Dumb questions, after researching the site

Hey guys and gals,I am building my first arducopter after having flown my naza bumblebee and my 250 racing quad for years and I’m feeling like a toddler trying to make heads or tails of this, my new quad is a sky hero little spyder I have my beheli opto esc and my emax motors installed I have my arducopter and pm mounted have the GPS mounted and my 3dr telemetry installed I ended up thinking my arducopter was fried because I was getting no link light on my receiver so I bought another whole arducopter setup and installed it and I have went through the entire process of installing it and trying to go through the initial setup but my GPS shows nothing in mission planner when I go through the calibration setup ,I have a red and blue light on the GPS modual ,a blue light on the arducopter along with 2 yellow lights and this is connected to my computer via usb with battery disconnected. Am I just not doing something correct or do I have to look at it funny when plugging in stuff …i have built multiple quads but none have made my so frustrated .

Hi,

Which board are you using ? the old apm one or a pixhawk ?
For the GPS, normally it is better to doing it on battery because your computer can disturbe the GPS. And it should be done outside ! Normally the gsp should get a fix in about 60s. If your are connected to a GCS, like mission planner, you should have info on GPS type and number of satellite detected !

It’s supposed to be a 2.8 board I also had a 2.6 board until I shorted it out last night, hopefully it was just a fuse…i temp installed my old naza m lite just to be able to fly until I can figure out this arducopter stuff…i really want more autonomous abilities for my quad then what the naza gives, I will set it up on my test quad and once I have it figured out I will transplant it into my little spyder

sorry both of my boards APM boards, picked both up from ebay, is there a better board to get then one of the aurducopter boards, i presume there are clones just like there is with regular arduino boards, ive built quite a few 3d printers with clone parts and had very little issues

The current technology is 32bit microprocessor based, APM’s are 8 bit.
Any of the Pixhawks from reputable makers as the clone market like to skimp on the quality of the sensors and thats where most come unstuck (have made the mistake myself but learnt from it).

Just do a search in the Wiki for hardware suppliers.

Awesome input , i have been reading a few forums and tried asking questions in a few and made to feel like an idiot, at least here i am getting some input , so i presume i probably have 2 older units that may also be clones that are dated and should dish out a little more for a real pixihawk board and then go from there …that is doable .

I will do some research on that style board , now is there any difference on the full size board /vs the mini other then size and weigh ?

The APM boards are a good controller, you just have to realise that the firmware stops for these at 3.2.1
If you are using a GCS (Mission Planner, APM Planner, etc) then it should see the board type and only offer you 3.2.1 to load.
I have quite a number of APM 2.6 in commercial operation and they are still working fine.

Pity I can’t say the same about the new controllers.