ESC Beep

[DGC]

I have an Adventure EP. I use a 2s 800 MaH battery. I have a Spektrum DX6 G2 Tx. I have bound and flown the plane previously. After a recent crash and repair, I changed the “model” in my Tx to a new model. I can bind to the new model, but I think the ESC (2S Lipo 6a BES 5V 0.8a) is for some reason requiring calibration. The ESC beeps, steadily about once per second before and after the binding process. It beeps, once per second, all the time. The prop does twitch slightly. There is no throttle response to inputs. The battery is fully charged.

I have tried various “throttle up – throttle down” at various points before/during and after the binding process, but nothing helps. I have two identical ESCs from the same model (bought a used one for parts) an each has the same difficulty.

I do not even have to have the receiver connected. Tx on or off, bound or not, the esc beeps, once per second. NO pairs of beeps, no note-changing chirps, just the same steady beeps. It doesn't even matter which motor I have connected.

DGC

 

[joelspangler]

Check that you don't have the ESC's plug into your reciever backwards. This type of thing often happens if you have the two outside connectors (neutral and signal) backward.

 

[DGC]

It doesn't even matter if it's plugged into the receiver at all! It's not backwards though. I checked. The wiring hasn't changed since I last flew it. Everything changed when I deleted the old model and generated a new one.

 

[quorneng]

DGA
A single beep like that is the ESC telling you it is not getting (or can't understand) a signal from the receiver.
It happens, for instance, if you power up the receiver but do not switch on the transmitter. The receiver is not getting a signal so nether is the ESC.
It follows that either your "new model" set up is at fault so the receiver and ESC are not communicating or you have physically lost a connection between the receiver and the ESC, maybe as the result of the crash?

 

[hankflies03]

Yes I agree try re-binding the transmitter and receiver.

 

[DGC]

Not the issue. Rebinding does nothing. Tried much more than this, but thanks for trying.

 

[DGC]

Check that you don't have the ESC's plug into your reciever backwards. This type of thing often happens if you have the two outside connectors (neutral and signal) backward.

I haven't changed the connectors since before the crash, when everything worked. I'm very careful about polarity.

 

[MrClean]

It's probably something stupid that we're all missing. If you haven't yet, unplug your esc. Plug a flight battery into your receiver (assuming you have one). Do the controls work? Do the controls work with the ESC plugged in but the motor? Unplug the motor from the esc and plug the flight pack in. Did it stop with the 1/sec beeping? Do you have another ESC? Have you looked up the ESC on the internet and checked for what the beeps are for? I'm attaching a file that has the esc error codes for one of the esc's I have. They don't all have the same codes but I believe there is some uniformity. Seems to be anyways as programming throttle is pretty standard on the 3 different kinds I have. It's indicating motor or esc problems. Put a red square around your symptom. Maybe it'll help. Maybe you need to look up your specific ESC. Wondering why you changed the model setting in your transmitter before verifying everything worked after the crash AND/OR if it did, what is different in your NEW model definition. Anyways, hope you find it cuzz it's a bit of drive for us to get to you.

 

[Tench745]

I haven't changed the connectors since before the crash, when everything worked. I'm very careful about polarity.

Do you have a throttle cut or anything enabled on your radio?
I have a FrSky transmitter, so what I've discovered may not apply to your DX6. But I can bind to Spektrum receivers and I have run into a glitch that sometimes happens if I bind to a DSMX reciever while I have a throttle cut enabled. For whatever reason, the RX never outputs a signal for throttle, no matter what I do with the throttle cut switch after that. The solution for me was to re-bind with the throttle cut disabled. Once I did that the throttle and throttle cut worked as expected every time.

 

[joelspangler]

Saw another thread that isn't totally related, but it's at least something to try. For their issue, they were trying to calibrate their ESC, and couldn't get it to go into calibration mode. The solution was that the radio's sticks were so badly out of calibration that even with full throttle, it wasn't sending a signal high enough for the ESC to go into calibration mode. Wondering if yours might be out of whack, but in the other way, where it's never sending a signal low enough for the ESC to boot outside of calibration mode. Thread for reference - https://forum.flitetest.com/index.php?threads/ft-25amp-esc-throttle-calibration.72747/

Other than that, the only other thing I can think of is one of the ESC wires to the reciever got pinched and a wire is broken inside the cable sleeve, or a wire got pulled out of the ESC side.

Do you have another ESC that you could try? Did you try building out another model on your radio - perhaps a SUPER simple one to see if it works that way?

 

[Merv]

Could the Rx have been damaged in the crash? Is the Rx dead?

 

[DGC]

It's probably something stupid that we're all missing. If you haven't yet, unplug your esc. Plug a flight battery into your receiver (assuming you have one). Do the controls work? Do the controls work with the ESC plugged in but the motor? Unplug the motor from the esc and plug the flight pack in. Did it stop with the 1/sec beeping? Do you have another ESC? Have you looked up the ESC on the internet and checked for what the beeps are for? I'm attaching a file that has the esc error codes for one of the esc's I have. They don't all have the same codes but I believe there is some uniformity. Seems to be anyways as programming throttle is pretty standard on the 3 different kinds I have. It's indicating motor or esc problems. Put a red square around your symptom. Maybe it'll help. Maybe you need to look up your specific ESC. Wondering why you changed the model setting in your transmitter before verifying everything worked after the crash AND/OR if it did, what is different in your NEW model definition. Anyways, hope you find it cuzz it's a bit of drive for us to get to you.

