I bought a Cheerson CX-20 from HK. Kind of...
The one I bought was sold without a radio. The ad stated "just add your own radio". I received the unit and it had absolutely no instructions (except the basic ones explaining how to use the "included" remote control).
I opened it up and connected my radio. The channels on the controller were marked "A-E-T-R-1-2-3-4"
I figured out what the "AETR" ones were, and connected them up. After checking on the net, I found that the controller was an Arducopter, so I tried Mission Planner. That seemed to work, and I used that program to calibrate the radio channels and set things up.
The controller was getting no power from the battery (it DID get power from USB, however), and I noticed that the red wires from all the ESCs were disconnected. The controller in this machine sits on a power distribution board that happens to have a small switching regulator on it, and 3 wires (red, black,white) came from the board. A voltmeter showed that 5V was on the red wire and 12V was on the white one. I connected the red wire to one of the wires connecting the ESCs to the controller and that powered the controller from the battery.
I went through all the mandatory setups in Mission Planner and put the unit in the "loiter" mode, but it will not arm. The red and green lights are flashing, but it simply will not arm.
I should state that the motors "sing" when I plug in the battery, and that I did get it to arm one time - by accident. The motors spun in response to the throttle. I have no idea what I did to create that conditon, and I haven't been able to duplicate it.
So I have some questions:
Is there some sort of diagnostic that I can run that will show WHY the unit won't arm?
I didn't see any voltage indication in Mission Planner. Could it be that the controller doesn't see the appropriate battery voltage and cause the unit not to arm? Should the wire that has the 5V and 12V be routed to the controller somwhere so it can not only get power but sense the battery voltage (I don't see where it could plug in).
There is a small PCB that holds the USB connector on the bottom of the machine, and there is a 3-conductor wire coming from that. It is not connected to anything now. What is that for?
There are a bunch of pin headers surrounding the USB connector. What are those for?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. HK is of absolutely no help whatsoever.
Replies
yes steve mission planner all set up ,the low voltage setting in mission planner only works so you can set rtl or land if you have a power module install so the apm can read real the battrey voltage that parts all fine with me its the inbuilt warning beeps and flashing lights i have an issue with as they are controlled seperatly via the inbuilt and set from factory on the power board that circuit alone controll the flashing lights and beeps ,i was just hopeing of a work around like charles had done above by fitting a trimpot to lower the voltage .He is the only person who has found a workaround so ive read other than that i may have to try another power board to hope they set it a factory lower than 11.8 which mine is set at .
Im away chilling at my caravan at the moment but when I get home and have my hands on my CX20 I will have a look at all the settings you can access via Mission Planner and get back to you... I will see what options mine gives because I am sure I saw a setting to turn off the low battery warning and or set the voltage at which it acts on one of the other settings to either rtl or land... ( its been a while since I looked ) so off cuff I cant remember....
Should be by Wednesday evening......
The problem is i have reverted my quad back to stock as i was using the mutistar 5200mah battrey so was getting a good 20 mins flight before i got a warning flash but as i have telemetry and run tower i never took any notice ,now ive lower the board back to stock so can only use small battreys the warning flashes within a minute of flight and i dont want the new buyer to think theres a problem even when there isnt if you know what i mean
Arming Problem -
Have you checked that the "Arm/Disarm" option in the Mission Planner software is set correctly. I had this same problem after I had completed a firmware update. I found that with the CX-20 connected to the Mission Planner software and then clicking on "Config/Tuning" Tab and then click on "Standard Params" Tab then look at the first setting at the top of the page ARMING CHECK And the you need to select "Disabled" in the drop down box and then click on the top green WRITE PARAMS button to send the data to your CX-20
Hope this helps
The Pins on the bottom of the CX-20 are for connecting items like a camera gimbal You have 12volt pins, 5volt pins and S1 & S2 Signal pins for controlling your gimbal motors.... a quick diagram link below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0QH-W9q8kQ
Hope this helps
Regards,
Steve
I have installed FPV, storm32 3axis gimbal and telemetry on my CX-20 open source.
My problem is the same as you can see in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwascDu92ns
I solve this problem like you say (disable pre arming check thru Mission Planner) but i think that isn't correct way to solve the problem.
What to you suggest?
Did you get your cx20 working? If so how did you do it??
Thanks,
Steve
I did get it to work. I just had to become familiar with APM and Mission Planner and figure out what was connected to what.
I did have a problem, however in that the lights would flash the "low battery" warning when the battery voltage got below 11.8V. That gave me about 3 minutes of flight time! I figured out where the voltage divider on the power distribution board was and put a trimpot there so I could adjust the low-voltage warning to something more reasonable (10.5V).
I wound up crashing it badly enough that I needed to buy a new case/housing. Since that had to come from HK and I didn't want to wait, I took the controller and GPS out of the Cheerson and put it into a home-built quad - where it still is.
I got the new chassis and put new (bigger) motors in the Cheerson, added 9" props and cut out the battery compartment ends (Dremeled out the front and removed the door from the rear) so I could use a 3800mAH battery. I bent a piece of aluminum that went under the craft and came up in the front to cover the front of the battery, and put a hinged door in the rear. I painted the aluminum white. It doesn't look bad at all, and my hinged door latch is a lot better than the silly latch on the Cheerson. I used a SOUTHCO 1/4 turn fastener for the latch. I also extended the landing gear about 2" with some pieces of .063" fiberglass sheet to better work with the gimbal. For the controller, I use a NAZE32 with a GPS. It doesn't do way-points, or autonomous flying like the Cheerson, but it really flies well and has position hold, etc.
The bigger motors and props help lift the camera gimbal and the bigger battery gives me 15min + airtime.
The Cheerson ESCs have no trouble with the bigger motors/props, although I did add a small stick-on heatsink to the FETs to make them run cooler.
So, the CX-20 (if you can still call it that) is still in my 'hanger' with my 5 other quads/hexes, and I fly it from time to time. It is a lot of fun to fly.
The 32 bit controllers seem to be a bit more stable than the APM - based ones. The downside being that they don't have all the autonomous features.
You can check out my blog at
http://CALmultirotor.com
hi charles hop you dont mind me sending a message but i can only find you on the internet who has managed to stop the low voltage alarm on a cheerson cx 20 ,mines sounding at 11.8v could you possibly help please
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