Comments

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  Bradley J Carr March 20, 2012 at 8:46am

  Ed.

  That is what I have been doing all day yesterday and today.  The fault followed the ESC.  So I am thinking there is something wrong with that ESC.  But from the last post I just made.  It started working and I have no idea why.  Now I am afraid to even try to put it in the air.  I did the motor setup in the CLI and it worked great with no problems either.
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  Bradley J Carr March 20, 2012 at 8:44am

  Well it started working.  But let me tell you what I did.

  I recalibrate everything and hooked it up and still motor 4 did not work.  So to see if the 5v regulator was working I plugged the signal wire from that ESC into motor 1 signal terminal.  I was sitting there and heard a tone come from the ESC and then it twitched a couple times and then it worked.  So I then I plugged everything back the way it was and then it started up and worked.
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  Ed Kirk March 20, 2012 at 8:43am

  Bradley,

  I am assuming you have tried the "faulty" ESC on one of the other APM outputs or switched the ESC plugs and follow the fault.  Some brands of ESC's have a safety feature that require a control signal within seconds of power up.  Some Eflite and Scorpion ESC's will not work on flight control boards due to this safety feature and time to arm the APM after power is applied.  If the faulty ESC doesn't work on another proven output channel on the APM then the problem is probably the ESC.  The only time I have had an ESC work on the transmitter and not the control board was due to the safety feature.  I have extra Eflite and Scorpion ESC's because of this safety feature. 
• T3

  Aerhead March 20, 2012 at 8:27am

  Bradley

  I'm still thinking that you don't have the one ESC going to a low enough throttle setting.  Try recalibrating all four ESC to a lower throttle setting by adjusting the trim on your Tx lower.  Having set lower will not bother the APM 2.  Be sure to set it back to center after your done.

  Larry
• Chris Mulder March 20, 2012 at 8:25am

  All of the ground signals should be connected together anyway because most ESCs will have this connected to the -ve wire of the ESC input - these should all in turn all be connected to the same -ve terminal on the battery pack... worth checking that this is the case using a multimeter...

  Sounds to me as if you have a faulty ESC ... I also found that some cheaper ESCs that I'd bought started misbehaving as soon as I used the 5v output from the BEC.

   

  How does the ESC behave when you plug it into the APM output pins directly?
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  Ellison Chan March 20, 2012 at 8:14am

  Btw, I also don't use the power harness as supplied by 3DR, since I build my own frame, and power bus.  I plug all my ESC into the APM.  If they are working properly, all the regulators on them should be outputting regulated 5v, and it shouldn't be a problem.  Additionally do that means that all the grounds are connected together, which imho, is better for signal decoding, since all signals are relative to ground.
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  Ellison Chan March 20, 2012 at 8:10am

  Oops, yes, "I would replace it".
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  Bradley J Carr March 20, 2012 at 8:06am

  Ellison,

  Did you mean that you would replace it?
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  Ellison Chan March 20, 2012 at 8:00am

  Bradley sounds like you have an ESC that's either failing or just slight out of spec. so that it is not decoding the pwm from the APM properly.  I would not replace it, because you don't want it to fail while in the air.
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  Ed Kirk March 20, 2012 at 7:45am

  I don't use their power distribution board so I don't power it with the two pin plug at pin 1.  I just checked to be sure and it gets power at all plugs, some recommend using only one ESC for power and unplug the red wire from all other ESC's.  Check all 8 outputs using the graph in Mission Planner to confirm which outputs are being processed by the APM, this will confirm proper configeration also.