Planning A New Build

Well, first flight ended in failure. After arming, I started to advance the throttle and the aircraft immediately toppled onto its left side and spun around clockwise - looked to me like loss of power on the #3 motor (front left).

The aircraft remained upright and smoke started coming from the aircraft. I immediately thought that the lipo was damaged so I quickly unplugged the battery and removed it, but the smoke was coming from the chassis.

After taking it home, I removed the basswood bridge I made to protect the ESCs from the lipo and discovered that the ESC powering the #3 motor was burned up.

I just removed the top chassis plate to access the wiring underneath and made a discovery - the servo wires to the #3 ESC were pinched to the point of exposing bare wires. Perhaps this is the cause of the ESC failure?

I created a video, but updated it to show my latest finding:

 
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Bummer man sorry your quad didn't fly, I still think it was the 30 amp escs you're using aren't beefy enough for those motors.

Don't feel too bad we all have sheet happen, I just fried my xrotor f4 board hooking up leds lights. A $40 mistake that I'll learn from, if the leds don't work, don't touch the signal wire onto the vcc pin lol.

I hope you get your bird flying we're all looking forward to seeing some aerial footage!
 
Dugdog47 said:
Bummer man sorry your quad didn't fly, I still think it was the 30 amp escs you're using aren't beefy enough for those motors.

Don't feel too bad we all have sheet happen, I just fried my xrotor f4 board hooking up leds lights. A $40 mistake that I'll learn from, if the leds don't work, don't touch the signal wire onto the vcc pin lol.

I hope you get your bird flying we're all looking forward to seeing some aerial footage!
Click to expand...

Uh, sorry if I didn't indicate that I am using 40 A ESCs. The Motors can draw up to 38 A at full power but I don't intend to run them that hard - this is strictly going to be a flying video platform with no undue stresses intended. The manufacturer recommends 40 A ESCs and that's what motivated my decision.

I don't know how I pinched the servo leads, but I strongly suspect that's what lead to the burnout. I had already ordered a new set of 40 A ESCs from Hobbywing when I first suspected that these were defective. At this point, I have no reason to believe that the Resdytosky ESCs are defective.

The only other damage is that two of the props were slightly scuffed on the edges. When I get the new ESCs installed and the aircraft put back together, I will see if the props are okay, otherwise I will replace them. I am still confident that it will fly fine.
 
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Copy and pasted from your original post:

"Hobbywing Platinum Pro 30A OPTO"

Lol that's what my assessment is going by!
 
Good news! After weeks, which seemed an eternity, my new Hoobbywing 40A ESCs arrived!

New%20ESCs_zpsgmhu3wbw.jpg

It will take a day or two to swap out the other three ESCs and install these, and put the aircraft back together, check everything and try again, weather permitting.
Stay tuned!
 
Repairs have been completed. I calibrated the ESCs and redid the radio calibration. The compass appeared okay when I connected to Mission Planner but I did tweak the compass declination a tad to get the aircraft heading to match the compass on my iPhone. I also did the motor/compass calibration, which consists of running the motors at increasing power so that M.P. can sense compass interference due to the electrical noise from the power system and compensate.

I removed each screw individually and applied Locktite. I think it is now ready for it's first flight:

Repairs%20Completed_zps4xjz48ti.jpg


Assuming the battery of test flights go well, I will add the gimbal and video transmitter. The gimbal will be powered by the main system and the video transmitter will have it's own small power source - a 450 mAH 3S lipo
 
So, this morning, the air was calm though somewhat cold but conditions were right for a test flight. Being it's first flight the objectives were to make sure all flight controls - pitch, roll, yaw worked fine. Then put the aircraft into Loiter mode and test the compass/gps; in Loiter mode, yaw the aircraft to make sure there is no toilet bowl effect. Finally, select RTL and land autonomously.

The good news is that the aircraft armed okay and I was able to lift off and control the aircraft. But (bad news) there was an odd noise coming from one of the motors - suspect one of the rear motors but not sure which one. Also, the aircraft seemed unstable. I could control the aircraft but didn't have a sense that I could maintain control, so I landed. I re-calibrated the ESCs and tried again but there was no change. I landed without incident and I did not attempt the other objectives.

Could one of the motors have been damaged in a previous crash? It's funny, in that during the compass/motor calibration all motors seemed to be running fine with no unusual noise.

I am not sure how I am going to troubleshoot this.
 
We don't have this problem using betaflight and tuning the quad manually tweaking the pids one or two digits at a time lol.

