I have found my new ESC! What a relief. =) Soldered the programming cable and everything else to motor and leds as I had before. Tried it out before flashing and got the motor to stop on sudden rais on throttle as of voltage cutoff. I’ve never run this setup on 4S on original firmware so I guessed that all my problems would go away after reflashing. Did so and here is the result, exactly the same as with the old ESC, guess it was not the problem after all =( What can it be following this description? I am going to go through power lines all the way. The windings on the motor seem fresh at least. I’m not suspecting firmware as the problem anymore.
I found the problem btw… and a notice
The new ESC even though it was the same item number on hobbyking as the others it seems to be updated. I cannot find any info online that it would be any different versions on these ESC’s but they are clearly different.
The motor had broken windings. Was not easy to see but when I removed it from the mount and put it under the loop and locked in every angle i found this. If you look close to the black cable you see some broken wires.
What would you have done regarding the ESC… shifted back to be sure they are all the same might be a good idea? They are all Turnigy 18A plush with the same firmware and settings right now but you can never be sure. Will have to order a new motor. Weird that it still worked this well with broken windings, maybe I should try to find some other motors to use in the future.[attachment=0]IMG_20150111_221504.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=1]IMG_20150111_153155.jpg[/attachment]
Glad to hear that you have find out the problem! . I would sitk with the old escs and just make sure the config are the same among them.
Since you should be messing around with wiring etc, you could take this opportunity and try to tune blheli to get the best efficiency out of the setup. It is easy to archive with a watt meter.
PS. If you are in a serious rush to be back in flight you could also try to weld the wire and try to fix that motor while the new one is coming.
[quote=“tabascoz”]Glad to hear that you have find out the problem! . I would sitk with the old escs and just make sure the config are the same among them.
Since you should be messing around with wiring etc, you could take this opportunity and try to tune blheli to get the best efficiency out of the setup. It is easy to archive with a watt meter.
PS. If you are in a serious rush to be back in flight you could also try to weld the wire and try to fix that motor while the new one is coming.
Best Regards, Fernando[/quote]
Thanx for the advice. I don’t want to risk it and there is tons of snow outside my window now. Have a nice little 250 quad to play around with even dough it does not give the same nice footage. I see you are writing from Brazil… summer must be good there now, spent a part of my life in south america myself and some of it in brazil. Lovely country!
“Unfortunately” I just bought a bunch of stuff like new radio modules, camera etc for the mini quad so I’ll have to wait a little to justify a new order for the tricopter being a student and all. Might also remake the tricopter over the winter moving the ESC’s inside the body and wiring the cables through the carbon tubes if it is not a bad idea regarding disturbance for other electronics to get the ESC’s so close to flight controller, GPS, FPV and so on. I’ve experienced bad telemetry when having the ESC’s close as they run on the same frequency of 433mhz
Regarding my bad motor… I cant stop thinking about the last time I tried autotune on firmware 3.1 the same thing happened. Maybe the motor was bad then too but it has never happened since for months. Crazy thought
here are two pics of my copters
[attachment=0]Screen Shot 2015-01-12 at 18.55.14.png[/attachment]
[attachment=1]IMG_20150109_145203.jpg[/attachment]
Yeah, summer is more than hot here this year. We are reaching 40 degrees , with a feels like of 52… it is almost a sauna. I’m pretty sure those guys that don’t have an A/C would be willing to have a little bit of snow here
Nice models I’m looking forward to build a small tricopter, to be easier to carry around .
I see that your escs are in the middle of the arm. Do they fit above the motors? if so , you could move the wiring inside, otherwise I would avoid having the escs so close to APM, most because of electromagnetic interference.
If you came to Brazil , around Rio , let me know so we could flight around you’re welcome!
[quote=“tabascoz”]Yeah, summer is more than hot here this year. We are reaching 40 degrees , with a feels like of 52… it is almost a sauna. I’m pretty sure those guys that don’t have an A/C would be willing to have a little bit of snow here
Nice models I’m looking forward to build a small tricopter, to be easier to carry around .
I see that your escs are in the middle of the arm. Do they fit above the motors? if so , you could move the wiring inside, otherwise I would avoid having the escs so close to APM, most because of electromagnetic interference.
If you came to Brazil , around Rio , let me know so we could flight around you’re welcome![/quote]
Thats pretty hot, please send some over here!.
Thanx!.. The tri’s are really nice. Easily foldable, quite cheap and really fun to fly. Besides I like the weird look they have.
I’ll think about that tip of moving them. Guess you mean just below the motor mounts? Could actually be enough space there and then I could wire the cables inside the tubes. Would look much neater that way.
Regarding the EMS the cables to the ESCs are DC while the cables from the ESC’s to the motors is altering current which produces less interference so it should be ideal to have the cables from battery to ESC as short as possible but then the problem of the ESC’s getting too close to the flight controller. Difficult to make everyone happy…
We’ll see… who knows… Brazil is always on the travel list
In the motor there are 12 coils and three coils are energized at one time. So if only one coil was bad then you would not have noticed anything except that motor would have less power than the others.
[quote=“iseries”]In the motor there are 12 coils and three coils are energized at one time. So if only one coil was bad then you would not have noticed anything except that motor would have less power than the others.
Mike[/quote]
It was not a whole coil but just a few windings, but it ended up in the same result, less torque which in autotune lead to the motor not keeping up loosing sync and failing on me. Good thing it is working now. I never noticed it while flying manually. I guess I don’t punch the throttle so much with my skills.
I see you are writing from Brazil… summer must be good there now, spent a part of my life in south america myself and some of it in brazil. Lovely country!
