Afro 12 esc build

[Dugdog47]

Hello friends of the four rotor fanclub!

I finally slapped together a "retro quad" using afro 12amp escs, naze32 rev6 fc, and ldarc xt1806 2500kv motors lol:

Problem: the thing takes off and hovers fine, all controls seem to work but when you punch the throttle a little she flips out of control; luckily throwing the kill switch does shut it down. Going to check all solder joints but I don't think that's the problem.

It dawned on me to lower the mid and max throttle in baseflight, that might do it?

Using this older, outdated electronics is not recommended I know that but has anyone encountered this same type of thing before?



Thanks bros,
Doug.

 

[Dugdog47]

Just remember lol I had 9 leds powered up by the esc bec lol. I'm thinking the leds combined with the amperage the motor draws was too much for the tiny 12ampers lol.
Fixing stuff is cool!

 

[Launchpad]

My first thought was underpowered ESCs. Full throttle with a 4S throwing 5040s is drawing 26A.

 

[Dugdog47]

Yes I'm going to see if limiting the throttle to about 75% will help. I haven't noticed them getting hot though but I haven't tried a full throttle punch out yet.

 

[wafflejock]

Since the ESCs are pretty small they don't have much thermal mass so they probably cool down quicker than motors. The BEC feeding power to the LEDs will put more strain on the BEC itself and if it's powering the FC then you could be getting brown outs (low power) on the FC when voltage is dipping from the battery being under load. If FC has it's own regulated power then I don't think the LEDs being powered from the BEC would be an issue, but could definitely be drawing too many amps through the ESCs, unfortunately hard to bench test since you need props on to really load the motors and not safe to be doing that while bench testing unless things are really well strapped down.

 

[Dugdog47]

The flight controller is powered of the PDB bec, then I noticed one ESC was getting hot while the other three were not, it was the one powering the led lights, I disconnected the lights and now everything seems fine. Also recalibrated everything in baseflight, the chrome app.

Gonna try flying it later today, wish me luck!

 

[Dugdog47]

I think I got her dialed in. After trying everything with 4s I gave up and tried a 3s. To my delight she responded very well yet still a little twitchy. Lowered my throttle curve down to 20, 40, 60, and 75%, that was the ticket. Flies very smooth now especially in acro mode. Gonna give her a real fpv flight tomorrow, I think it's going to fly very smooth but since there is no "air mode" getting inverted should be interesting.

12amp escs, what am I, crazy?

 

[Dugdog47]

I like to leave some slack on the fpv camera wire but not too much slack. You don't want those wires bouncing around.
"Upgraded" to cleanflight 2.2. Can finally do flips and rolls with "air" mode. Cf2.2 is legit.