I’ve been flight testing my Arducopter since Christmas with excellent flight performance (RC2 firmware) but mixed results for the Gps hold function.  I finally tracked the issue down to my MTK GPS resetting itself while running the September firmware when it is cold. The GPS runs great indoors as verified in my XBEE serial monitor using the “4” selection, but would stop reporting a position (TOD stops updating) a few minutes after I was flying in cold weather (20 degree F). I used my USBEE logic analyzer to figure out what was going on and I see the proprietary binary protocol change to the default NMEA protocol when I place the Arducopter outdoors.

The LA showed the output in proprietary format at a 5 Hz rate stopping for 2 seconds and then a $PGMOD message with the default NMEA output resuming just after. The blue light on the MTK carrier board maintains a solid blue light through the reset which was fooling me when trying to test the GPS hold in flight. I checked the 5 volt power going to the GPS when the event happens and everything is fine so it seems my MTK is temperature sensitive.

My MediaTek is an older one (purchased in late Summer 2010) with a coin battery on the back and I’ve ordered a new one. I just wanted to give a heads up to others since the the switch back to NMEA was so weird when trying to get the GPS hold to work.

Here is the USBEE screeen capture showing the serial port messages changing to the default message format during the MTK reset, the left packets are the proprietary messages at 200 msecs, then a pause, a reset message, and then NMEA packets. (Love the USBEE by the way):