yes, ground up, vcc middle and signal lower. I have never used a safety switch and it worked before when I had the roboclaw installed.
when your at the PPM mapping page of the wizard do you see any movement?
No i dont see any movement
do you have anything else with a PWM output like a RC receiver or servo tester?
I have a rc receiver ( Herelink) which is connected to the pixhawk. Should I connect the motor controller directly to the Herelink to see if there is anything? I dont have a servo tester.
can the recevier output servo pwm?
I am not sure. I have not checked it.
I am using Ardupilot the pixhawk, should I try the PX4 instead? Could that be an issue?
it might be a faulty esc, some googling shows that is a common issue with those controllers. i would try and test it with a receiver or servo tester to rule out a configuration issue.
You won’t find anyone here to agree to that suggestion. If you want to do it anyway it has it’s own forum.
How do I test it with the receiver? The esc turns on and the motors are running from it. I will try and connect it to the CAN ports on the pixhawk to see if that works.
do you have a standard receiver that you can plug servos into?
I have a Herelink receiver
order a servo tester they are only around $5 you should be able to find one locally they are pretty common devices.
Sorry, I was absent for a while. Did you select the PPM app in the VESC Software and write the setting to the VESC? Did you disconnect the VESC from the computer, when you tested the PPM/RC input, or did you dectivate the keyboard controls in the VESC software? Concurrent inputs block each other or lead to jerky motor behaviour. I am on vacation right now, so I do not have the equipment right now, but I wrote about the VESC setup elsewhere on this forum before.
It is possible to monitor the PPM/RC input the VESC is receiving without actually running the motors. This is also useful to calibrate the VESCs to the pixhawk output. Sometimes there is quite a difference between what the pixhawk says it is putting out and what the VESC is receiving.
Here is the thread where I wrote about the VESC settings and calibration:
Hello Sebastian
thank you for your comments. I would like to test this, but at this point I have two cube orange plus that has gone into a loop saying: “Failure in uploading IO firmware”.
I had the VESC connected to the pc via usb, but the keyboard was deactivated in the software. I saw that during the mapping that the min, max and center values where 1.0 ns, 2.0 ns and 1.5 ns, which is different from what the pixhawk sends out (min=1000, max=2000 and center= 1500). So you are saying to change the values in Pixhawk through mission planner in order to change the values in VESC?
The values are not different, they are just shown with different scalings. VESC uses miliseconds, while the Pixhawk uses microseconds.
The difference I was talking about is more like the Pixhawk says it is putting out 1500us, but the VESC input shows 1460us (or 1.46ms) for example. This may prevent the VESC from arming, because the default arming window is smaller than this.
In order for the VESC to see any input values is if it is somehow in contact with the Pixhawk. My problem is that it is not in contact at all. So the only values I see when I am trying to map is min=1.0, max=2.0 and center 1.5
As suggested by @geofrancis, you need to try and find the source of your problem. Ruling out different parts of the system as source of the problem is the way to do it. So you need to use something to test if the VESC receives PWM signals. You can do this with a servo tester, a RC receiver that has outputs for individual channels, or a microcontroller like an arduino.
To test the outputs of the Pixhawk, you can use a servo (the servo needs power, so you need a 5V supply) or a multimeter with the ability to read frequencies. You can also try to set the Pixhawk output to passthrough or a servo setting like groundsteering, so arming and safety switch settings do not disable the outputs. I would probably do that anyway while searching for the error.