***First time doing this disclaimer.***
I'm having trouble arming the motors after successful manual calibration of all four. I'm using the Turnigy 9X with a 3DR Kit and am able to individually calibrate and control each motor when connected only to the receiver/transmitter. Once I connect everything and power up the amp2, the motors appear to arm (red and blue LEDs are solid after doing their dance) but I do not get a response to throttle change and the initial perpetual beeping/twitching is still there.
Any thoughts what I'm doing wrong? Thanks in advance for your time and help.
Replies
I had this problem (first timer also). After I was *certain* I had not made any wiring errors.. I found a big one.
If your ESCs are doing the musical thing and follow up with 'beep........beep........beep......(continuously)' you may have one also.
On my APM2 I had installed the motor drive cable to the 3DR PDB on the wrong end of the output header.
Double check, again, that the cable is installed like this...(on the blue and green indicated pins)
I looked at this over and over again before the light came on. Here is a picture I had taken showing the cable in the *wrong* location. I have the 90 degree connectors and though on the top row, it was on the wrong end.
The cable on the right side of the picture clearly shows it is *not* located on the right side of the APM (as seen from the GPS end of the board). I have the 3DR ESCs so unless yours are radically different in function, if they are constantly beeping after startup, check your wiring again. I too ran them up with direct connection to the receiver but messed up when installing the cable back onto the APM.
I am over 20 battery cycles into learing to fly this critter and each one is more fun than the previous.
Good luck.
-=Doug
When I connected today to try again, I noticed there was an update for MP. After the update, I connected via USB with battery, armed the remote and noticed the attached in Failsafe. I'm definitely get output to the Servo/Motors (although it looks like the Radio 3 output needs some attention).
InputOutputCapture.PNG
After reversing the aileron and elevator, then un-reversing the throttle (from default settings), I seem to have the expected results in MP. I manually re-calibrated each motor and reconnected through AMP. Now I can both arm (Left Stick Down and Right - Solid Red Light) and disarm (Left Stick Down and Left - Blinking Red Light), but still no throttle responses.
If I screwed up soldering the PCB, would it still appear to work like it is? The AMP is definitely getting power from the PCB. I doubt I did that right then messed up every single three pin header and/or every motor signal. But I bet I could.
This happened to me just as you described the very first time I finally got everything hooked up (APM 2.5 + 3DR-B + standard motors/ESCs).
What it was was the ESC cal. I had done the radio cal many times, before finally getting the radio set up how I wanted it. Sometime I had very slightly changed the radio's throttle range so it was more 1100-1900. This was a bit wider than the range I had calibrated the ESCs (individually) with.This meant that the ESCs were no longer calibrated to the throttle range the radio was putting out, radio zero was not ESC throttle zero anymore. The quad would just sit there with a lot of really annoying continuous beeping.
My lesson: calibrate the radio first, then cal the ESCs when everything done. Makes perfect sense in retrospect. D'oh!
Did you perform the radio calibration within the Mission Planner (clickity click) too?