First Build & Looking for Advice

[DForesi]

Good evening Ladies and Gents,

My name is Dan Foresi and I'm an engineering student from Canada. A few months back I started looking into building my first multirotor and got quickly entranced by all the various builds on various forums. The goal of my build was to design and construct as much as I could on my own and come out with something well suited for flying.

I ended up going with the following general layout:

- X configuration quad
- 12" propellers
- Dual 5200mAh 4s batteries
- 700Kv sunnysky motors
- Naze32 flight controller
- Turnigy 9x radio and receiver combo
- Carbon Tube arms with Tarot motor mounts

So far I've made some good progress and I'm happy with how the build of the frame and everything came out. Unfortunately when I went to do my first test flight I had a pretty violent crash and I'm not sure what happened! I started to a YouTube video series along side the build and managed to catch the crash on video. I'm not here to plug my channel, you can see the exact moment of the crash at 5:50 in the following clip:

As far as I can tell all of the motors were spinning in the correct direction and the CW and CCW props were matched to the right motors. I did notice that even after calibrating my ESCs I could never get the all the motors to activate simultaneously. After tinkering with things for a bit 3 out of the 4 motors stopped working. I have tested each ESC individually and they all still function perfectly when connected directly to the receiver but they do not function when connected to the NAZE32. I have ordered in a new flight controller, also a NAZE32 in hopes that the control board was faulty.

I've reached the limits of my knowledge in this area and I would really appreciate any input you all have to offer.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Jackson]

We see this all the time. Is the Naze pointing in the right direction? Was it perfectly level when you ran the initial set up? Are you sure the motors are plugged into the correct ports?

 

[DForesi]

Hey Jackson thanks for the quick reply,

All motors were spinning in the correct direction
All props were installed on the correct motors
I'm pretty sure the naze was in the correct direction, although I'm not sure if it would have made a difference as all I was touching was the throttle
The accelerometer and gyroscope were calibrated on a level surface
All motors were being controller by the correct slider in clean flight (ie. motor 2 slider controlled motor 2 and so forth)

As I mentioned, now only 1 motor runs and it does not run well, it pulsates and has a hard time running at a high speed. When I plug the esc directly into the receiver the problem goes away. When I plug in a new naze board the problems for all motors go away.

 

[Todd Martin]

Hello everyone, I am new to quadcopters. I learned how to fly with a Hubsan X4 good enough to zoom around the house with no accidents. I have 2 Eachine 250 FPV racers, 1 is a RFT and the other was assembled with parts and even had to use librepilot to set PID's. The second seems to fly smoother than my RTF. I have a DJI 450 kit with CC3d and DJI motors, Simon k flashed ESC's. I have a pretty good idea of how I am going to assemble this 450 size quad. Any pointers which might be helpful.

 

[Michael Fenimore]

Good evening Ladies and Gents,

My name is Dan Foresi and I'm an engineering student from Canada. A few months back I started looking into building my first multirotor and got quickly entranced by all the various builds on various forums. The goal of my build was to design and construct as much as I could on my own and come out with something well suited for flying.

I ended up going with the following general layout:

- X configuration quad
- 12" propellers
- Dual 5200mAh 4s batteries
- 700Kv sunnysky motors
- Naze32 flight controller
- Turnigy 9x radio and receiver combo
- Carbon Tube arms with Tarot motor mounts

So far I've made some good progress and I'm happy with how the build of the frame and everything came out. Unfortunately when I went to do my first test flight I had a pretty violent crash and I'm not sure what happened! I started to a YouTube video series along side the build and managed to catch the crash on video. I'm not here to plug my channel, you can see the exact moment of the crash at 5:50 in the following clip:

As far as I can tell all of the motors were spinning in the correct direction and the CW and CCW props were matched to the right motors. I did notice that even after calibrating my ESCs I could never get the all the motors to activate simultaneously. After tinkering with things for a bit 3 out of the 4 motors stopped working. I have tested each ESC individually and they all still function perfectly when connected directly to the receiver but they do not function when connected to the NAZE32. I have ordered in a new flight controller, also a NAZE32 in hopes that the control board was faulty.

I've reached the limits of my knowledge in this area and I would really appreciate any input you all have to offer.

Thanks for your help!

Yep. That's a familiar sight!!
I have done that too many times. So many in fact, you'd think I'd learn by now.
My board is a CC3D, but any board will react the same way when:
You rotate the FC and DO NOT account for it in your GCS. If you rotate your FC 90 degrees and don't account for it in the programming, your quad will do exactly what you experienced.
A good spin up, but not reacting, lifting when you think it should. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it flips!
On your FC you should see an arrow indicating which direction is forward.
With my CC3D I rotated 90 degrees counter clockwise. In LibrePilot I had to show that rotation by inputting 90 in the YAW setting. (Or -90, depending which way your board was rotated.)
Also, if you flipped your FC this could have an effect as well.