Not your average Chameleon

[Taylor]

Well, 95% of my build came in the mail today! I am just waiting on a couple of finishing touches which are more cosmetic than anything. For now I will post the specs and a few pictures:

Frame: Armattan Chameleon 5"
Motors: Racerstar 2205s
ESCs: Kiss 24A
PDB: ImpulseRC Mr. Steele
FC: Kiss V1
Transmitter: Spektrum DXE
Reciever: Spektrum race reciever with diversity
FPV gear: Fatshark urban camo Teleporter V5 1.3ghz with integrated vtx
Battery: R-line 14.8v 95C 1550mah lipos
HD video: GoPro Session 4 with Brain3d mount

The only thing I may have to swap out is the fpv gear... mainly because the camera has a built in antenna and it won't fit in the designated spot... Only bought that setup because I got a heck of a deal on it that I couldn't pass up! But otherwise... I'm stoked to get this thing in the air! Not everyone is going to like it (per my cosmetic choices that will come soon) but that's ok! Hate away!! Hahaha

 

[Taylor]

Hopefully these pictures post successfully!

 

[Jake Jhonson]

Nice set of components

 

[wafflejock]

Hopefully these pictures post successfully!

How did you end up posting photos here it doesn't seem to work with embedding from Google photos?

Looks like a nice setup.

 

[Taylor]

Nice setof components

Thank you!

How did you end up posting photos hereit doesn't seem to work with embedding from Google photos?

Looks like a nice setup.

Thanks! I'm really excited about it. But the only way I've found that works for me is using the "Upload a File" next to the "Post Reply" button and using photos straight from my phone. Anything else either shows up as

 

[Jake Jhonson]

I am sure that this components are expensive

 

[Taylor]

I am sure that this components are expensive

The most expensive were the ESCs and that's only because I needed 4 of them lol everything else wasn't too bad.

But I've finally made some progress! Got the PDB mounted along with the ESCs and motors soldered together. All that's left is mounting the fpv gear, FC, and the reciever which shouldn't be too bad. I'll try to post some pictures when I get home.

 

[Taylor]

Well, a little trouble in paradise... I am currently working on setting up the flight controller and have never used KISS GUI before. I have downloaded all of the correct drivers and even used ImpulseRC driver fixer which said it fixed the drivers, but when I try to connect in GUI the "connect" button changes to "connecting" and then stays there. The one aspect that I'm unsure of is the baud rate for a KISS v1 FC. In my device manager, I believe it shows 9600 (I'll have to double check), but I'm not sure if that needs to be changed. Also, I have already flashed the latest firmware via DFuse and I have the solid green light along with a blue light flashing every second or so, which from what I've read means that the FC needs to be activated and from my understanding can't be done until I am successfully connected to GUI. Any ideas?

 

[Jake Jhonson]

The most expensive were the ESCs and that's only because I needed 4 of them lol everything else wasn't too bad.

But I've finally made some progress! Got the PDB mounted along with the ESCs and motors soldered together. All that's left is mounting the fpv gear, FC, and the reciever which shouldn't be too bad. I'll try to post some pictures when I get home.

Good to hear that it is only the ESC Yea sure so that i can see the photos

 

[Taylor]

I finally had some free time to work on this thing! I was able to get the FC setup, but when went to plug in the battery to program the ESCs... fireworks from the XT60... thankfully the electronics look alright, but the inside of the XT60 is charred pretty good. My guess is crappy solder job somewhere... I double checked polarity at each ESC and all is good, but my 2 week old soldering iron did crap out half way through the build so I've been stuck using an old Weller that has seen better days. I plan on picking up a new, better quality soldering iron today and redoing all of the joints to ensure little-to-no resistance... But we're almost there!

 

[wafflejock]

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I finally had some free time to work on this thing! I was able to get the FC setup, but when went to plug in the battery to program the ESCs... fireworks from the XT60... thankfully the electronics look alright, but the inside of the XT60 is charred pretty good. My guess is crappy solder job somewhere... I double checked polarity at each ESC and all is good, but my 2 week old soldering iron did crap out half way through the build so I've been stuck using an old Weller that has seen better days. I plan on picking up a new, better quality soldering iron today and redoing all of the joints to ensure little-to-no resistance... But we're almost there!

Check for continuity on the xt 60 to see if they are shorted. Usually big Sparks only happen from big capacitors or shorts.

