Drone Motor constant beeping can't calibrate

[Woodiie]

Hello! I am making a tricopter for a school project, but having some issues.

Once the flight controller is powered, the motors beep it's starting sequence and then simply beeps at a 2s interval with the motor twitching.

The reciever is definietly connected to the FC since when I open Betaflight, the controls work as intended when looking at the reciever section. (They change the correct values).

Using a switch on the controller for motor arming, which works fine as I can see the flags of arming when on the startpage. (Only MPS shows up once ready since it is connected to the FC)
So as far as I can tell, the motors are armed if asking the FC

I have checked that "min max" or whatever it was called, is correct. (The minimum thrust is at 1000 and the arming value is at 1050)

When attempting to callibrate the ESCs by putting the motors on Max in the motors tab(after enabling the safe warning switch), and then connecting the battery, it simply does not respond and keeps beeping. I have tried multiple combos of having the reciever on/off and battery in or out. Basically alp I could think off.

I am running the latest version of Betaflight and I have flashed the FC with the correct version and changed it to the tricopter mode. I have gone through multiple setup steps, I can't recall them all. (Such as switching the FC to ibus reciever mode)

Here are the parts:
Holybro Kakute F4 V2 AIO Flight controller(built in PDB).
This kit of motor and ESC times 3
I will not bother naming the reciever and controller, since I am quite certain that part works fine as previously mentioned.

The ESCs are connected to plus and minus and then the yellow data wire is connected to M1. Grounding it did not help.

I have tried multiple configurations on the Motor and ESC wiring to make sure they are aoldered correctly, andI think they are. Yellow in the middle with black and red on the outside with one motor having those two reversed. This also works when just running PWM mode directly from the reciever to the ESC, so those should be correct.

In case you could not tell, I am quite a newbie and after hours of searching and trying out different things, I am just lost for ideas as of what could cause it. At this point, I believe it could be something to do with PIN mapping, since the servo does not work either(unsure if I need to map that up myself, or if changing betaflight config to tricopter was enough).

Thanks for your time! Apologies if there are any spellingor grammar mistakes, writing this on my phone. >.<

 

[cranialrectosis]

Welcome to the forums @Woodiie.

Do the motors/flight controller beep and power up with a lipo connected and the FC DISCONNECTED from USB support?

 

[Woodiie]

Welcome to the forums @Woodiie.

Do the motors/flight controller beep and power up with a lipo connected and the FC DISCONNECTED from USB support?

Yes, they act exactly same with or without the the USB connected.

And thank you

 

[FDS]

Have you looked at the settings for the buzzer on Dshot commands? It could be beeping because RX lost and USB are ticked in the buzzer settings.
Also have you tried calibrating the ESC’s? They need to learn where O and full throttle is.

 

[MorningViewFPV]

Awesome, tricopters rule. I think you need to try and calibrate the esc's with your radio, not in the motors tab. With drone and props off, throttle to full blast on radio, power on drone and lower throttle after it stops beeping, power cycle drone. With props still off and battery plugged in, go into betaflight and under the motors setting spin up each motor to about halfway, see if they all spin up easily. if so good, if not maybe hardware problem.

 

[Woodiie]

Have you looked at the settings for the buzzer on Dshot commands? It could be beeping because RX lost and USB are ticked in the buzzer settings.
Also have you tried calibrating the ESC’s? They need to learn where O and full throttle is.

Forgive me, I am unfamiliar with the settings for the buzzer and dshot commands. If they're ticked on the same, the problem should not stay there, right?
And yes, I tried calibrating them through the Betaflight software, however they did not respond to it at all.

 

[Woodiie]

Awesome, tricopters rule. I think you need to try and calibrate the esc's with your radio, not in the motors tab. With drone and props off, throttle to full blast on radio, power on drone and lower throttle after it stops beeping, power cycle drone. With props still off and battery plugged in, go into betaflight and under the motors setting spin up each motor to about halfway, see if they all spin up easily. if so good, if not maybe hardware problem.

I believe I tried that too, however I could be wrong though and I will have to try that. I spent so many hours trying to fix it that I've forgotten what I tried ^^'
Thank you!

 

[MorningViewFPV]

i just looked at the esc's and each one has a built in bec. You are not using it so you only need to connect the signal (white) wire from esc to flight controller/pdb. The esc timing might be wrong as well...i'm not able to see betaflight right now so not sure where that setting is.

 

[MorningViewFPV]

post a picture of the wiring or a diagram

 

[Woodiie]

i just looked at the esc's and each one has a built in bec. You are not using it so you only need to connect the signal (white) wire from esc to flight controller/pdb. The esc timing might be wrong as well...i'm not able to see betaflight right now so not sure where that setting is.

