I've just finished wiring my boards up and mating them with my airframe and (tested working) ESC+motor combos but I can't get the board to drive my motors.
I've done manual calibration and driving the ESCs directly from my RF receiver works fine for all. When I power up I'm just left with a flashing A LED (indicating ESCs not armed yet, I think?) and no chirping from my ESCs.
I had a brief moment of success when all four motors spun up for a few seconds after I had wiped all config and gone through the steps from scratch but it stopped after I rebooted the board.
Do I actually need the radio connected to observe any activity from the ESCs/motors?
Any thoughts?
Replies
I strongly second what Chris is saying; read everything in the manual, but I would add "twice."
To arm, you need to yaw hard right, and you need to be in stabilize mode. If you don't know three other "yaw" instructions which you can issue from the RC to the quad, then you haven't read in enough detail. :-)
You'll know you've armed when your flashing green LED on the IMU goes solid.
There is a while mess of things that can go sideways from there, so be sure you've read the manual, and be prepared to troubleshoot, methodically, and be prepared to look through your assumptions. For example, a leading cause of these things not working right away is a mixup in which ESC is attached to which arm, or motors spinning in the wrong directions, or props mis-matched to the direction they need to spin. Even if you've checked it three times, it is easy to make a mistake, and then overlook that mistake after your first bad test.
Good pick on the futaba; I have become a happy futaba owner.
Yes, you need a radio connected to arm the ESCs. (It's a safety thing).
You can also go through the troubleshooting guide here.