Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Eric Tweet on June 11, 2012 at 12:06am

I'm not a guru by any means, but a few ideas came to mind.

First, have you gone through the radio setup and all of the typical setup procedures in Mission Planner for your quad?

Second, have you performed the ESC calibration routine (either the simultaneous routine while everything is connected to the APM, or individually with each ESC plugged into the receiver)?

If I'm not mistaken your problem is not related to the RC3_MIN parameter, since that is adjusted when you do the radio setup in Mission Planner and you are able to arm the APM (which indicates that it recognizes the minimum throttle value correctly). To me it sounds like the ESC's aren't calibrated. As I said, though, I'm no expert, so these are just top-of-my-head ideas! Good Luck!

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Christiaan van Vollenstee on June 11, 2012 at 12:10am

Hey

Yes I have done that almost a 100 times. The ESC does calibrate. The radio is setup in the mission planner.

When I change the RC3_MIN to 1000 the esc arm themselfs successfully but then the problem is the APM does not arm. The apm only arm's when the RC3_MIN has not been tampered with but then the ESC's does not arm just beeps contantly.

 

Regards

Christiaan

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Eric Tweet on June 11, 2012 at 12:22am

I figured you probably had done all of that, but thought it was worth checking anyway.

The problem with playing with RC3_MIN is that when you set it to lower than the Tx PWM value (as stored when doing the radio calibration in Mission Planner), the APM thinks that your throttle is not all the way down even when it is on your controller (since it's waiting for a very low PWM and your Tx is sending a higher value).

Did you have everything working before you upgraded the firmware?

If I were in your shoes, I would:

1. Check all wires and solder joints if you have the time (if you haven't already)
2. Re-Load firmware
3. Perform Mission Planner setup procedures (radio calibration, level, etc)
4. Perform the ESC calibration after doing the Mission Planner setup to ensure the ESC's are getting the correctly transmitted PWM values.

Again, these are suggestions that I would likely do at this point if help doesn't come flooding your way from more experienced people. Cheers :)

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Christiaan van Vollenstee on June 11, 2012 at 12:27am

Yes I have been doing from friday night to sunday night. I took everything apart and check the connections I took out my voltmeter and checked the currents and all that is 100%.

 

I have been going over the thing over and over and for the lights of me I cannot see the issue.

 

Thank you for the suggestions every bit helps.

 

Regards

Christiaan

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Michael Pursifull on June 11, 2012 at 1:38am

Don't change your RC3_MIN manually in the parameters.

Remove and reattach the ESC servo cables and the cables from your PDB to the APM. Make sure they are all tight. 

Push a new copy of the firmware. 

Connect, and go into the configuration, and re-calibate your TX on all channels. 

Set up your modes and your frame orientation. Push your custom PIDs if you have them, but only load the PID settings, not the entire file. Especially don't load any TX/RX related settings, like min/max values.

Power it off, and power it back on with battery while not connected to your USB. 

Do your ESCs keep beeping? If so, wiggle the ESC cables and APM output cables. See if they stop beeping. If they keep beeping, look up the beep codes for your ESCs. Usually it is something like:

1 beep every 1 seconds  means something

1 beep every 2 seconds means something else

2 beeps every 1 second means something else

Most likely it is something like:

 * PWM signal is invalid (bad TX calibration, reversed throttle value, or bad connection between ESC and APM)

Good luck.

 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Christiaan van Vollenstee on June 11, 2012 at 3:12am

Thank you for this, I have tried it, there was one part on the forum where a person wrongly connected the ESC's so I did that exactly, I took apart the whole setup and put it together. I calibrate my remote on a flight sim and that works 100% my throttles is not reversed. My question is why does all of the ESC's act presisely the same and if I lower the RC3_MIN all of the esc's arm together playing the same melody at the precise same time.

 

I even reproggramed my ESC's to make sure that all of them is set to the default programming of all ESC's.

 

Regards

Christiaan

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by iskess on January 28, 2013 at 3:16pm

So did you ever figure this out? I have the same issue.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Christiaan van Vollenstee on January 28, 2013 at 11:26pm

The APM got hurt. Once it starts doing this you can start thinking of using it for someting else becuase it will never fly again.

• ▶ Reply