Burning Cash on SpeedyBee

General Rants&Raves
, ,
1

I was once very passionate about building my first drone from scratch and making it autonomous without a remote control. I learned fast and spent money faster on SpeedyBee FC/ESC stacks for multiple reasons:

  1. I shorted my first BLS F3 50A ESC (my fault) :person_shrugging:
  2. I bought a BL32 50A ESC only for it to be discontinued :sob:
  3. I then bought the F405 V4 / BLS 55A only to brick it :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:
    • Speedybee has the C2 interface solder pads, so I can still recover it.

Iā€™m very demotivated as I put a lot of work into this project (as you can see from my GH repo) with no flying drone.

Note: For the readerā€™s confidence, I have successfully flashed between multiple different firmwares on the FC (Ardupilot, BetaFlight, INAV) and ESC (BLHeli, BlueJay) and got the motors spinning via Betaflight-configurator.

Enough whining and letā€™s be adults; I am happy to buy another ESC to continue my dream, but I want this to be my last donation to SpeedyBee for quite some time. So how can I be sure my setup?

image
image838Ɨ710 91.3 KB

Assuming I have the simplest flashing setup:

  1. Battery connected to ESC (with capacitor across terminals)
  2. FC ESC connection via 8-pin cable
  3. Laptop connected to FC via USB-C for flashing both ESC and FC

Note: I noticed that to flash BlueJay onto the ESC through the FC, the FC must be running Betaflight. I tried with Ardupilot, and it didnā€™t work until I re-flashed Betaflight onto it.

Realistic flashing setup:

  1. Motors soldered to the ESC
  2. A distance sensor soldered to the FC over SDA and SCL pins

I assume these are normal flashing conditions and did not cause the failed flash to ESC?

Final questions

  1. Should I even bother flashing BlueJay onto my new ESC, since BLHeli was working fine until then?

Note: BlueJay supports RPM filtering and EDT telemetry and is the recommended ESC firmware for 8bit ESCs

  1. Was I unlucky with my 3rd ESC or am I really making a mistake in my wiring diagram, the flashing process, or the firmware compatibilities?
2

BlueJay is really much betterā€¦ it can give you RPM and ESC temperature.
Not sure what you meant by drawing Bat and Current going to UART?

How do you know you bricked it?

I assume you know that to read ESC data using esc-configurator you need the main battery be connected to the ESCā€¦ I once spent 1 hour trying to figure that outā€¦

I have 7 ESCs from Speedybee (60A), no problems so far, one was running at continous load of 25 A x 4

3

BlueJay is really much betterā€¦

Yeah, I figured since even SpeedyBee recommends it over its own firmware :rofl:

Not sure what you meant by drawing Bat and Current going to UART?

Good point, I updated my wiring diagram according to the SpeedyBee docs. This is the provided 8-pin cable anyway, so I am not making a mistake here.

How do you know you bricked it?

I linked this issue I filed under esc-configuratorā€™s GH with the screenshots and logs, but basically (in the v4 ESC version) there are no C2 interface pins for me to recover, and I cannot connect to the ESC via esc-configurator.com (web version or Debian app). When I plug the ESC into the main battery, (at least one) of the ESCs make noise so maybe I didnā€™t brick it???

I assume you know that to read ESC data using esc-configurator you need the main battery be connected to the ESCā€¦ I once spent 1 hour trying to figure that outā€¦

I am using the main battery connected (soldered) to the ESC with the capacitor across the leads.

I have 7 ESCs from Speedybee (60A), no problems so far, one was running at continous load of 25 A x 4

I wish.

4

I am not sure about betaflight at all, but with ardupilot you have to:
set SERVO_BLH_AUTO to 1
and enable the motors in SETUP, Motor 1ā€¦4 as 1ā€¦4.
Then you have to disconnect MP, and then run ESC-configurator.

For a simple copter, I would not bother with Blue Jay, especially if you have problems flashing it.

1 Like
5

This is helpful as I plan to have my final setup be Arducopter and BlueJay!

6

There are few things that are easy (or inexpensive) about this endeavor.

If youā€™re having fun and meeting your goals - continue.

If not - reevaluate.

I like this endeavor because thereā€™s no ā€œfinish lineā€ - thereā€™s always something to learn or improve.

1 Like
7

Is your current ESC BLHeli-32 or BLHeli-S.

If itā€™s BLHeli-32 then just leave it. It is possible to flash to AM32 but at this point what Iā€™ve read suggest thatā€™s not for the faint of heart. As long as the ESC has a real verson of BLH32 then youā€™re okay. (some boards after the shutdown of BLH32 were sold with dev versions of the firmware. If you have one, get your money back)

If itā€™s BLHeli-S then I would consider switching to BlueJay. Then you can run Bidirectional DShot. This means you can get simpler, effective filtering and you donā€™t need the extra telemetry wire.

3 Likes
8

Flashing AM32 on a BlHeli board is likely the fastest way to burn more cash for those already prone to releasing the magic smoke.

I bricked an AM32 board once by loading the wrong firmware. I then tried to recover it with pogo pins (as you would use to do an initial conversion from BlHeli to AM32). Iā€™m pretty confident with this type of work, and it proved impossible. Do not recommend.

3 Likes