So everything was coming along just fine until I just broke the AR500 receiver. I was being a noob and was probing 5 Volts around the pins as if it was no big deal. The LED stopped flickering (which is always bad) and when I touched the receiver, it was extraordinarily hot. I’m pretty sure it is dead to the world.
The good news is that the frame, motors, and props are all assembled. Also, the new XBee shield came in the mail today. The old one was no good because it didn’t allow any room between it and the protoshield. All of that soldering for nothing! The new one (as you can see below) is shaped like an ‘L’ and allows us to mount the IDG300 gyroscope vertically to detect yaw. Sweet.
I just posted on the forum over at RCGroups begging for help with my current problems. Hopefully they will be kind enough to provide some insight to get over this 43 foot speed bump.
I have written code to test the 5DOF and it is working very well. I’ll post screenshots soon if I get it looking pretty.