A faulty flight control board can cause your issue.
 
Well, I was searching through some old posts in a couple of forums - seems that this problem has cropped up in other builds. There was a lot of technical stuff being mentioned that seemed to do with code in the APM firmware, but since the posts dated back to 2013 or so I figured that any code issues would have been resolved - I get that the APM is no longer supported but I would have figured that the version of firmware I'm using would be pretty stable. But I did try a couple of tests in my basement:

I powered up the quad and established a telemetry connection with Mission Planner on my laptop. There is a motor test feature I can run, where I can select a power percentage, and the number of seconds I want the motor to run and I can try each motor individually or all at once. I tested each motor at 25% power for 3 seconds - all worked fine with no problems. I then ran all four at once - again all motors ran smoothly. Then I found some ceramic tiles which I placed on the landing gear as anchors, armed the motors using my transmitter and throttled up. There was the surge. So, if I bypass the transmitter/receiver everything is fine.

There is something about the receiver signal and interaction with the APM that's the culprit. The APM is new and so is the receiver. But I just received an Orange 6 ch receiver I plan to use for another build, and I plan to test it and see if I get the same or different results.

I might also try looking for the latest firmware version and flashing the APM....
 
It has been awhile since I've reported and since then I have moved. But I thought I'd take a moment and bring you up to date.

first of all, the bad news - my aircraft crashed on its second flight. According to the logs I suffered a brownout and the motors quit and it just fell out of the sky, destroying the airframe.

I have salvaged the motors and some other parts and will try again. I will use the same frame - Tarot 650 Ironman, but will use a Pixhawk flight controller. I breifely considered the 2.1 Cube but its more expensive and I think the Pixhawk will suit my needs. The main draw for me is redundant power capability. I don't know what caused the power brownout on my APM , but I want to have a backup power capability on this aircraft.

I have ordered a power module that can accommodate up to 10S power ( I will be using a 6S lipo to power my MN3420 T-Motors). I think when I have this build completed, I will try to stress test it by anchoring the aircraft and throttling up close to full power and monitor it with Mission Planner before I attempt any flights. IT will take awhile as I have just ordered stuff and some will be coming from China...
 
The frame, ESCs , 100 mW telemetry raios and Pixhawk arrived. I agonized over what to do for power distribution but finally decided to go with a Matek FCHub power distribution board - I think that it will provide cleaner and more reliable connections and I like having on board 5V and 10V power which I can use as backup power to the F.C. as well as power to the gimbal/video transmitter.
 
I need some advice/opinions. I have decided to mount my 40A OPTO ESCs underneath the main chassis as shown:

ESC%20Mount_zps93zs3b0y.jpg


I have attached velcro squares to the ESCs and onto the Tarot battery plates and sandwiched them together. My question is will I run into heat issues with this arrangement? the top/bottom ESCs are flush against each other.
 
Okay, I have finally wired up the ESCs and motors. I had to reposition the MATEK pcb and APM power module as the boorms were interfering with the wires, so I had to take take it apart and move the MATEK underneath the bottom chassis plate. I put the booms on and now I'm happy with the wiring:

Wired%20Up_zpsfd7b9hf5.jpg


It won't look as pretty as there will be wires protruding from the sides - maybe I can to some cavble management once I've tested the motors for proper spin direction and mout the top plate. I have the ESCs sandwiched together underneath but put a pice of fine wire mesh to aid with heat dissipation...
 
GlassKnees said:
So, this morning, the air was calm though somewhat cold but conditions were right for a test flight. Being it's first flight the objectives were to make sure all flight controls - pitch, roll, yaw worked fine. Then put the aircraft into Loiter mode and test the compass/gps; in Loiter mode, yaw the aircraft to make sure there is no toilet bowl effect. Finally, select RTL and land autonomously.

The good news is that the aircraft armed okay and I was able to lift off and control the aircraft. But (bad news) there was an odd noise coming from one of the motors - suspect one of the rear motors but not sure which one. Also, the aircraft seemed unstable. I could control the aircraft but didn't have a sense that I could maintain control, so I landed. I re-calibrated the ESCs and tried again but there was no change. I landed without incident and I did not attempt the other objectives.

Could one of the motors have been damaged in a previous crash? It's funny, in that during the compass/motor calibration all motors seemed to be running fine with no unusual noise.

I am not sure how I am going to troubleshoot this.
Click to expand...
Thank you so much
 
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