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bhunt2 / QC1.0

Design, documentation, and code for our first quadcopter
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ESCs - Motors off balanced #14

Closed hautruong36 closed 8 years ago

hautruong36 commented 8 years ago

@bhunt2 @sabmah @Kekahuna

I tried to fly the drone couple weeks ago after installing firmware for flight controller and R/C calibration, but it was unsuccessful. Looking into the problem, I thought it was ESCs calibration wasn't not done correctly. I followed the tutorial on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iry4vaE4RUY and http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/esc-calibration/. Basically, what I did for ESC calibration was:

Setup: Unplug all of the wires to receiver. Connect power to receiver. Connect ECS 1 to throttle.

Procedure:

  1. Turn on TX
  2. Put throttle on high
  3. Plug the battery in. This will give receiver 5V.

There should be some beeps sound according to the tutorial, but there wasn't any sound. Also the motor was spinning when it wasn't supposed to. I tried it couple of times, but no success.

Also, when I have everything wired correctly, I slowly increased throttle until the motors started to spin, and three out of 4 motors would spin together, and the other one would take couple second to catch up. Eventually, they all spin.

Am I missing anything in ECS calibration? I might need advice from drone expert, but none of my friends are.

bhunt2 commented 8 years ago

@hautruong36 have you talked with your teammates, @sabmah and @Kekahuna about this issue and tried working together to figure out the problem?

  1. Which tutorial are you talking about when you reference a tutorial? Is it the remote tutorial, or the flight controller tutorial, or flight software tutorial?
  2. Did you go through each of the above tutorials?
  3. Did you connect the motors correctly to the flight controller? There is a front and back, and left and right to the drone. If the motors are not connected properly you will not get a balance in motor power.
  4. In the software (on your computer), do you have any telemetry feedback from the flight controller? Are you using the on board sensors or external sensors for stabilization? If you are getting feedback, does it make sense? If sensor data is off, you won't get balance because the firmware (in the flight controller) uses that information to stabilize the drone.
  5. In the tutorial given by Crash Hancock, which you posted to the Wiki, he goes through the complete setup of the software and firmware and how to configure the flight controller to a drone. Did you go through the tutorial as he showed it?

We will go to there for now.

bhunt2 commented 8 years ago

You may take a look at this series of tutorials to get some additional insight into how to setup everything and what all the sensors do and how everything works together.

https://youtu.be/Foc8lxDddHw

sabmah commented 8 years ago

Yes, we went through the trouble shooting. we followed the tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iry4vaE4RUY

As hau mentioned, we are not getting the expected results as stated in the tutorials.

hautruong36 commented 8 years ago

We tried to work this out together, but got same result.

Yes, I went through Crash Hancock tutorial.

Yes, the multiwii config tool does get connected and feedback from the flip 1.5

Everything in the Crash Hancock tutorial worked out fine, BUT ESC calibration.

To clarify the problem, it's about ESC calibration. I can't calibrate ESC, and yes I tried to follow very closely in the crash hancock tutorial.

bhunt2 commented 8 years ago

Please document your process and the results in the wiki so that I can see them. This is the reason why I have been pushing documentation. If you have the process you followed and the results documented, you would not only have proof that everything worked or didn't work, but you would have a foundation for figuring out what is wrong if anything.

The wiki should have either video of the results or screen shoots showing feedback outputs and other elements either working correctly or not. This allows everyone to get involved in helping to figure out the resolution for this issue.

hautruong36 commented 8 years ago

https://github.com/bhunt2/QC1.0/blob/master/Documents/Drone%20Assembly.pdf

Link above is the documents of how I assembled the drone. I think the problems were that the flip 1.5 needed to face in a certain way. Also, the digital wires might have been misplaced. Hope that will fix the problem, and we can bypass the ESCs calibration. I will test it out when the weather is allowed.

bhunt2 commented 8 years ago

Thank you for your documentation. It is pretty well done. The resolution that you came up and are hoping works is not documented as the proper way to assemble though. I recommend that you move all of this to the wiki which should facilitate easier updates to the documentation. Use what you have written as a tutorial for proper assembly with the flip 1.5 orientation comment added. Then either at the end of the document or in another section you would have issues and resolutions while figuring it out. You want to make sure that anyone would be able to go through your documentation and completely assemble, calibrate, and startup the drone.

Thanks for the diligence in figuring this out. I hope that you like me pushing you in the right direction rather than just giving you the answers. You guys are doing great.

Please close this issue once you have tested the drone with the mentioned resolution.

hautruong36 commented 8 years ago

I have put up document on Wiki. Also, the drone doesn't fly as of yesterday. Please take a look at my document to see if I have done anything wrong. Also, there are AUX1 and AUX2 on the flip 1.5 and Remote Control. However, there were only 5 wires provided, so I just have 5 servos connected: THRO, AILE, ELEV, RUDD, and AUX1. I am not certainly sure how important AUX2 would be, but it's not connected. When you assembled your drone, did you have them all connected? Also, if I understand correctly, AUX1 has to be high (~2000) for easier flying.

image

Also, there is a document about flip 1.5 calibration without using multiwii (picture below). For Gyro calibration, I used Multiwii, How about angle/horizon calibration and mag calibration?

image

bhunt2 commented 8 years ago

@hautruong36

It looks like the manual stick configuration may be an option to try out. You may try using the manual option to run all the configurations. I did not see this when I had played with it, so I don't have any experience doing it, but it seems straight forward.

Notice the references for AUTO-LEVELING. This is one of the possible issues you are having. This is the setting for the Flip 1.5 to take care of a balanced flight.

hautruong36 commented 8 years ago

I basically took a part and started from beginning. The drone is now flying. I will have a more detailed document on our wiki. We can close this issue.