I have been having tons of issues with the vanilla jDrones ESCs (20A) that came with my hex kit. After calibrating and re-calibrating multiple number of times (manually and automatically), I finally managed to get my hex into the air (it was -15C outside).
After about 5 minutes of flying and two mild crashes (1 ft high), one of the motors stopped arming. It would simply jerk. I tried to re-calibrate the ESC, but now two parallel motors start beeping rapidly. I spent all day trying to re-calibrate the ESCs (again manually and automatically), but to no avail. Two motors still beep. They would work fine on their own after a manual calibration, but when all six are hooked, the problem happens again. One ESC would only power up with the throttle half way up. I tried calibration with adjusted trims, but again, no luck. I heard low temperatures outside may cause calibration reset.
I finally gave up yesterday and purchased DJI Opto ESCs because they do not require calibration.
Did anyone try to use those with APM 2.5? The Ardu Wiki states that they are "excellent." Do I need any extra equipment to hook them up if I do not use any servos.
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I am happy to report that I found a solution. The TX (WFT 09) came prepogrammed with the low throtle endpoint of 107%. Once I bumpted it to 120%, recalibrated the APM-radio and finaly recallibrated all ESCs manually, they finally startup as they are supposed to. Note that is it is very important to make sure that the accelerometr is calibrated before and that arducopter is level because APM sends different PWM out values if the calibration not done before hand. As a result, the props may end up spinning at different speeds.
Lessons learned: ESCs may change their calibration parameters if run in extreme cold. They will have to be recalibrated manually afterwards.
I've been using them forever and a day. No setup required and they work well. I'm not sure how high of an update rate you can push to them.