with two x-ctu windows since I have only one USB adapter. Or well, yes, I could use Arduino as an adapter... Or then I could do like I saw in one tutorial and just feed back the signal from output pin to input pin so that the XBee will echo back anything I send to it.

[JussiH]

U can use the FDTI adapter used for AQ to connect to the second Xbee...5V, gnd, TX and RX is all you need.

[Trnquill]

Ah, brilliant! The bi-directional communication works like a charm.

I disabled flow control and now getting parameters works flawlessly. It even gets the params automatically upon connect. Thanks!

[JussiH]

Good to hear!

Pls rename thread to "Solved: Xbee connection problem", to keep it searchable and on topic. I think its a pretty common issue that people run into. Probably should write a tutorial for the docu sometime...

Thanks

[Trnquill]

Yeah, absolutely! The wiki should include all the setup parameters of XBee's to make it work. It was kinda tidious to browse through the net searching for solution when for example all the APM tutorials only instructed you to "set PAN ID & set baud rate" and nothing else.

[Trnquill]

Ok, I was a bit too hasty... After doing the calibrations I tried to upload calculated parameters to my AQ board and found out the XBee-radio link is everything but reliable. I can see the artificial horizon and all that update really nicely all the time but refreshing and transmitting parameters fails constantly. After tens of tries I managed to get the params list updated. Transmitting the calculated parameters back to AQ board took again tens of tries. It just fails at some point trying to resend or re-request some parameter and hangs there. Clicking refresh or transmit might or might not solve the issue and it might or might not hang again on some other parameter. After succesful transmit I clicked "write to ROM" multiple times but after a reboot found out nothing got saved to ROM after all... So I had to start all over again. What the hoggelborg?

Just to make it clear, I have used the same exact hardware with my APM multicopter for some time before trying it out with AQ. No problems there, telemetry and tuning parameters work like a charm all the time, every time. Could it be related to baud rate? APM uses half the speed AQ does. XBees are capable of higher speed than that which AQ uses, but I still wonder could this be the reason for the reliability issues with AQ-XBee -link?

[chschmid]

[Trnquill]

[QuenS]

Hi everyone. I also have connection problem between my AQ6 board and my computer. I use the cp2012 usb to uart adaptator sold by flyduino. Does someone know if the driver for cp210x is suitable for the cp2012? Otherwise, can someone provide me the driver for cp2012 and windows XP? Thanks for the help!

Quentin