Retractable landing gear (TL65B44) on APM2.x

Hi!
New to this forums, so forgive me if my search for previously answers to this questions have failed. I have found topics regarding this with the pixhawk, but none with the ardupilot apm2.x

I have two TL65B44 that I are trying to get to work. I was told that “the brightest” cable is the signal cable, so I plugged one of the landing skids into the OUTPUT#8 on the APM. I set RC8 to 29 and activated channel 7 on my RX to act as “landing gear”. But I still don’t get any response from the landing gears when I flip the switch.

Can some gentle soul please help me with an explanation as HOW to install/plug in my landing gears? I want them in the APU in order for them to auto deploy when RTL, but I simply can’t get them to function right.

Is the “lightest cable is signal cable” false? Do I dare experimenting?

Thanks in advance, and forgive me for being noob. It’s my first custom built drone.

Background:
F550 Hexacopter. Scratch built. APM2.8 and Walkera RX702 reciever.

thanks
Conny, Sweden

@Conny_Gyll,
Try here for a start.
Regards,
TCIII AVD

Thomas,

That link is only for PixHawk, since the Landing Gear lib is not on 3.2 version of Copter, and the question was related to APM

@LuisVale,
It is possible that the last version of ArduCopter that will run on an APM2.x does not support retractable landing gear?
Regards,
TCIII AVD

@TCIII

First appeared on 3.3RC1, so no APM support

https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/blob/master/ArduCopter/ReleaseNotes.txt#L227

I have checked, and I have the latest version. No LGR-parameters are existing.

You can still use it ok. Just let your channel be as pass trough channel. Eg. input from our radio goes directly to landing gear. At least that way you can manually control landing gears from the switch on your radio.

Yes, that’s how I use it now. But I would have fancied the “auto deploy on RTL”-function the APM promised. Oh well.

When installing the landing gears directly into my RX it binds to the AUX2 gain dial on my Devo7 TX. I would have liked to have my “GEAR” flip but I can’t figure out what that flip does.

Is there a way to change my TX in some way so that the GEAR-switch takes the AUX2-dial’s function? When it comes to remotes I have zero experience :-/

That totally depends on the radio itself. Usually you can swap those switches.
Devo7 is rather simple radio so it could be that you cannot change switches on that radio. You should look your radio manual on that as every radio have different ways to do it.
As I don’t have any Devos here, i quickly googled few links that could help you more: