Motors not starting XQuad

[timvukman]

Hi

Lynxmotion HQuad500
Lynxmotion 12A Multirotor ESC
11.1V 3500mAh 30C Battery
Radiolink AT10ii Transmitter with R12DS Receiver
1000Kv 15A Brushless Motor
Lynxmotion Quadrino Nano Flight Controller with GPS

Everything is according to the parts list that would be included if you order the whole kit.

The motors do not start.

I have gone through the FCT software and saved it to the drone.

I have gone through WinGUI and saved it to the drone.

On the transmitter, I have set the end points to 120%

When I connect the battery I get 3 beeps that go up in pitch.

The Quadrino shows a green light - lower right, a blue light beside the GPS connection and a blue light flashing quickly in the upper left.

I turn on my transmitter and I get a green link on the transmitter indicating that it linked to the receiver.

I move the left joystick to the lower right corner and I get an orange light in the lower left and a green light center left.

Moving the joysticks does not make anything happen.

With the USB connected to the computer and no battery connected, I get the same lights as when I plug in the battery. Solid blue near GPS, flashing blue top (front) left, green lower right (rear)

From WinGui

The circle guages are displaying attitude, etc, correctly

On the right, all channels are sitting on 1500 and the four motors show 1000
**
Turn Transmitter On**
Thr low = 1005, high = 1922
Pitch low = 1096, high = 2004
Roll low = 1090, high = 2003
Yaw low = 1090, high = 2002

USB Connected, Battery Connected, Tansmitter On

All channels show the same numbers as above.

Left joystick moved to lower right corner

Orange light turns on in Quadrino lower left (rear), green light turns on center left (left)

ARM light turns on in WinGui and stays red.

Moving the joysticks changes the values for all 4 motors and the changes appear to make sense with the way the drone would move according to the green bars for the motors if they were running.

None of the motors moved at all, in any direction.

On the plus side, all indications are that everything is working properly and wired properly,

I have attached 4 files. config, config.h, profile and usavsettingsfeb11 which I saved from WinGui.

I am missing something, and suspect it is in the configuration of the software, likely as written from WinGui, but I am not that familiar with the code.

If someone can point me to where I have gone wrong, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
TimV
Edited to correct spelling
profile.xml (920 Bytes)
config (2).h (71.2 KB)
config.h (71.2 KB)

[dialfonzo]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the very complete description of your issues and tests, that’s nice to get.

So what we understand is that when you do “ARM” the copter it does arm and the Quadrino Nano show it’s Arming LED ON. At the same time if you are connected to the WinGUI software ou see that the outputs to the motor goes UP when you throttle UP but nothing happen on the motor itself. Right ?

One thing that could be the issue is the “Min Command” value when you load the FCT firmware. Try to raise it to “1050” and flash the board.
This is the Minimum signal sent to the ESC’s when they are not armed (power up) and is needed for the ESC’s to unlock themselves. They will wait a Low signal to avoid motors to start by connecting the battery for example (in a standard situation).

Let us know,

[timvukman]

Hi DiaLFonZo

Thanks for your response and suggestion.

Yesterday I figured out how to change the lower set point percentage (Feel like a moron for not realizing the key was moving the throttle lever)

Throttle Low = 1006, Med = 1486, High = 2006

FC Arm light shows, Red Arm shows in WinGui. Motors do not start.

Used FCT to change Min Command to 1050. Reset everything.

Connected battery, motors do not start.

Checked FCT and 1050 is correctly saved.

Can I just keep bumping this up?

Nice of RadioLink to produce and 84 page manual written by experts for experts. Maybe some day it might even be understandable. I have not yet figured out how to set the Aux channels between WinGui and the transmitter switches. Any quick overview you might be able to offer?

Thanks and best regards,

TimV

[dialfonzo]

In the WinGui application once Armed, do you see numbers right next to each motors ?
They should jump from “Min Command” to “Min Throttle” value when you arm the copter / controller.

Also, if you go to the “RC Control Settings” can you take a screen shot of what you have ?

[timvukman]

Hi

I was tinkering and set min command to 1100 - didn’t change anything. Didn’t make any difference. Let me know if I should put it back to 1050.

USB Connected but unarmed, no battery attached
Front_L 1100
Front_R 1100
Rear_L 1100
Rear_R 1100

USB Connected ARMED, no battery attached. ARM Light on FCT and FC Board
Front_L 1220
Front_R 1220
Rear_L 1220
Rear_R 1220

USB Connected ARMED, battery attached. ARM Light on FCT and FC Board

Throttle Lever Down
F_L 1220
F_R 1220
R_L 1220
R_R 1220

No wavering for any value

Throttle Lever Mid
F_L 1509
F_R 1554
R_L 1552
R_R 1749

All 4 values waver slightly up and down, don’t appear to move by more than four or five units.

Throttle Lever Full
F_L 1754
F_R 1780
R_L 1800
R_R 2000

F_L, F_R and R_L all waver slightly around these numbers

R_R does not waver from 2000 - stays there

[dialfonzo]

Ok - So WinGUI is showing you that there are outputs sent to motors.
Can you take pictures of your ESC wiring to the Quadrino Nano ?

[timvukman]

Ok

Picture Time

The picture of the receiver connections looks like the grey (throttle) is on the middle connector, but it really is on the top connector (signal).

Please let me know if you need more, or better pcitures

[dialfonzo]

I think you will laugh but all of your ESC’s connection are reversed.
The Orange wire on the ESC side should match the cable on the other side. Right now they all connect to the Brown wire which is the GND.

[timvukman]

Good Morning DiaLFonZo

Thank you so much for your post this morning. Correct!!! I am laughing.

That would certainly explain why I am having the problem I have been having!

There is a very simple explanation. When I was connecting the cables, there was resistance to inserting the cables in the direction that they are now connected (ie the correct one )I took that to mean that the connectors were keyed.

Wow, this worked right away!!!

So,

1. should I change Min Command back down to it’s default value of 1000?

2. should I go back in to FCT and reselect the motor stop tick box?

Right now, the motors start as soon as I arm them with the transmitter and they do not stop at min throttle.

Thank you very much for working through this with me and explaining things along the way. You provided a great deal of information and education for which I am grateful.

I want to add some LED lights, to be switched on one of the AUX channels. I have the radio controlled switch and the LEDs in my cart, but the process of selecting a physical switch on the transmitting and linking that all the way to functioning properly is not clear to me at the moment. Can you provide a quick “high level” for me?

Please let me know on 1 + 2 above.

Curiosity Question.

There is a 3 blade prop with the same diameter and pitch as the 2 blade props that I have now. Would the 3 blade provide more thrust / lift?

Thanks and best regards,

TimV

At min throttle on the transmitter, the motors are still running

[timvukman]

Hi Again:

I went into FCT and set min command back to the default 1000

I reselected motor stop and wrote it out to the FC

It works perfectly!!! Motors are stopped when I connect the battery and when I ARM with the throttle lever physically at min. I raise the lever and the motors kick in

(It’s quieter than I thought it would be)

NOTE:

The is a different tone sequence when I plug in the battery. There used to be three beeps rising in pitch.

Now there are four beeps rising in pitch.

TimV

[dialfonzo]

Good news…!

You should (as you did) go back to the initial values. The “Motor Stop” is explained in the FCT User Manual, it’s really a matter of choice.
(i prefer my motors to start spinning when armed, that’s to avoid lifting the throttle thinking it’s not armed and have the drone fly-away or injure someone)

Motor Stop:​If active, the motors will not spin up until sufficient throttle is given, even though the motors are armed.

You should re-do your ESC’s calibration as they most likely didn’t worked with the cables not connected right. (if you did the calibration with MultiWii/FCT)

How do you want to trigger your LED’s exactly ?
You can get a RC switch and connect it to an AUX channel of your receiver.

[timvukman]

Thanks for the quick response!!! A little excited here!!!

Lights.

On my transmitter, I have a number of physical switches. I have one on the left lower front labelled “F” by the manufacturer. I will have 4 LED strips (One on the bottom of each motor boom) wired in parallel.

I don’t have the switch or strips yet, but it looks like ground is supplied electrically through the switch, so I run two wires from my combined terminals of the strips to the switch.

In WinGui, there is a panel which shows all of the AUX possibilities. I want to assign physical switch 7 on the transmitter to whichever port of the receiver needs to be wired to the remote control switch. I see the panel is a table, but how do I know what AUX goes with what physical switch on the transmitter? That’s the part of the transmitter manual I was whining about.

Also, for the flight modes like angle and horizon and I would like a switch for the “home” function.

WinGui documentation talks about what the functions do, but I don’t get how that relates to the switches on the transmitter. I’m sure I have to set them on the transmitter somehow.

If you wouldn’t mind giving me the “high level big picture” then I can relate that to what the manual says and I should be able to set it up.

Thanks,

TimV
(I only had to swap two motor wires on one esc to get all the motors to rotate in the right directions.)
Yet another spelling edit

[dialfonzo]

You will have to set your switches to the channel in the Transmitter.
Go to the mode by holding “Mode” and select the “AUX-CH” option.

To trigger LED’s you will have to do it Outside the Quadrino Nano by connecting a switch to the channel on the receiver. (RC Switch)

[timvukman]

Yes, I see. Thank you. I knew my lights would be outside from the receiver to the remote switch directly. Thanks for the pictures. That makes it clear.

Again, my thanks for all of your patience and assistance.

TimV

[timvukman]

Hi:

I am revisiting this post as I seem to have done something to my UAV which has killed it. Everything was working properly with Arming and Motors spinning, etc.

I took it apart yesterday and did not see anything wrong in the wiring.

As far as I can remember the only recent change was in starting to add the FPV equipment.

That is all disconnected at the moment.

My board won’t arm and the motors won’t spin.

I recharged the battery, so it is up to snuff.

I have added PDBs, but I have tested it after each one.

Can you point me toward a troubleshooting approach?

Thanks,

Tim

[timvukman]

Ok

Not sure what is going on, but I have separate power leads to each PDB that I combine into one cable to connect to the battery.

I connected the PDB that controls the quadrino and the 4 upper motors, and that worked properly.

I connected the PBD that controls the 4 lower motors and that worked properly.

I connected the two PDBs together and that worked properly.

At the very minimum of throttle engagement the motors are engaging with a pretty high thrust. If I don’t slide it down out of range (ie stop), I think it would want to go up on it’s own.

Min throttle is reporting at 1068 on the flight deck. I have all 8 motors showing 1000 in the picture of the quad. They bump up when I give it a little throttle. The top climb faster than the bottom 4.

Should I not be able to have this sit on the ground with the motors spinning? I suspect a changed setting somewhere that I don’t see.

Thanks

Tim

[timvukman]

Hi:

I got past the issues with the motors not starting and arming, but I think I’d like them to start at a lower RPM, ie so I can run the motors without the UAV trying to take off.

Since I didn’t do anything with that problem over the weekend, I balanced all 8 props. (4 2 blade and 4 3 blade) Of the whole lot, there were two that were ok and didn’t need anything done to them.

I have the FPV transmitter on the UAV and that part seems pretty simple.

The receiver side has been a real pain. I really didn’t have anything in a small portable monitor that would accept RCA inputs. Yes, I saw the monitors with built in receivers, but that seems very expensive.

I have two decent sized tablets that have HDMI inputs, so I figured that had to be a possibility. Not so easy to sort through.

I had to get a converter box with RCA Input and HDMI Output. There’s a ton of these little boxes with HDMI Input and RCA Output, but that won’t work. Fortunately, I found one and it’s not very expensive.

It ships with an HDMI cable which has the largest size at the box end and a Micro size at the other end. Of course, the connector on the Tablets is Mini, so I had to hunt down a different cable which I also found and it is not expensive. It’s a coiled cable that plugs into the converter box and in to the Tablet with no issues.

Still with me?

One issue remains. The converter box needs to plug into a USB Port for Power. The end for the computer is the standard 2.0 A type, and the end on the converter is a 5 wire B type mini plug. I will hook it up to the computer in the morning, but…

The USB connector on the Tablet is a micro 4 wire C type. Apparently, I have to get an OTG (On The Go) adapter which will have the correct C type connector for the USB on the Tablet. The adapters appear to have a standard type A connector on the other end. I’m of the opinion that it is the opposite format of the type A that would plug in to the USB on the computer so that you can take a different A to something cable and plug the A end into the OTG Adapter. At least, I hope that is the case, because then the 5 wire B can plug into the RCA to HDMI box and the OTG can plug into the Tablet.

Apparently, when you plug the OTG cable into the USB port on the Tablet, you will get an on-screen message telling you whether or not OTG is supported by your Android device. No promises that it is.

The USB connection is only for power for the converter box.

I have a wall transformer supplying the R60 receiver at this point for testing and the R60 likes 7 - 12V DC. The tablet, of course, likes 5V DC, so I will now need some other battery specifically for the Receiver which I could drop down to 5V DC for the tablet. Not impossible but a bit of a pain.

It only works out to about 3 miles of wiring to hang off the tablet somewhere…

I shall review the monitors again

One serious question. I found in troubleshooting my problem with the motors that moving the cables and connectors for power caused some make / break power issues. I’m not that impressed with the Deans connectors as they loosen up over time. I’m looking at converting the connectors to the Yellow ones. (I will look up what they are called and edit the post later) They look like they might hold themselves together.

What would you recommend?

Best,

Tim

[dialfonzo]

Hi Tim,

Thant’s an intensive writing…
For the motor look at the “Min Throttle” value and lower it so you get the Idle you need. Look at the “Motor Stop” option in the FCt on the “flight” tab for enabling or not motor when you arm.

XT-60 (yellow ones) are the way to go.
In the future we will change all batteries and distribution to this connector.

[timvukman]

Hi DiaLFonZo

Thanks for your quick reply. I hope my “intensive writing” didn’t spoil your morning.

I have been consciously documenting my trials and tribulations among your revelations of truth;

in part because what I encounter will be encountered by others. It also provides me with somewhere to go back and check information that I have received. Not all of it is instantly cemented so as I learn more, I can go back and pick up on items I didn’t really understand the reasons behind.

Thanks for the information on where to adjust what I need to adjust. That was my thought, but then the whole issue of the Deans connections came up and I had just recharged the battery, so…well I wasn’t as confident as I wanted to be.

I will switch over to the XT-60 connectors and stick with them going forward.

I am planning on getting a second 11.1V battery. I would put one battery on each group of 4 motors which is easy for me to do the way things are connected. One battery would carry the FC and it’s peripherals with 4 motors and the other would carry the FPV camera and transmitter and the other 4 motors.

I’m worried about running everything (especially 8 motors) off one 3500Mah battery. The last thing I need when learning how to fly it would be to get it to hover and have the beeper start to tell me it’s time to land.

Anything you want to toss in on the subject is welcome.

Best,

Tim

[dialfonzo]

The important rating is the “c” for the battery.
If you have a 1000mAh battery with a 30c rating you will be able to pump 30A out. The motors are not to hungry in this setup.