Mission Planner not connecting to radio modem

Ground Control Software Mission Planner
1

Hi. I am very new to UAVs, just having started last week. I have been doing lots and lots of research and think I’m starting to get a hold of the basics. After trying out a drone using RFD900 radios, I am interested to see if I can get a couple of microhard radio modems to send telemetry data between my UAV and GCS, MissionPlanner. Unfortunately, this is not working too well. I can get the modems to communicate over putty when both plugged into my laptop and can configure them to communicate at 57600 baud which is the recommended speed for telemetry data (though I don’t understand why when I put the modems in command mode, I can only access and change the parameters when my baud is set to 9600 but when I want to transmit and receive, I need to set the putty to 57600 baud again . . .) but when I try to connect the radio modems to MissionPlanner I am having no success.

When I try loading the radio settings into mission planner, the program says that it has either failed to enter bootloader mode or gives me the following error message:

"Error during read System.FormatException: Input string was not in a correct format.
at System.Number.StringToNumber(String str, NumberSytles options, NumberBufffer number, NumberFormatInfo info, Boolean parseDecimal)
at System.Number.ParseInt32(String s, NumberSytles style, NumberFormatInfo info)
at MissionPlanner.Radio.Sikradio.BUT_getcurrent_Click(Object sender. EventArgs e)

I have tried wiring the cts pin on my radio to ground as mentioned in this post: 3DR Radio in Bootloader mode after failed firmware update That did not work, but because it’s not specifically an SiK radio I can’t say that that was too surprising.

The radio connects to my computer which is running mission planner by a rs232 cable to usb so it’s not any problems with rx/tx being switched or something like that.

Do I have to somehow download mavlink onto these radios or the ability to run the mavlink protocol? If so, how do I do that? Or should I be downloading the sik firmware onto these radios?

Could it be something to do with my drivers? I don’t even know what drivers I have with these radios, how would I figure that out?

2

its saying that one of the numbers has a decimal point that is not valid.

3

What number is it referring to?

4

are you in a country that uses a comma as a decimal seperator?

5

No I am not. How would I alter the format of the string to no longer throw this exception?

6

I don’t know if this is related, but upon doing further tests, I am realizing that the modem connected to the pixhawk is not transmitting. This is because the lights that should show up when something is transmitting to the modem are not turning on when I connect the master to the ground control station but they are when I connect it to the pixhawk.