Hello. I am following the wiki to calibrate the ESCs for my ArduCopter hexa ready to fly version that arrived this week (http://www.udrones.com/product_p/achrtf1.htm). It has firmware "ArduCopter V2.8.1" from the Mission Planner 1.2.14 mav 1.0.
So far I have done the automatic calibration (http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/wiki/AC2_ESC). It seems to work, and after I am done, all 6 motors work when I move the throttle. However, the "arm" and "disarm" features do not work when I move and hold the stick to the bottom right/left. And when I remove the battery, it resets and I must calibrate again.
The wiki mentions that this is a known problem:
Note! After performing an Automatic ESC calibration, (even if the motors seemed to operate correctly immediately after setup,) but do not initialize after power off / on sequencing (ESCs still beep quickly and continuously) you will need to do a Manual ESC calibration sequence as described below."
Which leads me to think that now I must do the manual calibration. But I am confused about how to do this. Each ESC has a red/white/black 3 wire connection that I need to plug into channel 3 of the RC receiver, but how do I do this? Do I need to take apart the bottom of the hexacopter to access the PDB, and if so, which of the pins on the receiver (it's the AR8000) do I then plug in the red/white/black 3 wire connector? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Replies
John, that looks like some garbled text in the wiki. I've edited and clarified it.
When you say you can't arm, do you mean that holding the left stick to the bottom and right doesn't trigger the IMU initialization process (showing by fast-flashing LEDs on the APM board)? If so, you've probably got your RC setup wrong (Mode 1 vs Mode 2, a channel reversed, etc).
Or do mean that it does go through that process, but the motors still don't turn?
Arming / Disarming are not the same as initializing. When the battery is connected, the ESCs will initialize with one beep for each cell in the battery and then one final beep.
Arming / Diarming requires the radio to be calibrated. Do this under MP configuration.