UNSOLVED Uploading Arduino Sketches to a Remote in a Class of 25

[gregoryconely]

Hello. My questions are about pairing drones once I have their unique address. We've gone through each drone of a class set and used the "Find Address" and "Pairing with a Unique Address" sketches to pair every drone individually with a certain remote - whew!!!

Problem is, I have 3 class periods of 25 students each. And they have to remove their remote batteries for the next class, disconnect the USB cables, and a new connection has to be reestablished with the student (laptop) computers in the period after. In either case, it seems the drones and remotes don't stay paired. So, I'm wondering:

(1) Is there any way possible to keep each drone paired with a certain remote after disconnecting the USB cable, changing the batteries, or connecting the remote to another computer (laptop) that still has all the necessary Arduino Software Installations?

(2) My students are also having trouble connecting to different COM's (i.e, COM3, COM4, etc...) when trying to upload code, which appears to be preventing their sketches from uploading successfully. We did successfully pair each drone with a certain remote individually, beforehand, per the recommendation of others. But, again, we had to eventually disrupt the USB connection from our (teacher) computers and have students establish a different USB connection with the remote on their computers.

The only way different COM's became available was to have each student, individually, upload a code for pairing, while all other students had their sketches closed, remote power off, and drone battery disengaged. At best, however, this process took about 2 min. per person; and I only have an hour long period with 25 students.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining so much as trying to create an environment where all of my students can write, create, and upload code at the same time...And for the life of me, I haven't figured out how to do this yet!

You all are always very helpful , though, and provide me with insight and info that I haven't yet considered. So, I'd appreciate some more of it! Thank you, again, for your time and patience.

[robolink_arnold]

Hello @gregoryconely I really hope we can have a video call I can answer a lot of these questions in full detail. Whenever the bluetooth module is turned off it will need to reconnect to the bluetooth module even if it has the code with the correct address. Usually I have my students connect to the same usb port whenever they upload their code, if they connect to a different USB port, Arduino will generate a new com port. Most of the times the com port to pick is always the last one that appears in the list. Please check out this video it has a lot details on uploading.

[robolink_wes]

@gregoryconely I checked with @robolink_arnold, and it seems he hasn't been able to schedule a call with you just yet. Did you still need assistance on this? If so, we'd like to get in touch to offer advice from Arnold's experience in classrooms. Thanks!

[robolink_hansol]

@robolink_arnold: Pinging you in case you haven't seen this yet.

[robolink_wes]

Hi @gregoryconely! Your feedback is all valuable, so thanks for that. We're definitely interested in trying to reduce the amount of time it takes to do setup and troubleshooting, so this is all useful. I'll have @robolink_arnold answer these, since he's our veteran CoDrone instructor.