Pixhawk 6c Pro stopped booting after reflashing

ArduCopter Copter 4.6
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1

Hello friends!

I’ve just fixed one issue (with ESCs) getting the motors to spin, and got another - Pixhawk just stopped booting…

All I see when I power it up is the PWR leds being lit, B/E led is constantly lit on the left side but blinking quickly on the right side and ACT led is blinking but not as quickly as the B/E on the right side. The big LED in the middle of the FC isn’t lit anymore and there’s no usual sound of booting up.

I was trying to reflash it and in the process something happened, it either asked me to switch the Pixhawk off from the laptop or something like that, and when I did it the flashing didn’t continue the right way, I believe it’s because of the COM ports not being available anymore.

Usually I see COM 13 to connect to the flight controller and COM 14 to connect to the CAN, but now I only see COM 12 which is just a USB Serial Device.

I wonder what could have gone wrong and if there’s a way to fix it, or maybe it’s permanently bricked and I can throw it away now?

2

Try using QGroundControl and reflash the Arducopter firmware

3

I tried that, but apparently the FC “was” bricked and neither Ardupilot nor QGC could simply see its COM port, it was just a generic USB device and trying to connect to it had no results, luckily I found a solution which completely fixed the issue but is a bit “involved”. Honestly, sometimes I’m shocked how quickly a situation becomes from “no way it can be fixed, panic!!!” to “everything is perfectly fine and working”.

I had to connect (basically solder a thin wire) R10 and C36 pads on the board to enter the DFU mode, then install and open the STM32CubeProg software and use it to flash the board with the needed firmware I’ve got from the firmware.ardupilot.org website.

Now it works as before. I’m happy, the day is saved.

It looks like majority of FC use STM32, so I believe it can be repeated to “unbrick” any FC with STM32.

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