Motors not spinning up, Help!

[joelmartinez]

Hi all ... first time poster, but long time flitetest show fan. So I've built my first quad, everything seems to have gone relatively smoothly, other than the fact that the motors don't spin when instructed (I know, that might be problematic)

The quad I've put together uses an Seriously Pro F3 flight controller (with cleanflight), and motors/ESCs from the this flitetest power pack. Got everything soldered up and connected, and it *looks* like it should be working, and indeed, I can arm it and see the tx input from the receiver in the cleanflight configurator. **Unfortunately**, the motors do not spin; neither from tx throttle input, or by the motor override in the cleanflight configurator.

I was wondering if anyone could give me some troubleshooting tips/ideas on what I could check.

Things I've tried so far:

- Verified all solder points for ESCs ... looks good as far as I can tell: https://i.imgur.com/XSmqudo.png
- ESCs plugged in in the correct order 1-4: https://i.imgur.com/cRC9p4A.png
- The ESCs definitely have power, cause they make the motors buzz when I plug the battery in short vid of sound. However, I will note that it's not the exact same sound that I've heard from other quads ... if that makes sense. Not sure if that's a hint that something isn't plugged in right.
- Configuration of ESCs/Motors in cleanflight: https://i.imgur.com/RY6mf4o.png
- Attempted to calibrate the ESCs (as shown here), but they don't seem to be responding to the calibration.

Not really sure what else to test, but any tips anyone can offer about what to test, or how to troubleshoot would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

note: I've x-posted this post to /r/multirotor so you can see any other suggestions/troubleshooting that might occur over there: https://www.reddit.com/r/Multicopter/comments/3jak9f/motors_not_spinning_up_help/

 

[NHS77]

I was going to ask whether you calibrated your ESCs but seeing that this isn't even working.... hmmm. The chance that all 4 motors or ESC's are bad is unlikely. So I'm thinking it must be wiring issue between the ESC's and the F3. Haven't played with that board but as I understand it's quite a bit more sophisticated than the Naze32.

One thing to check: Are you using linear or switched ESCs? If they are switched you should remove the red (power) pin from 3 of the 4 leads that connect to the F3. If this were the case it might be a cause for your problems.

Other than that you might want to follow this series by Painless360 on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYsWjANuAm4ro1vHztauuHFaelUDCOwqw

Follow along and see if you missed anything...

 

[joelmartinez]

Thanks for the response. Yes I've been following along that painless360 series, very helpful.

I did remove the red lead from 3 of the ESCs ... But just double checked the docs that came with the ESC, and they're linear! Hmm, maybe that's it. Just to be sure, what documentation should instruct us on whether to do this? I could have sworn I read somewhere that we had to remove those leads, but I can't remember where

 

[joelmartinez]

Oh here it is, from the spracing manual ...

Connect only one SOURCE of power to the VCC pins / Do not connect more than
one source of power to two or more of the VCC pins. e.g. If you are using ESCs
with BECs then remove the center RED wire from all but one ESC connector.

And the way its described in the ESC manual is, "equipped withbuilt in linear BEC, or switch BEC".

So should I still try this, or am I gonna get the magic white smoke if i do?

 

[Craftydan]

Joel,

First things first, lets confirm the ESCs are indeed functional. the motor beeps confirms it's getting power and booting up, but the lack of response from the motor tab override means there's something not quite right in the connection between the ESCs and control board (potentially an issue with the board itself).

Try plugging the ESCs, one by one, into the throttle channel on your receiver. Your radio should be able to control any one of those ESCs if you directly connect to the receiver (be sure to put the red wire back in briefly -- the RX will need it for power).

If they all work, your power system is functional up to the ESC's control plug -- the issue is in the board. If they don't you need to inspect your wiring. It's unlikely that 4 ESCs would have bad control wiring, but if the RX can't drive it, the FCB certainly can't.

 

[joelmartinez]

ok ... so I've plugged the ESCs directly into the receiver, and they do in fact all spin up! alright, so what should I try now?

 

[Craftydan]

Finally got somewhere I could open the Imgur links . . .