Do you have a throttle cut or anything enabled on your radio?
I have a FrSky tran

It's probably something stupid that we're all missing. If you haven't yet, unplug your esc. Plug a flight battery into your receiver (assuming you have one). Do the controls work? Do the controls work with the ESC plugged in but the motor? Unplug the motor from the esc and plug the flight pack in. Did it stop with the 1/sec beeping? Do you have another ESC? Have you looked up the ESC on the internet and checked for what the beeps are for? I'm attaching a file that has the esc error codes for one of the esc's I have. They don't all have the same codes but I believe there is some uniformity. Seems to be anyways as programming throttle is pretty standard on the 3 different kinds I have. It's indicating motor or esc problems. Put a red square around your symptom. Maybe it'll help. Maybe you need to look up your specific ESC. Wondering why you changed the model setting in your transmitter before verifying everything worked after the crash AND/OR if it did, what is different in your NEW model definition. Anyways, hope you find it cuzz it's a bit of drive for us to get to you.

smitter, so what I've discovered may not apply to your DX6. But I can bind to Spektrum receivers and I have run into a glitch that sometimes happens if I bind to a DSMX reciever while I have a throttle cut enabled. For whatever reason, the RX never outputs a signal for throttle, no matter what I do with the throttle cut switch after that. The solution for me was to re-bind with the throttle cut disabled. Once I did that the throttle and throttle cut worked as expected every time.

HI Trench. I've tried that as well. No Luck.

 

[DGC]

It's probably something stupid that we're all missing. If you haven't yet, unplug your esc. Plug a flight battery into your receiver (assuming you have one). Do the controls work? Do the controls work with the ESC plugged in but the motor? Unplug the motor from the esc and plug the flight pack in. Did it stop with the 1/sec beeping? Do you have another ESC? Have you looked up the ESC on the internet and checked for what the beeps are for? I'm attaching a file that has the esc error codes for one of the esc's I have. They don't all have the same codes but I believe there is some uniformity. Seems to be anyways as programming throttle is pretty standard on the 3 different kinds I have. It's indicating motor or esc problems. Put a red square around your symptom. Maybe it'll help. Maybe you need to look up your specific ESC. Wondering why you changed the model setting in your transmitter before verifying everything worked after the crash AND/OR if it did, what is different in your NEW model definition. Anyways, hope you find it cuzz it's a bit of drive for us to get to you.

Hi MrClean. Flight battery or AAs - it makes no difference. When bound all the controls work, except for the beeping motor. Unplugging the motor is the only thing that stops the beeping. When its plugged in, it's beeping. I have another duplicate ESC, it does the same exact thing. I can't find what the beeps are for. I'm going to make some banana plug adapters for different sizes tomorrow so I can test other ESCs. I changed the model because I discovered that it had become corrupted, as it was based on another model that was proven to have been corrupted. The problem may be a calibration thing, but I can't seem to get it into calibration mode.

The Flight Test supplied ESC has no make or model information on it (pictured), so looking it up is tricky.

I have tested the motor on another ESC/Rx/Battery combination. It works fine.

So the motor is good, the receiver is good, the wiring is good (no bad or loose connections), the battery is good, and unless both ESCs are bad at the same time, then they are good as well. I'll find out tomorrow when I make some adaptors.

I have had three experienced RC friends of mine look at this, and it has stumped each of them.

 

[DGC]

Could the Rx have been damaged in the crash? Is the Rx dead?

Rx seems fine. No damage apparent. Problem exists with other Rxs so that's not likely. Thx. DC

 

[MrClean]

Well, put the model behind your cars wheel. Back over it. Not gonna fix THIS problem but we can stop worrying about it.
When you programed your transmitter did you get the channel alignment raight TAER instead of TEAR or any of the other mixtures? Nah, you said the other controls work right. And you tried swapping the Suspect ESC into a working plane and the problem didn't follow the ESC? IF you can swap each piece of the pie with a working plane (esc, motor, receiver) and it all works in the working setup but not your current setup I'd have to think there is something wrong with the transmitter setup. IF you bind the working planes setup to your non working planes receiver does it make the problem go away. Ya CAN'T have everything work in one plane and not have it work in another without it being the one thing you didn't change. But, I spent the better part of three days trying to get a tape drive to load when the problem was the stupid Power Supply light bulb. It was burned out. The POWER was fine however if the bulb had been working I would have seen that it was flashing. The only reason it would flash would be insufficient air flow over the airflow inidcator fin in the power supplies cooling fan. THAT wasn't flickering and the machine was pushed back against the wall which hid the fact that a piece of paper from a report had fallen and sucked up against the cooling supply fans input filter. No air flow, No clean check light, No load. Stupid thing. "Shoot, we were hoping to sell it in working condition" they said as I found out they were getting rid of the string for a new Cassette tape system. I went in the next week to take the string out, pushed it away from the wall and the piece of paper fell partly down from the filter. Said STOP, cleaned the filter, loaded a tape and it came ready. I was embarassed BUT they laughed, and sold it as working. They already had the casettes working so it just sitting there wasn't costing them anything, And it showed that I had gotten too far in the weeds and forgotten what my trainer had told me about 3420's. "Theres damn near nothing on a 3420 you can't fix with a good PM." That would include filters and light bulbs. So three years later when I had a jr tech come up with the same problem I told him the problem was the light bulb. He looked dumb founded at me, replaced the bulb and saw the REAL problem.
It's a bunch of blather, but sometimes thinking about something else clears the paths for you to figure out the problem. If you can swapp all the equpiment with a working plane the problem is in the transmitter setup other wise the problem has to follow a component. Wish I was there. Not saying I could fix it BUT I could commiserate with ya easier.

