Help! Motor Slider Issues in Betaflight

[Sam88]

Hi all, this is my first "build" and first post on the forum. I say "build" because I have an old Eachine Wizard 220 that I got a few years ago but has never worked.

Originally I couldn't get any stick input in Betaflight but I replaced the Flysky receiver with the Fli14+ and switched the receiver protocol to IBUS and now that is all good.

However, I still am unable to spin up the motors both with the transmitter and in the motors tab in Betaflight. The FC has motor resources defined but it still says 0 in all the motor sliders. I have no arming flags in Betaflight and have tried resetting to defaults with no luck.

My receiver and transmitter should be all set as I have stick input as I mentioned before but for some reason, I just can't get the flight controller/Betaflight to recognize my motors. I have attached pics of the motor tab in Betaflight and the CLI when I type #resource. Im happy to provide any other needed information.

Any help is appreciated!
Thanks

 

[Dugdog47]

Okay your fc is not recognizing your motors probably an esc issue. Do you get the five start up beeps when you plug in?

 

[Sam88]

Nope, just the three beeps showing that the escs have power but not the other two showing a connection to the FC. I'm not sure why the FC wouldn't be receiving a signal from the escs though unless the quad was doa because it was brand new a couple of years ago and has never been flown...

 

[Dugdog47]

If you only get 3 beeps that means your escs and fc aren't recognizing each other. Try to calibrate your escs, try a different esc protocol, try re-flashing your fc. One of those 3 will probably solve your problem.

 

[Sam88]

Thanks for your reply,

I have tried every different motor protocol on Betaflight (oneshot125, Dshot, etc.) with no luck. I also reflashed the FC with Betaflight previously and reset settings to defaults but the problem still persists. I tried to calibrate my escs as well but since the motors aren't even being recognized in betaflight it didn't work... Here is a video of my calibration attempt.

I'm happy to try anything else you think will work, I'm getting a bit desperate at this point

 

[Dugdog47]

Okay you'll have to download an interface called bl heli. There you can see if your escs are being recognized and you can update the firmware in your escs.

Check min/max rpms, also check/change motor direction of necessary.

 

[Sam88]

I have tried BL Heli before (the one through the chrome extension) but I don't seem to get any tabs on the side when I launch it and connect to my FC. Here is a screenshot of what I see when I connect and power up the escs and then hit read setup.

It says reading setup finished in the top left but there are no tabs for me to do anything in. I'm not sure if its a driver issue of my laptop or something but betaflight runs fine and I'm assuming they run the same drivers.

 

[wafflejock]

Very very long story short you want to get the BLHeliSuite 32 desktop app

BLHeli/BLHeli_32 ARM at master · bitdump/BLHeli

BLHeli for brushless ESC firmware. Contribute to bitdump/BLHeli development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

BLHeliSuite - Google Drive

drive.google.com

Chrome apps I believe can no longer access USB devices since they have deprecated support for the whole concept of "Chrome Apps" as far as I can tell:

USB Devices | Apps | Chrome for Developers

How to communicate with USB devices from your Chrome App.

developer.chrome.com

I believe though Betaflight configurator also started as a chrome app the devs managed to port it over to be a standalone cordova app it looks like:

Apache Cordova

betaflight-configurator/package.json at master · betaflight/betaflight-configurator

Cross platform configuration tool for the Betaflight firmware - betaflight/betaflight-configurator

github.com

Also interesting to me there they are using Vue framework for all the frontend/display stuff which I'm very familiar with huh... anyhow that's cool.

 

[Sam88]

Thanks for that information,

When I downloaded that app and connected my quad, I tried to read setup and got this message.

This version of BL Heli looks very strange to me so I'm not even sure if I have the right version but it seems like BL Heli can't read my ESCs either...

Any ideas on what to do next are appreciated

 

[wafflejock]

Make sure you don't have betaflight connected when you try to connect from BL-heli suite but the FC is connected to computer via USB also if possible check in "Device Drivers" find the "Ports" section (or whatever it may be called now) and open the serial device for the FC to verify the COM port setting (or just make sure the COM port matches what it shows in betaflight when it works connecting from there). If the FC is working fine but you can't get communication to the ESCs... oh yah make sure ESCs have battery power as well but if that is true and still not communication then must be signal line from FC to ESC that isn't working for some reason.

That screen looks right I know it looks ancient but it's right

The Music Editor lets you make your motors play different tunes search on youtube for BLHeli Music to find some tunes and usually notes in the description.

 

[Sam88]

if possible check in "Device Drivers" find the "Ports" section (or whatever it may be called now) and open the serial device for the FC to verify the COM port setting (or just make sure the COM port matches what it shows in betaflight when it works connecting from there).

Could you explain this a little more for me? I'm not quite sure where "Device Drivers" is or how to very the com port setting.

I made sure betaflight wasn't connected as well and tried BL Heli again with the same error message posted above.

 

[Dugdog47]

It just dawned on me, that is an o.g. wizard. If it's like mine it uses the spracing f3 board no longer supported. by betaflight.

Try flashing it with cleanflight 2.5.

 

[Sam88]

Yes, it has the spracing f3 board. I would like to use betaflight instead of cleanflight if possible because I've seen that it just runs better on the wizard. I flashed it with version 4.0.1 of betaflight I believe.

Do you know why betaflight would only not be working for the motors? Every other function such as arming switches and stick inputs all seem to be working fine which makes me think that the version of betaflight I have is supporting the f3.

 

[Dugdog47]

No longer supported, probably your whole problem. Although it may seems to work, the updated firmware "knows" it won't work on your board so it won't run your motors. That's why I flashed my 2 older f3 board with cleanflight. Works fine:

 

[Sam88]

Sounds good, I'll try flashing with an older version of betaflight (3.1 probably) and if that doesn't work go to cleanflight 2.5

 

[wafflejock]

ooooooohhhh good to know, I did not know that.

 

[Dugdog47]

ooooooohhhh good to know, I did not know that.

I think that's the reason cleanflight came out with version 2.5 for the f3 boards. It works as well as bf 3.5 imo.

 

[Sam88]

No longer supported, probably your whole problem.

And the money goes to Dugdog47!!!

I flashed Betaflight 3.1 and everything is working as intended!
I am really grateful for everyone's help, this is a fantastic forum for beginners


P.S. If someone can mark this thread as solved or let me know how to do it that would be great!