Have you tried turning off oneshot?

I don't believe the EMax BLHeli ESCs support oneshot with the stock ROM. If you reflashed it (for that ESC, you have to do it the hard way at least once) you can load up oneshot, but frankly you won't notice the difference until the craft is tuned to it's peak . . . if then.

I'd also recommend increasing your maxthrottle to at least 1925 -- that ESC has a bad habit of not going into calibration mode if the throttle signals aren't above 1900. You'll want to fine tune minthrottle to just above (10 points or so) the least throttle every ESC runs at, but you've got to get them to respond first.

 

[joelmartinez]

That did the trick!! the motors now spin up, and react to throttle input from the radio. Thank you so much!!!

Ok, so perhaps the last bit here ... tell me a bit more about tuning the max throttle value. Now that I have it at 1950, do I need to edge it down and calibrate every time until they no longer go into calibration mode, then edge it back up until the +10 or so value you mentioned?

 

[Craftydan]

Great to hear they're up and running!

The max throttle should be fine so long as it's over 1900. It's an issue with those ESC's ROM. The calibration mode trip point is set a bit too high, so if it were at 1850 (a touch low, but still reasonable for a radio to mean that as "full throttle") it would never enter calibration mode. 1950 is just fine -- calibrate the ESCs with that (unplug the battery and run the motor override sliders to maximum, plug in the battery and after the first set of beeps, run them all down to the minimum), and you'll never have to touch maxthrottle again.

Minthrottle sets how low the ESCs are allowed to go and stay "on" -- effectively, it sets an idle throttle. It needs to be 10 points or so above the lowest value all the motors will spin at, so you're absolutely, positively guaranteed that the motor will never go past idle without the pilot (you) moving the stick to the bottom.

If you didn't set this high enough, in a wild maneuver, if your throttle is low and the correction is strongly down the two could add up to below "idle" . . . and the ESC shuts the motor off . . . which takes a second or so to spin the motor back up to idle. In the mean time, you'll likely find the ground in an uncontrolled manner.

To tune this, Set minthrottle to something low, like 1050. Go back to the motor tab and start moving that slider up slowly until each motor has turned on. once the last one has turned on, that's the absolute bare minimum. I'd add 10 for good measure, and set the minthrottle to that value. Go back and test, and the motors should jump to the minthrottle value as you increase the slider, and they should all spin up in unison.

 

[benny347]

hi i'm benoit from france i have a robocat 270 with spf3 flight controller i almost got the same type of problem as joel... i had a few problems to connect my drone to clean flight but it was coming from my computer, i've change fro a laptop and now i'm connected to cleanflight but i cannot flash the board maybe because the robocat arrived rtf ?? i can run the motors with the sliders in clean flight but once i unplugged the drone from the computer and move the throttle stick of my devo 7 nothing happened, when i'm on cleanflight i see the graphics move on every channel of the tx i've watched painless360 videos and still don't understand what i miss... i try to put throttle stick in the right corner , nothing happened, i've also put the master slider at is max, plugged the battery hear the buzzer sound and then put the slider down ... i even try the solution you proposed above but nothing .... could you help me please fix this issue

 

[Craftydan]

Benny,

First off, welcome to the forum.

Since this is an RTF airframe, they may have setup some things for you . . . and not clearly informed you of those settings. One of those is the "ARM" mode.

Go to the "modes" tab:

- If you see nothing assigned to "mode", then stick arming is enabled. If commanding Minimum Throttle + Maximum Yaw (left stick to bottom right on Mode 2 radios) should arm the board. You'll need to adjust the throws on the Devo to go low enough and high enough to hit those maximum and minimum points. If that's not happening, there's something less obvious that's wrong -- we'll dive into that if this doesn't help.

- If you see an Aux channel assigned to "ARM", then they've setup a switch arming for you, and stick arming is automatically disabled. you'll need to find the switch/channel that will bring the board in-and-out of the arm mode . . . Or delete the channel assignment so "ARM" mode is unassigned -- Stick arming will be enabled automatically to take it's place.