After repair from a crash, two ESC's don't initialize...
I'm trying to fix my Arducopter Quad. (APM2.5 flashed to 3.01) A little puzzled at this point. the other day, I was flying my Arducopter using FPV and I was near 200 feet altitude, and it started wildly rolling left and right abut 45dg each way, I reduced throttle in an attempt to get it to the ground before something happened, I got down to about 50 feet and then it went inverted, possibly I had made it worse by throttling down, and descending through my own prop wash.
When I got to the site, one arm was bent, and motor was damaged, and 3 props were trashed. I have all the spare parts so I replaced the arm, two motors and checked the wiring and I don't see any problem. when I power up I get the proper lights, but the esc beeps are from only two esc's When I arm and advance the throttle, only two motors that spin clockwise spin. The other two appear dead.. one of these is the motor I replaced, the other one didn't appear to receive any damage. Any ideas what could cause only two motors to spin up?
I don't know it this is the cause of the crash or the result of the crash.
unfortunately I was not using mission planner so I have no logging.
Thanks in advance for any ideas!
Richard
Replies
I solved the problem! I mentioned in the initial post that it appeared that after replacing two bad motors, and two arms that when i armed it, only two motors would spin. I thought I was only getting the ESC beeps from two motors, but I was wrong about that. After further investigation, I saw that in the initialization was much more obvious with the two motors that did spin, but the other two were making weak beeps as well. Then with props off, I waved it over my head and I could get the other two motors turning at some angles, but there was no maneuver that would allow all motors to run at once. I connected it to the mission planner, and went through all the hardware setup, and then I rechecked. I noticed that some of the settings were not present anymore, so I went through everything as if it was a new setup.
Then I tried again, I armed it and then raised the throttle... It still only spun up two motors! hmm.
the only thing I hadn't done is to recalibrate the ESC's.. Then I did that.... fantastic! Now it works perfectly again! all four motors spin up and it flies very stable.
That really was a surprise to me... why would they need to be re-calibrated? it was a crash that damaged two motors which I replaced the motors with the same type?? well, it doesn't make sense to me, it is almost as if the impact with the ground shook up the memory and made it lose some settings, but that is absurd (I think) but I'm happy with the outcome whatever the reason..