Can't arm pixhawk, yellow flashing LED

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1

Hi all,

I bought a Pixhawk and mounted it on an Y6, connected it to mission planner, flashed it, configured it with the param file, calibrated the magnetometer and accelerometers, set up my radio and calibrated it.

Now I want to start the motors to see if they turn on the correct side but I can’t find how to arm or I can’t find what error prevents it to arm.

Let’s say I connect it to mission planner to have more infos, I turn on my radio, power the pixhawk, get that little music which says it started up.

Now it shows DISARMED in red in mission planner and the big LED flashes two times yellow repeatedly, the act LED flashes blue, the B/E LED doesn’t flashes and Pwr LED is solid green and the safety button flashes red.

If I am in loiter mode I wait to have GPS fix, doesn’t change anything compared to be in acro mode.

Now if I press the safety button, it becomes solid red and the motors make a little music, the screen in mission planner still shows disarmed and the big led still flashes two times yellow repeatedly.

If I put the trottle on the low right corner, nothing happens, neither low left.

Could someone please give me some hint to find the problem because I read all the manuals I found etc, I didn’t find some way to know what error the double flashing yellow led shows.

Btw, the power module gives coherent datas, like 15,24V (4S battery not full) and current consumption like 0,1A

Thank you very much to the one who’ll help me to get my Y6 flying.

2

Hello,

in the wiki :

“Double flashing yellow: error. System refuses to arm.”

did you check what is going on on the console while booting ? (console port serial4/5 + std FTDI cable)

I had the same kind of thing because of a faulty Sd-card…

BR

3

Hello, thank you for your answer,I have no idea how to do that but I’ll check as soon as I can what is this ftdi cable and how to read the console.

I understand that 3dr products are less final user oriented than some other bands but isn’t there a way to read this error directly in mission planner using the classic usb cable or something?

Do you think the sd card could be defective if the pixhawk connects correctly to mp and respond quite normally?

Thank you again

4

[quote=“NEVdD”]Hello, thank you for your answer,I have no idea how to do that but I’ll check as soon as I can what is this ftdi cable and how to read the console.

I understand that 3dr products are less final user oriented than some other bands but isn’t there a way to read this error directly in mission planner using the classic usb cable or something?

Do you think the sd card could be defective if the pixhawk connects correctly to mp and respond quite normally?

Thank you again[/quote]

Mission planner should display the message in the HUD.

5

When i say «the screen in mission planner still shows disarmed» I meant the HUD, sorry for my English.

Except for the disarmed red message in the middle of the HUD, everything else seems fine and there are no explanation about an error. If I loose the GPS signal and I am in loiter mode,I also get a red message saying something like it can’t be armed when bad GPS signal but no other error is shown.

I’ll try with another sd card and also try to find some logs in the sd card as I read in some forms one can find logs there. I doubt the sd card is the problem because when this is the problem the pixhawk seems to show more «fatal errors»

6

Okay, so after trying a lot of things like putting another SD card and reconfiguring the whole thing, when I tried to calibrate my ESC (because someone said he had a similar error and calibrating the ESC would solve the problem), one of my ESC fried.

I don’t really know how the pixhawk would now that an ESC was not working since the communication is unidirectional but anyway maybe that was the problem and I’ll see if it works better when I get it replaced…

7

Did you update to the latest FW? There were some issues on the earlier FW.

8

Yes I updated to the latest stable firmware, I didn’t try the beta though.

9

Please review the Pre-Arm Safety check information here

copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/prearm_safety_check/

Please connect your vehicle to one of the ground stations using a radio or USB cable. The error that is preventing you from being able to arm will be displayed on the screen.

10

Thank you, that will help for sure!

As soon as I have replaced the ESC I’ll perform all these steps.

I am sorry to ask questions which are answered on some manuals but I have a lot of difficulties to find the informations between 3drobotics.com, ardupilot.com, code.google.com/p/arducopter etc.

Thank you again, I’ll click the “solved” button as soon as I get my Y6 armed :slight_smile:

11

code.google.com/p/arducopter

is no longer maintained. It has been replaced by copter.ardupilot.com/

12

Oh, ok, thank you for the info

With the little video on the pre arming checks I understand that the error does show and disapear somehow on the HUD so now I understand that the error is ACRO_BAL_ROLL/PITCH (since it apears one or two second and then desapear I thought it was some glitch).

Anyway, with this information I searched and saw that there is an old value set and a new value set for the param ROLL and PITCH.

I suppose my pixhawk is loaded with the old (and wrong) values since I loaded the param file found here
3drobotics.com/?attachment_id=750

Unfortunatelly I have to stop my researches for today but if anyone could tell me if there is a param file updated for the latest version of the APM (I updated the latest version today 3.1.2) that’d be great, if not I’ll continue my research tomorrow.

13

You can load the correct parameter file directly from Mission Planner or APM planner in either the Initial Setup Load parameters for known vehicles or in the Full Parameters tab. If you just bought your Y6 it will be the Y6B and if it was some time ago it will be Y6A.

14

Even in these files the values for ACRO_BAL_PITCH and ACR_BAL_ROLL are set to 200 or at least these parameters are not getting updated when I load the file (other parameters are updated fine)

After reading some forums I put 0.2 and not it is arming! YES thank you!

But I still have a question, what value should I really put there?

15

ACRO_BAL_PITCH and ACR_BAL_ROLL only can take values from 0 to 3 in increments of 0.1