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PixHawk Woes - Max Throttle Not enough power to fly after installing APMCopter 3.2.1, works fine with QGroundControl :(

Posted by Jake on March 28, 2015 at 4:25pm

After upgrading to APM Copter 3.2.1 and doing all the calibration (Radio, compass, accel, flight modes, failsafe) I am unable to fly more than 1 ft off the ground. This is peculiar because I was previously flying with the QGroundControl firmware and I could fly great but I wanted to use APM Copter. 

What's the difference? What could be causing this?

So far I've tried:

  • Reinstalling APM 3.1.2 (same issue, also could not calibrate compass on mac)
  • Reinstalling APM 3.2.1 several times.
  • Recalibrating several times
  • Reseting the parameter list to default
  • Loading the 3DR-Quad parameter list.

None of this seems to help and I'm at a loss for what's different between the systems. Any hints on where to look for a solution would help greatly because I can't find any other help online. 

Here's a video in case it helps:

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Replies

  • mark parrski April 1, 2015 at 2:00pm

    Hey Jake go look at the THR_MAX setting after your upgrade the THR_MAX gets set to the default of 80.

    Should be 800-1000. I had the same problem..

    Mark

    • Jake > mark parrski April 1, 2015 at 3:16pm

      Craft stopped flying again (ESCs beeping about throttle above zero). I think I found the solution there so once I try again I'll examine my THR_MAX. 

      Is that all you had to change? 

      Thanks!

      • mark parrski > Jake April 1, 2015 at 3:36pm

        Yes thats it I had a lot bigger quad would not even get off the ground..

        Good luck

        PS make sure your not having a low voltage cutoff problem with the esc or wrong bat voltage set in mission planner for pixhawk you said something about the craft stopped flying, that you had not mentioned before

  • Gregmaan March 30, 2015 at 11:14pm

    Maybe your Transmitter uses other throttle min/max values than on qgroundcontrol.Try to recalibrate your escs or change them to the same values as used with QGC. Dont forget to recalibrate your radio in APM Planner if you change the values. Warning: Not all ESCs can be calibrated at once as decribed in the manual. So be sure you get the right beep codes while calibrating.Otherwise you should calibrate them one by one connected direcly to the receiver.

    • Jake > Gregmaan March 31, 2015 at 10:34pm

      Thanks for replying. I'm trying to compare APM / QGC values but I can't find numbers in QGC with the 2.3 version, just ambiguous auto-configured sliders. Will continue investigating on this front.

      I have tried calibration but the DJI ESCs I have (E300) allegedly cannot / do not need calibration. Not sure what option this leaves but I'm confused why a calibration issue might cause the problem when QGC works fine with no hardware changes.

      • Gregmaan > Jake March 31, 2015 at 11:43pm

        OK, you don´t use "normal" escs...  I don´t know much about the QGC firmware.

        I think that should solve your problem:

        http://ardupilot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=6640

        (Configure throttle Channel (normally RC3) in between of 1120 to 1940 on the Transmitter and redo RC calibration).

        Cheers

        Gregor

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