BLHeli_32 Flash failures

ArduCopter
1

I need all the help i can get here. I have another thread from a couple years ago talking about a very similar issue. Now i have basically fully rebuilt this UAV and now i have a similar problem. The motors just don’t run right, like the config for each is different.

Using an orange cube, and luminaire Elite 60amp 4 in 1 ESC’s. The ESC is hardly used at all, its never really flown with this ESC. Latest Mision Planner and BLHeli.

So i downloaded and installed BLHeli Suite to try to check the configs of the individual ESC’s. Here are the rersults;

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Then get this.

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Click yes to try to flash ESC 1 and get;

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Finally get to here;

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Trying to flash fails every time. Flashing 3 and 4 worked just fine, so seems passthrough is working fine. I pulled my wire harness tht goes from Cube to ESC out all the way and fully inspected and tested it for continuity, and it seems fine. Im pretty good at wiring, so this was simply to cover bases. I ordered a new ESC, but wont get it for several days.

What sucks is this ESC is basically brand new, seems like the firmware on it is just broken. Any help would be appreciated. Any way to force a firmware onto them?

2

It’s possible that you just have a faulty ESC. Have you tried with a lower baud rate? I’d also uncheck the “Keep settings” option.

3

Thats why i bought a new one. Seems this one is toast. Problem is even though its barely used, i did purchase it over 2 years ago, so return not an option.

Should also mention that even though #2 doesnt show, all motors spin, its just obvious not at the same speed.

Trying lower Baud now.

So on lower Baud no changes.

Get this when trying to flash 1 by itself;

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Also tried different channels from the Cube, no changes.

4

I ran into some strangeness like this before, but I can’t for the life of me remember what I did. Are you using the main channels on the cube or the Aux channels?

5

Aux 1-4 (Servo 9-12) Need to use these for Dshot as i understand it.

6

Yes, that’s correct. I don’t have the drone handy so I can’t check what I did. Just for flashing did you try main 1-4?

7

No, does the blheli passthrough work on those?

8

Well, it looks like blheli32 is no more, I just watched mads tech’s video about bl32 stopping their business.

9

I’m reasonably sure passthrough will work on main, but not bdshot. I know there’s been some people experimenting with bdshot on the main outputs but I don’t know if that’s gone mainstream yet.

10

I’ll give it a try this evening. Thanks for your time.

11

There will likely be 10 clones popping up in the next weeks and months*. Never really liked the fact that it was closed source anyway although I understand the people need to earn a living.

*there already is one: GitHub - AlkaMotors/AM32-MultiRotor-ESC-firmware: Firmware for stm32f051 based speed controllers for use with mutirotors

Anyways, before binning them I’d try flashing directly via serial adapter. Maybe it is a passthrough issue after all.

12

So got my new ESC. I installed it, and initially got the same result. 1 was unknown, 2 didn’t read at all. then I moved motors to Aux 3-6, configured appropriately, and boom they all four showed up. Motor tests are much more consistent.

So it seems the first two Aux channels on my Cube might be messed up for some reason. Question is, is my first ESC really toast. I’m not going down that rabbit hole right now. Spent all night soldering up the new one.

Now if only i knew how to clear this ‘CrashDump data detected’ error, i could arm.