Setting up camera gimbal causes crash and freeze about missionplanner HOT 4 CLOSED

     Do you have servos attached while you're doing this?  I find the USB cable cannot provide enough power to move the servos and so it causes a brown-out of the APM and this can lead to the loss of connection with the MP.

     By the way, you shouldn't plug the servos' red and black wires directly into the side of the APM, really you need to power them from the rear motor output rail or a separate BEC.  servos sharing the same power with the APM's 2560 CPU is a recipe for disaster.  I speak from countless crashes with a tradHeli because of this.

-Randy

From: Graham Dyer [email protected]
To: diydrones/MissionPlanner [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2013 5:58 PM
Subject: [MissionPlanner] Setting up camera gimbal causes crash and freeze (#15)

I'm setting up a tilt gimbal using MPv1.2.36 connected with a 3DR 433MHz radio.
I've set up the servo limits and angle limits, however when I change the Input Ch from 'disabled' to 'Ch6' the following errors come up, (I am connected to the 'net so not sure about the second one).
Also at this point my APM2 becomes completely unresponsive, requiring a cold reboot.
Ch6 Opt in ArduCopter Config is set to CH6_0NONE.

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Using 3DR radio with 4xESC's providing power so there should be enough for one servo, have used exactly the same A11 output for my servo parachute release.
The tilt servo works 100% in tilt before I try change the Input Ch to Ch6, after I change, boom

Confirm only the signal wire should be connected to APM, the power (+&-) coming from the ESC rail?

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Can you try disconnecting the servo to see if the problem still occurs with the servo disconnected?

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Yup, sorted now, thanks Randy. Moved the +/- wires to the ESC side of the APM and just left the signal lead connected to the signal pin of A11. Despite having around 4.93V throughout APM, if that particular servo is powered from A11 it causes the problem, APM2 freezes & comms lost.

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