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Permalink Reply by Boston UAV on September 17, 2012 at 3:55pm

Did you perform the radio calibration within the Mission Planner (clickity click) too?

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Pinkston on September 17, 2012 at 5:29pm

Thanks Boston,

I thought I did that a few times, but something tells me no. I re-did what I thought was the calibration in the attached screenshot. The button dialog changed to 'Completed' so I thought it was successful. Is the saving all 'auto-save' a bit and not so much manual? I repeated the process in the same way I had done it previously. Still two solid LEDs after the arming process but no throttle response on any motor. 

Attachments:

• MP.PNG, 227 KB

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Pinkston on September 17, 2012 at 6:11pm

I re calibrated the remote and am still getting the same response or lack there of. I can't seem to de-arm the motors once they are LED-blinkingly ON if that adds any logic to where I am lost. (Mode 2 Default)   

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Permalink Reply by Boston UAV on September 18, 2012 at 6:11am

I use telemetry with the MP (easy version of situational awareness) so unfortunately I'm not up to snuff on the LED patterns. I'll take a read through later today though and see if something jumps out at me.

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Permalink Reply by Craig Fraser on September 18, 2012 at 10:49am

This happened to me just as you described the very first time I finally got everything hooked up (APM 2.5 + 3DR-B + standard motors/ESCs).

What it was was the ESC cal. I had done the radio cal many times, before finally getting the radio set up how I wanted it. Sometime I had very slightly changed the radio's throttle range so it was more 1100-1900. This was a bit wider than the range I had calibrated the ESCs (individually) with.This meant that the ESCs were no longer calibrated to the throttle range the radio was putting out, radio zero was not ESC throttle zero anymore. The quad would just sit there with a lot of really annoying continuous beeping.

My lesson: calibrate the radio first, then cal the ESCs when everything done. Makes perfect sense in retrospect. D'oh!

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Pinkston on September 18, 2012 at 11:39am

Thanks Craig. Makes sense to me. I will give that a try.

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Permalink Reply by Craig Fraser on September 18, 2012 at 12:32pm

Hope it helps. Bear in mind I'm new to this too.

The wiki instructions have things in the correct order in the Config section. But I received my APM a couple weeks after the frame and electrical parts, so I had calibrated my ESCs in the meantime (to the Tx's existing throttle range) and then kind of forgotten about them. It is totally unsurprising in my case that things didn't work out that way.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Pinkston on September 19, 2012 at 8:24am

Humm. I redid the calibration and still no response after connecting through APM. Were you ever able to get the Automatic calibration for the ESCs to work, or could you only get manual to work like myself? On your Turnigy did you leave all default settings (Mode 2), or did you reverse anything?

I think it may have to do with the Radio Calibration on the actual remote and reversing the transmitter channels. For example, in the printable AMP2_Quad_Setup_3.pdf during radio calibration it says:

a) Right stick Left (Roll Left) should equal low PWM. If not reverse the transmitter channel.

But (if I understand what I am looking at in the screenshot, which I very well may not) when I Roll Left it looks to equal higher PWM as before it was at the midpoint for Roll. This is true for Pitch Forward and Throttle Low as well. Only Yaw left looks to equal low PWN. Do I need to reverse the others on the remote itself?

Attachments:

• RCCalibration.PNG, 19 KB
• RightStickLeft.PNG, 113 KB

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Permalink Reply by Craig Fraser on September 19, 2012 at 8:47am

Sorry, I have only one radio here and it's a Hitec and that's all I'm directly familiar with.

I only had to reverse the pitch channel, and I did that at the radio end. I don't know if it matters if you reverse in the APM or at the Tx (not supposed to matter), I don't think I even tried reversing in MP/APM. I just automatically did it at the Tx from old habit. All my low/high PWM directions match what they show/require in MP, and it seems to work fine in practice.

I also didn't even try automatic ESC calibration. Two reasons: the instructions said it wouldn't work with my jDrones ESCs, and I didn't have an APM yet. The next time I calibrated the ESCs I just did it the same way. Because frankly when I had a problem that "looked" like yours, I wanted to re-do ALL the ESC settings for all the ESCs, so you have to do it manually for that (these are my first ESCs that don't allow you to "read" the ESC settings if you want to check their setup, that only allow you to "write" them).

Just my 2 cents, but I'd lower your lower pitch PWM value. It would probably work as is, but it's kind of high, check what may be causing it (some inadvertent mixing?, short EPA?, etc.). Are you using ch. 6 to set modes, and if so did you connect the APM ch.5 input to Rx ch.6? I ask that because ch.5 has no range along with 7 and 8 which I presume you're not using either. Or maybe all your flight modes are Stabilize and it's OK for Rx ch.5 connects to APM ch.5 as is.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Pinkston on September 19, 2012 at 8:59am

Thanks Craig, I never had any success with the auto calibration either. I have jDrones as well, but just figured I'd ask.

When I reverse the Roll in MP, it just seems to flip the end points (see attached) and not reassign them to the converse values. So the green bar goes the other way, but the PWM seems to be the same number. I think I need to research Turnigy 9X a bit more. And probably RC in general...

Attachments:

• ReversedRightStickLeft.PNG, 125 KB

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Permalink Reply by Craig Fraser on September 19, 2012 at 9:26am

Your roll low PWM value is also a bit high (like pitch), ~1100 is the guide target. I don't quite understand what I see in the MP pic with roll reversed at the MP end, as I've never done it myself, so I'd need my radio/APM here to visualize it (sorry). But it definitely looks like you need to reverse that channel. What does MP look like when you reverse it at the radio? When I did it for my pitch channel, whatever I saw in MP looked right/intuitively correct to me. And I calibrated my radio a lot in MP as it's older and requires some fiddling to get flight modes conveniently set up (though I only use Stab at this point).

Bear in mind I have no real knowledge of your radio, but I can't help but have noticed that many owners say it is a bit flakey with the original firmware, and that it becomes totally fabulous with the FW upgrade...something to consider if you haven't already.

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Permalink Reply by Craig Fraser on September 19, 2012 at 9:51am

P.S. Do you have a spring on your throttle channel by any chance? Just wondering because it shows as being in the middle in the pics. Should get into the habit of always zeroing throttle when "leaving" the radio, even if it's turned off. Safety first with these upside-down flying lawnmowers...

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