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3DR DIY 2014 Quad

Posted by Arthur Poolton on July 28, 2014 at 11:08am

Hi All,

I am somewhat of a novice so please bear with me.

I have assemble this drone as per instructions, bonded it to the transmitter, and have calibrated the "sticks" as per "Mission Planner" software.

I believe that I have calibrated the ESC's (following instructions from the APM Copter web-site).

The problem is that not all motors spin-up to maximum smoothly.

When increasing the throttle control, one of the motors appears to keeps stopping intermittently, it seems to be getting hotter than the other three motors, and I have noted a slight wisp of smoke.

One of the other motors is also showing similar characteristics, but not so markedly.

Question : is it a faulty motor, ESC, power distribution board or the Pixhawk flight controller that is causing the problem ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Arthur

 

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Tags: 2014, 3dr, diy, quad
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Replies

  • Johann van de Venter July 30, 2014 at 2:30pm

    btw ... noticing a slight wisp of smoke is never a good sign ..:(

    • Arthur Poolton > Johann van de Venter July 31, 2014 at 3:04am

      Thanks for the info. Johann. After conducting a series of tests I believe that the ESC's are faulty. I have since emailed 3DR and am waiting for a response.

  • Clayton W July 28, 2014 at 5:44pm

    I think with an issue like that, I'd be emailing 3drobotics directly. 

    • Arthur Poolton > Clayton W July 29, 2014 at 7:02am

      Hi "Clayton",

      I have already emailed 3DRobotics and am waiting for a response, hence my post to see if anyone else had experienced a similar problem.

      Meantime, I am contemplating swapping over the faulty motor / ESC combination for one of the others to eliminate the flight controller. If the controller proves OK, then by swapping the two respective ESC's should prove whether I actually have a faulty motor or a faulty ESC.

      The only question then is - am I likely to damage the good motor &/or good ESC ?

      • Johann van de Venter > Arthur Poolton July 30, 2014 at 2:28pm

        I had the same issue. What ESCs are you using?

        In my case there was two problems 

        1. The ESCs were programmed for LIPO and no NMxx. Although I fly with Lipos, 3DRs site says you must set the ESCs to NMxx. Doing this helped a lot but did not sort out one of my motors completely. 

        2. I then checked each of the ESC's programming and found that 1 was programmed slightly different to the other 3. I then went through the process of making sure the programming settings on al 4 ESCs were identical.

        I then calibrated each of the ESC manually on their own and after that I calibrated them all together using the APM's calibration mode. 

        Hope this helps

        This resolved the issue with on motor spinning slower and then stopping. 

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