 

[Taylor]

Well I definitely got lucky. I picked up a much better soldering iron and resoldered almost every joint and thankfully no sparks! I was finally able to actually arm the quad today for the first time ever! So stoked.... But, now the issue I have to sort through is that I get zero throttle response. The motors will arm just fine and I get a response from yaw, pitch, and roll, but no throttle. I need to sort through the settings a bit more to make sure I didn't goof something up, but just glad I'm making progress!

 

[Taylor]

So I need some advice... Quad arms, I seem to have good control over the throttle now, but as soon as I try to take off, the quad flips out of control, usually backwards. I have double checked the mid and end points, triple checked the orientation of the FC and motors (as well as props), recalibrated the ESCs, and calibrated the accelerometer (not sure if that will affect this issue, but figured why not). PIDs are still set to the factory settings for now. Any ideas?

 

[Dugdog47]

So I need some advice... Quad arms, I seem to have good control over the throttle now, but as soon as I try to take off, the quad flips out of control, usually backwards. I have double checked the mid and end points, triple checked the orientation of the FC and motors (as well as props), recalibrated the ESCs, and calibrated the accelerometer (not sure if that will affect this issue, but figured why not). PIDs are still set to the factory settings for now. Any ideas?

I've only had this problem twice, one time it was a motor spinning the wrong way, the other time it was a flight control board orientation problem, I.E. when you just looked at it I betaflight all looked good but when you lifted the nose of the quad up, the betaflight image showed the quad nosing down. Double check EVERYTHING lol and good luck!

 

[wafflejock]

Like dugdog said would just individually drive each motor to make sure the right signal is going to the right motor as well.

 

[Taylor]

I've only had this problem twice, one time it was a motor spinning the wrong way, the other time it was a flight control board orientation problem, I.E. when you just looked at it I betaflight all looked good but when you lifted the nose of the quad up, the betaflight image showed the quad nosing down. Double check EVERYTHING lol and good luck!

Thank you for the input! I double checked the orientation last night and verified that if I tilted toward me, the image responded the same, as well in all other directions. I will double check the direction of the motors here shortly, it'd be nice if that's all that it was!

Like dugdog said would just individually drive each motor to make sure the right signal is going to the right motor as well

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm assuming that I can test each motor individually through KISS GUI? I've only ever tried all 4 motors at the same time

 

[wafflejock]

Actually not sure in kiss gui I guess could just keep throttle down and pitch forward back and roll left right but in betaflight can drive them individually I'm just not familiar with kiss gui but probably has it somewhere. In betaflight it's under the motors tab.

 

[Taylor]

No worries, thank you for the advice regardless. Before I tried to test them individually, I armed the quad (props off of course) and noticed something strange... At mid throttle
(1500) motor 1 was abnormally low and motor 3 was abnormally high. Motors 2 and 4 were spot on. Now the motor configuration for KISS is different than the rest ( I'll post a picture), but if the motors were both low I would have said maybe a bad solder joint on the esc/motor, but what would cause 3 to be so high? I took a picture of the motor data output on GUI, but it's not letting me post the picture so here is the actual data at mid throttle: Motor 1 - 1251, Motor 2 - 1542, Motor 3 - 1694, Motor 4 - 1515.

 

[Taylor]

Here are the screenshots, in order: 1) first arming with no throttle 2) mid throttle 3) full throttle 4) back to no throttle. As you can see, the motors all start out around the same values, but as they increase motors 1 & 3 go crazy and remain crazy even when I'm back at zero throttle.

 

[wafflejock]

Here are the screenshots, in order: 1) first arming with no throttle 2) mid throttle 3) full throttle 4) back to no throttle. As you can see, the motors all start out around the same values, but as they increase motors 1 & 3 go crazy and remain crazy even when I'm back at zero throttle.


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Could be a couple of things, if in angle mode it can be trying to correct to get level by pushing one motor harder 3 and keeping the other motor throttle low on motor 1. If the motors are across from each other on the frame (diagonal) then it may 'think' it is tipped diagonally. When you do a pitch forward the back to motors should go up in speed and the front two motors should come down in speed, if you pitch back the front two should spin up faster and back two should slow down, roll left the right two should give more power and left two should sink, roll right the left two should go higher and right two should go down. If you aren't seeing those patterns then best guess is something flipped. The 1 and 3 being off thing could just be it trying to correct from bad accelerometer calibration or just from vibrations on the table if in angle mode, usually in air/acro mode it won't have that kind of angle correction going on but it might still spin all the motors up and down 'randomly' since it is trying to hold current angle still instead of trying to get itself to level. Hope it helps, sounds like you're very close.