Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ellison Chan on April 7, 2012 at 7:47am

I don't like the looks of those extension wires to the ESCs signal connectors and tie down all your wires, I bet you're getting a lot of signal noise to the ESCs from them flailing around.  Also you should balance your props.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Zimmerman on April 7, 2012 at 8:49am

Thanks Ellison, I'll balance props now and re-try.

P.S. How to isolate noises? What do you suggest?

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Permalink Reply by Gustav Kuhn on April 7, 2012 at 7:59am

It really looks like the APM has no effect whatsoever.

Your wiring to the APM doesn't look right, give us a hires picture of that.

On at least two controllers you don't have any earth connected to the ESC's.

There are very nice and clear pictures and, drawings in the Wiki, read it again.

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Permalink Reply by Ellison Chan on April 7, 2012 at 8:02am

Yeah, I noticed the grounds too, but since they're running off the same battery, the grounds should all be referenced from the battery ground, I think.  So, I think it's alright, but I would connect the ground to the signal connectors, just to be safe.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Zimmerman on April 7, 2012 at 8:53am

You mean just connecting - wires and signal wires? ESC to APM or RC to APM?

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Permalink Reply by Gustav Kuhn on April 7, 2012 at 12:58pm

You CANNOT reference anything to the ESC grounds, at the currents drawn there are huge voltage fluctuations in voltage on those wires.

All your grounds should be tied to a common point, preferably the correct PDB.

The Wiki has very clear info, collected and refined by many gifted people, and sometimes learned the hard way.

I fail to see how someone WOULD'NT  follow it.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Zimmerman on April 7, 2012 at 7:44pm

I was not able to find anything related to ground wires in ArduCopter, I used google, tried different search keywords, nothing relevant. Could you explain or reference it? Thanks

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Permalink Reply by Mark Zimmerman on April 7, 2012 at 10:13pm

Please see my last 3 comments in this thread

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Permalink Reply by Mark Zimmerman on April 7, 2012 at 8:52am

I connected only 1 ESC with all + and - and signal cable. Just 1 ESC connected with all options to power on APM and other ESCs just connected their signal cable. I learned that from here, by a comment from another expert. I was connected all ESCs with all 3 wires, they told me to just connect 1 ESC with 3 wires, so APM doesn't confuse and doesn't get power from 4 ESC.

Same goes for RC to APM connection, only 1 full (+, - and signal) connection from APM to RC. Others have just signal connected.

Any problem here?

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Permalink Reply by Ellison Chan on April 7, 2012 at 9:05am

Like I was saying, I don't think the ground connections are critical, since everything is connected via the battery ground.  So I wouldn't worry about that yet.  But tie down all the cables, to avoid introducing signal noise.  If you have electrical tape, then tape up all the connection points, so they don't jitter, and also introduce noise.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Zimmerman on April 7, 2012 at 9:22am

I'll balance props using tape.

I'll tape up all connection points to prevent noise and bind cables to frame.

I'll connect - cables of ESCs to APM and APM to RC. All - wires will be connected.

I'll do it in hours.

But, do you really think these stuff solve my problem? Isn't it something deeper?

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Permalink Reply by Ellison Chan on April 7, 2012 at 9:40am

Well, it's not that difficult to get a quad flying really.  People do it all the time.  Yours look relatively standard in size.  Nothing too unusual.  Everything appears to be configured properly.  So I would suspect it just needs a little tweaking.  The balancing of props important.  Once they are balanced, you will noticed the stability, greatly improves.  And from the looks of the way yours is behaving, some motors are not spinning at the same rate as others to cause the flipping. This can also be caused by uncalibrated ESCs.   Personally, I don't trust the ESC calibration routine on the APM, since it's hard to tell if all ESCs have calibrated properly.  I would definitely calibrate them with the receiver individually, then you know each is calibrated properly.

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