 

[Shurik-1960]

I had such a problem.I opened the heat shrink and tested all the keys on three lines with a tester.I found a poorly soldered key. The problem is gone.Then this problem was repeated twice, after flying in rain and snow : I immediately opened the shrink and drank the burnt keys from the water droplets. and once it peaked, but the regulator turned out to be intact. The breakage was in the motor phase wire.Disconnect 1 wire from the motor at the working kit: the motor will start twitching and the battery will start beeping.

 

[DGC]

Hi MrClean. Flight battery or AAs - it makes no difference. When bound all the controls work, except for the beeping motor. Unplugging the motor is the only thing that stops the beeping. When its plugged in, it's beeping. I have another duplicate ESC, it does the same exact thing. I can't find what the beeps are for. I'm going to make some banana plug adapters for different sizes tomorrow so I can test other ESCs. I changed the model because I discovered that it had become corrupted, as it was based on another model that was proven to have been corrupted. The problem may be a calibration thing, but I can't seem to get it into calibration mode.

The Flight Test supplied ESC has no make or model information on it (pictured), so looking it up is tricky.

I have tested the motor on another ESC/Rx/Battery combination. It works fine.

So the motor is good, the receiver is good, the wiring is good (no bad or loose connections), the battery is good, and unless both ESCs are bad at the same time, then they are good as well. I'll find out tomorrow when I make some adaptors.

I have had three experienced RC friends of mine look at this, and it has stumped each of them.

Okay guys. Problem solved. It turns out that I had TWO failed components; the ESC AND the RX. I made up a bunch of misc connectors to marry-up different components from another powertrain that worked, and proceeded to do Re & Re until I had it sorted. The crash was a reasonable one, but only from about 6' up (tip-stall 3/4 throttle). It was the maiden flight of a rebuilt plane with insufficient right-thrust and it bit me. I guess those components, protected as I thought they were, suffered injury. The unfortunate part was that the only part of the Rx that didn't work was the throttle. This combined with the other throttle-related component, the ESC, made diagnosis tricky.

Thanks to everyone for their input. Really appreciated.

 

[joelspangler]

Okay guys. Problem solved. It turns out that I had TWO failed components; the ESC AND the RX. I made up a bunch of misc connectors to marry-up different components from another powertrain that worked, and proceeded to do Re & Re until I had it sorted. The crash was a reasonable one, but only from about 6' up (tip-stall 3/4 throttle). It was the maiden flight of a rebuilt plane with insufficient right-thrust and it bit me. I guess those components, protected as I thought they were, suffered injury. The unfortunate part was that the only part of the Rx that didn't work was the throttle. This combined with the other throttle-related component, the ESC, made diagnosis tricky.

Thanks to everyone for their input. Really appreciated.

Glad to hear you got it figured out. Since it is only the throttle channel messed up, I was thinking of suggesting doing something weird like using channel 5 or 6 for throttle, but I don't know that I'd trust the receiver at all - it might also have lousy range, or do something unexpected once in the air and crash a plane that you spent lots of $$$ or time on.

 

[Tench745]

Okay guys. Problem solved. It turns out that I had TWO failed components; the ESC AND the RX. I made up a bunch of misc connectors to marry-up different components from another powertrain that worked, and proceeded to do Re & Re until I had it sorted. The crash was a reasonable one, but only from about 6' up (tip-stall 3/4 throttle). It was the maiden flight of a rebuilt plane with insufficient right-thrust and it bit me. I guess those components, protected as I thought they were, suffered injury. The unfortunate part was that the only part of the Rx that didn't work was the throttle. This combined with the other throttle-related component, the ESC, made diagnosis tricky.

Thanks to everyone for their input. Really appreciated.

Sounds like a good RX to throw into a glider. Don't need a throttle there.

 

[MrClean]

Sounds like a good RX to throw into a glider. Don't need a throttle there.

Or one to open up and see where the signal from channel one doesn't get to the esc. Or ground/voltage path. Did the shock break a cold solder joint and if so, are there any more marginal lines there? Working on these small electronics is for good, young eyes or a magnifier and fine tipped tools.