Nighthawk 280 pro ARF motor issue..

[Adrian93]

So, I recently bought an nighthawk 280 pro.
Flew it a couple of times, then I decided to flash cleanflight to it (came with baseflight)
To my knowledge this quad comes with a Skyline 32 board, an intergrated 12A ESC's.
After my flash to cleanflight I enable Oneshot, flew it two times, had a minor crash. Try to take of again, then it just automatically flips.
Go to check it in cleanflight, now it seems that motor 3 starts spinning at full power, when throttle is low, and when throttle is at mid it stops.. full throttle it starts spinning again, but this time in the oppostite direction..
what is happening to it..

 

[nitrowing]

try to reflash maybe do full board erase option, and fully re configure from scratch?

 

[Snarls]

Sounds like the ESC on motor 3 has had 3D mode enabled somehow. In 3D mode neitral is mid stick and up or down causes the motor to spin in opposite directions. Since this happened after a minor crash and not right after flashing Cleanflight, I am not sure what could have caused it. I am not the person to talk to as to how to fix it, you may be able to do it with stick commands, or you may have to do some soldering. Jhitesma is a member of this forum who has experience dealing with the 280 ARF ESCs. He may chime in to help you, otherwise you can send him a message.

 

[Adrian93]

yes, tried to reflash back to baseflight, didnt work... flashed to cleanflight again, still the same..

 

[Adrian93]

Sounds like the ESC on motor 3 has had 3D mode enabled somehow. In 3D mode neitral is mid stick and up or down causes the motor to spin in opposite directions. Since this happened after a minor crash and not right after flashing Cleanflight, I am not sure what could have caused it. I am not the person to talk to as to how to fix it, you may be able to do it with stick commands, or you may have to do some soldering. Jhitesma is a member of this forum who has experience dealing with the 280 ARF ESCs. He may chime in to help you, otherwise you can send him a message.

yes, 3D mode was my thougt to... i know there is a way to program the esc's but i cant seem to get this one esc in to programing mode.. works fine with the other ones..
I did order a new FC, four ESC's and a PB, but it will take a few days for me to get them... was hoping to fix the stock one and do some more flying.. guess i have to wait then -,-

 

[jhitesma]

Once the stock firmware goes into 3D mode the only way to change it is either with an emax programming card or by reflashing with real blheli.

Shortly before these came out CF made some changes to their oneshot implementation and it doesn't play nice with the hacked up version of blheli that emax flashes from the factory. So if you want to run oneshot you really need to reflash anyway.

So your two best bets are:

1) Get an emax programming card and disable oneshot.

2) Reflash with real BLHELI and enjoy the ESC's working the way they're meant to

I'm a fan of #2...but it's not without its drawbacks. Specifically the pads are very small and hard to solder to and I'm not good at just holding wires to them for flashing. And being an all in one board if you mess up one ESC - there goes the whole thing. But if you're up for the challenge it really wakes up the performance on this quad.

 

[Adrian93]

Once the stock firmware goes into 3D mode the only way to change it is either with an emax programming card or by reflashing with real blheli.

Shortly before these came out CF made some changes to their oneshot implementation and it doesn't play nice with the hacked up version of blheli that emax flashes from the factory. So if you want to run oneshot you really need to reflash anyway.

So your two best bets are:

1) Get an emax programming card and disable oneshot.

2) Reflash with real BLHELI and enjoy the ESC's working the way they're meant to

I'm a fan of #2...but it's not without its drawbacks. Specifically the pads are very small and hard to solder to and I'm not good at just holding wires to them for flashing. And being an all in one board if you mess up one ESC - there goes the whole thing. But if you're up for the challenge it really wakes up the performance on this quad.

I see.. Well i already bougt a new FC and four new esc's, also bougt the programming card from emax, and... I bougt an ardouino so xD
I might just hook up the new FC, and when i later get the ardouino, and emax card i can test and see if i get the old one working again
Thanks for replys

 

[MototechRyan]

Did you order the programming card from the emax website? I ordered one from the emax website back in early October of last year. Didn't bother to check the status of my order thinking it'll take awhile to arrive from china. Fast forward to the last week of December and I started wondering where my card was.

Checked the status of my order and it was still sitting in the processing phase. Wtf, so I emailed emax's customer service and got some bs excuse that it was held up because it was out of stock. But they managed to mail one out the next day even though it was supposedly out of stock

It arrived a few weeks later so no big deal. I'd just recommend you keep an eye on your order if you ordered direct from emax like I did.

 

[jhitesma]

Checked the status of my order and it was still sitting in the processing phase. Wtf, so I emailed emax's customer service and got some bs excuse that it was held up because it was out of stock. But they managed to mail one out the next day even though it was supposedly out of stock

Sounds about par for emax customer support

The exchange I had with them trying to figure out what frequencies were actually available on the NHP 290's VTX was an exercise in absurdity. Still not sure if it's really language problems or if they just like messing with people

 

[Adrian93]

Did you order the programming card from the emax website? I ordered one from the emax website back in early October of last year. Didn't bother to check the status of my order thinking it'll take awhile to arrive from china. Fast forward to the last week of December and I started wondering where my card was.

Checked the status of my order and it was still sitting in the processing phase. Wtf, so I emailed emax's customer service and got some bs excuse that it was held up because it was out of stock. But they managed to mail one out the next day even though it was supposedly out of stock

It arrived a few weeks later so no big deal. I'd just recommend you keep an eye on your order if you ordered direct from emax like I did.

Yea, orderd from emax website, but they had other shipping options that would arrive faster. Ill have to keep an eye on them then. Thanks for the warning

 

[angus_gb]

Did you try recalibrating the ESCs in cleanflight?

 

[Craftydan]

I can't guarantee it will work . . . but . . .

Cleanflight, as of 1.11 supports pass-through programming of the ESCs. Effectively, BLHeli flashed ESCs that support down-the-servo-wire programming can be directly reflashed/reprogrammed using the Naze32 board (or Skyline Naze32-clone, in your case) as the adaptor. This means never needing to unplug the ESC to dink with it's internals.

If it works (It does depend on your ESCs) it's simple as can be:

- Plug-in the USB port and connect to cleanflight (to confirm you have a connection)
- Disconnect but do not close the cleanflight configurator
- Open BLHeliSuite and copy the Com port and baud from the cleanflight configurator.
- Plug in your copter
- click connect on BLHeli suite
- Click Read Setup on BLHeli suite.

. . . And if it works, you should be in!

From here you can mass-reprogram all 4 ESCs, flash to the latest version, rename them, recalibrate them, even test the motor responses to PWM signal levels.

Might I suggest . . . turn off the TX programming while you're in there. There's nothing in the TX programming you can't get to through BLHeliSuite, and if it's this easy to get in through there, why leave open the potential headache accidental TX programming can cause?

 

[jhitesma]

I can't guarantee it will work . . . but . . .

If it works (It does depend on your ESCs) it's simple as can be:

Won't work on the 280 pro. The ESC's can't be programmed through the signal lines because they have filters on the lines that mess with the signal. I've tried to trace the circuit to see if I could find the components in question...but haven't had any luck thanks to the conformal coating and black PCB. And to be honest even if I could find them I wouldn't remove them on mine as there are reports of the standalone ones glitching with them removed (not surprising.) I'll take more reliable control signals over easier flashing any day since I fly a lot more often than I tweak ESC settings.

 

[Adrian93]

Ill get my new FC and ESCs tomorrow. So i guess ill do a full rebuild insted But I aint complaining Looks like fun to build!