All right, thank you. At least I know the wiring(should) be correct then.
As I mentioned in the main post, I am unsure if I need to do some resource mapping in Betaflight. The motors are currently assigned to "B01, B02, and A03, A04) or something similar to that. I assumed at a point that I needed it assign them to "M1,M2,M3" but it didn't let me.

 

[cranialrectosis]

I tried calibrating them through the Betaflight software, however they did not respond to it at all

I believe the beeps you are hearing are ESCs reporting no signal. I concur with @MorningViewFPV. A well lit, high def photo showing the connections between the ESC and the FC including your RX may help.

 

[Woodiie]

First off, do forgive the horrible job that I claim to be soldering. It does the job for now. And be kind to my hasty paint.net skills for the "diagram". I can draw up a proper diagram tomorrow if you would prefer that. Perhaps that would help a bit more.

Blue are the ESC power leads
Yellow are the ESC data leads(forgive me, I forgot the word for them)
Pink, battery leads. (using a 3 cell LiPo, 1800)
Green are the questionably soldered Receiver wires that I know for a fact work, since Betaflight shows the controll works just fine and assigned correctly.
Red are the for now not functioning servo wires(I'd rather have the motors work first, then I'll play around with that.)

 

[Woodiie]

I believe the beeps you are hearing are ESCs reporting no signal. I concur with @MorningViewFPV. A well lit, high def photo showing the connections between the ESC and the FC including your RX may help.

Apologies, here's a picture showing one of the ESCs aswell. The groundwire has been cut off after some... Technical difficulties.

I assure you a more proper soldering job will be done once I get it up and working, I've been re soldering a bunch trying to get it working.

 

[Woodiie]

I had a double check to make sure the solderings, despite their sorry looking state, are making contact with their pin and also is also not connected to any other ones by accident from some excessive soldering.

 

[Woodiie]

Might as well leave this here as well. It's the pinout for the board.

 

[Woodiie]

I hope this helps a bit. It should be exactly as wired on the real thing, as I was using it as reference exactly. Don't mind the switched around black and red on the ESC, mistook the placement. The colours are correct.

(Edit: Oops, placed M3 and M1 on the ESC instead of the Motors. You get the idea )

 

[Woodiie]

Apologies for the reply spam, I realized just now there's an Edit feature. In either case, since the ESC might not be getting a singal(which makes a lot of sense), could it be that I need to map them in some way in Betaflight? It feels weird that they are Mapped to B01, A03 and so on. I assume that the software I flashed it with name those pins that, or does the board itself have it's own names for them that i fetches? Once again, a total newbie to all this.

 

[MorningViewFPV]

does it show a tricopter in betaflight? there is a command in betaflight...it "resource" i think or resource list...thatll tell you where the motors are assigned in the mix. when you choose vehicle type it sets it up for you.

 

[Woodiie]

Yes, it does show a Tricopter.
Here is the list that "resource" gives me.
resource BEEPER 1 C09
resource MOTOR 1 B00
resource MOTOR 2 B01
resource MOTOR 3 A03
resource MOTOR 4 A02
resource PPM 1 C07
resource LED_STRIP 1 C08
resource SERIAL_TX 1 A09
resource SERIAL_TX 3 B10
resource SERIAL_TX 4 A00
resource SERIAL_TX 6 C06
resource SERIAL_RX 1 A10
resource SERIAL_RX 3 B11
resource SERIAL_RX 4 A01
resource SERIAL_RX 5 D02
resource SERIAL_RX 6 C07
resource INVERTER 3 B15
resource I2C_SCL 1 B08
resource I2C_SDA 1 B09
resource LED 1 B05
resource LED 2 B04
resource LED 3 B06
resource SPI_SCK 1 A05
resource SPI_SCK 3 C10
resource SPI_MISO 1 A06
resource SPI_MISO 3 C11
resource SPI_MOSI 1 A07
resource SPI_MOSI 3 C12
resource ESCSERIAL 1 C07
resource ADC_BATT 1 C03
resource ADC_RSSI 1 C01
resource ADC_CURR 1 C02
resource FLASH_CS 1 B03
resource OSD_CS 1 B14
resource GYRO_EXTI 1 C05
resource GYRO_CS 1 C04
resource USB_DETECT 1 A08
(Sorry, couldn't use the Spoiler tag)
I also just now double checked and tried calibrating the ESCs just now plainly through the controller and battery, with no success.

 

[MorningViewFPV]

on the main config tab, in the upper right, what do you have set for esc/motor protocol ? those are older esc's...i'm not able to tell the firmware...probably simonk. because of this you will have to use slower protocol...