Hello there!
I have just assembled my first very first quadcopter. As the title says, its a DJI Flamewheel F450 Frame kit with a PixHawk autopilot and a Turnigy 3S 5000mAH LiPo. I have the 3DR GPS module attached as well. My Tx/Rx is Turnigy 9x /9x8Cv2 through PPM.
I was able to calibrate everything just fine, but I did have to disable the arming check to get the PixHawk to arm, but that issue can be postponed for another time.
The craft is not generating enough thrust to take off. The motors are 920 kV so there should be plenty of power there with the 3S. I am using the 10 inch propellers included with the kit.
According to the Mission Planner software, at full throttle there is only ~25A being pulled from the battery, which seems very low to me. I check and rechecked to make sure the motors and props are spinning the right way. I have them spinning according to the DJI assembly wiki at DJI Flamewheel F450 Assembly
Can anyone give me any troubleshooting tips to isolate the problem? I'm completely at a loss. Thanks in advance!
Matt
Replies
Ok several things here.
First up, you must NOT use the DJI frame setup instructions as you are not flying a DJI flight controller. The motors are numbered differently to PIXHAWK and APM. See this page for motor numbers and prop directions.
http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/common-pixhawk-wiring-and-quick-st...
Also, from the picture you have the red arms as the front of the copter, however the props appear to be on the wrong way round, in fact from the picture they actually look upside down as well as the wrong way round, but that could be an optical illusion.
You will be hard pushed to pull more than 25 amps with that setup, i think what you are seeing is 25A full throttle and the quad pulling itself into the ground due to the prop/motor number issue. You are lucky that it doesn't just try to flip on takeoff, you must have got everything perfectly backwards!
Good luck, and don't worry we've all done it :)
Yep, I had the props mounted upside down.... At first it seemed like they only mounted one way. Thank you so much!!! Time to do some flying!!! :)