Esc's not receiving input and gps not working

ArduCopter
1

I am currently building a quadcopter that has a 3 cell lipo battery, Pix32 V6 autopilot, and a M8N GPS, but the GPS isn’t seeming to work and it is saying “GPS: No GPS” no matter what I do. Also my esc’s are connected to IO 1, 2, 3, and 4 with the receiver connected to RC IN, but when I connect power, the esc’s do nothing, and it won’t let me arm the drone due to the gps problem and it saying “PreArm: Fence requires position” which I think has to do with the gps since it says position in it. I installed the drone software, set the frame type, calibrated the accelerometer, calibrated the leveling, calibrated the onboard mag, and calibrated the radio, but I am not sure about the servo output thing, because I tried changing where motor 1, 2, 3, and 4 were on in but nothing worked.

here are some pictures of it

IMG_20221007_185644064
IMG_20221007_1856440641920×2560 299 KB

IMG_20221007_185658927
IMG_20221007_1856589271920×2560 375 KB

Also I pre calibrated all my esc’s before and made sure all of them worked on their own, and I don’t think it should matter but my gps is connected to gps 2 since it won’t fit in gps 1 or i2c. And also I know the props are too small but I got them when I had a smaller frame when I first started working on it so I am still waiting on bigger ones.

2

Is that port configured for GPS in the parameters?

I got a laugh at the photo of the craft. Putting that Flight Controller on that frame is like the old joke “spinners on a Yugo” :slight_smile:

3

Oh, that helps, I didn’t know you had to configure it, do you know what parameter(s) I have to change?

4

The uart assigned to that port has to be configured for GPS. Looks like uart8 but confirm that.

5

Sorry for not replying for 4 hours, I had to go somewhere, but also how do I check that?

6

nvm found it, it is uart 8

7

Also some more info about the esc problem:

I have ESC’s 1-4 connected to IO 1-4, and the outputs on my autopilot go (from left to right) RC-IN, RC-OUT, FMU 8-1. then IO 8-1 so it would look like:
RC-IN, RC-OUT, FMU-8, FMU-7, FMU-6, FMU-5, FMU-4, FMU-3, FMU-2, FMU-1, IO-8, IO-7, IO-6, IO-5, IO-4, IO-3, IO-2, IO-1

and I have it so in servo outputs in ardupilot, positions 1-4 are motors, I have tried positions 13-16 but nothing worked, also for all my esc’s I have signal, 5v, and ground connected to the board. I have tried different combinations of servo output positions and connecting the esc’s to different pins, but nothing ever works. Also I know all the esc’s and motors are working fine because I tested them all individually, also I know that my pdb (my drone frame) is working because I tested all the xt60 connections and they are all outputting sufficient power. Not sure if this info helps but hopefully it does.

8

Oh and some more info, on the top of the autopilot I have 2 labels, FMU and IO and both of them have 3 leds under them labeled

Pwr: power
B/E: Bootload error
Act: Armed/activity

When I turn the power for the drone, on FMU I get solid green for power, flashing B/E most of the time but it slows down or disappears sometimes, and nothing for act, and for IO I get solid green power, solid red B/E when I turn off the power but after a while it stops, and flashing blue for act. Also yesterday I used a multimeter on the 5V and ground pins for IO 1-4 for my autopilot and I got 5v for all of them, but I tried it again and I am no longer getting any power.