Pixhawk (Baro bad health, Bad velocity, Gyro cal. failed)

ArduCopter Copter 3.2
1

Hello everyone,

I want to ask, if there is some kind of procedure to test if Pixhawk is physically fine. In past days I received multiple failure messages and now I am little bit scared. I want to be 100% sure everything is ok.

It all started with “Baro not healthy” message". I wasn’t sure, if it is HW error, temperature was around 0° C, so there might be other reason for this message. I found that recalibration might help to solve the problem. I decide to update firmware to 3.2 and in process recalibrate compass. After that I start getting failure messages “Alt disparity” and “Compass not calibrated”.

I decided to reset Pixhawk to factory setting, but I didn’t find any guide to that. So I did it by pushing reset button on side (one without microUSB) of Pixhawk, until it start blinking blue, and then pushing second reset button next to micro USB on opposite side. Then I installed APM:Plane firmware and after that APM:Copter 3.2, after that I load “IRIS with gimbal” parameter list, calibrated Compass, Radio, Accelerometer and then successfully armed IRIS.

Second day, I took IRIS outside to do autotune, but I keep geting failure messages “Bad velocity”, “Gyro cal. failed”, “high GPS HDOP”. Temperature was again around 0°C.

“Bad velocity” - Accelerometer calibration was successfull, at home in room temperature was everything alright.

“Gyro cal. failed” - I was inserting batteries really gently, like 100 times before. I removed this message on 3rd battery reconnection.

“high GPS HDOP” - this might caused by different place, I noted just to describe whole picture.

After all I was able to make 2 short, not very confident, flights, but I am not sure, what to do next.

Is it safe to fly it? Is Pixhawk temperature sensitive? Should I just calirate Accelerometer again? Is it possible to test Pixhawk HW?

Thanks, Tomas

2

Tomas,

Strangely enough , I had the same yesterday with a brand new out of the box pixhawk. Firmware 3.2 xas installed, I even tried 3.2.1 to verify it this would slove all the alt disparity, gyro bad health, bad accel, etc messages. Once out of 4 reboots I would succeed to not get a bad accel but the HUD horizon would not be straight. Tried an accel recalibration at least 10 times with systematic “failed calibration” error.
Pixhawk could also not read a reliable and stable power port’s current monitor signal.
I replaced this pixhawk with another one and all problems disappeared. This confirmed the pixhawk card was faulty (and excluded any cabling/mounting/attopilot issues).
If I were you I would not fly with such an instable card, just request a replacement under warranty.

3

Well, but my Pixhawk isn’t new, I was successfully using it for past six months. Then I got “Baro not healthy” failure message. This disappeared after last firmware change.

Unfortunately I get “Gyro cal. failed” and “Bad velocity” message instead. It seems to me, it is more like SW problem. My accelerometer calibration failed twice, but I think it was because I did it slowly. On third try I calibrate it successfully.

4

I decided to try it with arducopter 3.1.5., I did accelerometer, compass and radio calibration again, then made two test flights and everything seems almost alright. I have to make accelerometer calibration again, because I get in log analysis IMU mismatch 0,78 warning. But otherwise IRIS flies high again!