Copter is taking too long to arm

The solution of @dkemxr works using a USB Power Brick to keep the flight controller powered after you disconnect the main battery. I’ve just tested it and the motors can be instantly armed on your second, third… flight after plugin in the battery. But you have to carry the power brick at the pit area and connect the USB cable before unplugging the LiPo. Due to safety reasons, we are not allowed to carry the drone with the main battery plug in.

But I think I have a solution to it. There is a ViFly Finder 2 Buzzer Lost Drone Finder Locater Alarm. This unit has a tiny battery in it. Can I connect the GPS unit and the Buzzer Drone finder as shown.

This way, the GPS is always powered by the Buzzer Drone Finder unit even after disconnecting the LiPo battery. The diode is to stop the Buzzer Drone Finder unit in supplying power the flight controller.

Question:

  1. Does the flight controller needs power to remember the take off position? If NO, then the diode has to be removed but I don’t know how long can the battery last to power the GPS and FC together.
  2. When you go for your succeeding flights, the GPS has still the lock indicated by the PPS LED. Will the flight controller immediately be in the GPS Lock state? Or there is a waiting time.

Regards,
Carlou

Don’t use the finder. It doesn’t power the board. However they make something very similar called the GPS-mate that will do what you want.

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Hi @Allister,

Thanks for that. I only found the following issues:

  1. When you fly till your battery failsafe triggers, the only way for you to clear the failsafe is to unplug the main battery. Do you know of other means to clear the failsafe?
  2. When you finish flying, you turn off your radio. Wen you turn it back on on your next flight, the radio is not bound anymore.

I guess we cannot have everything. We solve one and other issues comes in.

Regards,
Carlou

Why would this be?

First of all, I don’t recommend flying till a failsafe triggers. But if you’re going to continue flying, you need to put a new battery in any how so what’s the problem? The GPS-Mate is only to power the GPS module, not the FC so when you change the battery the GPS is still active but the FC will be power cycled and your battery warning will be re-set.

That’s a different problem. That shouldn’t happen.

Hi @dkemxr,

You are right, it should connect automatically but apparently in my case it does not. Any clues. I’m using crossfire.

Regards,
Carlou

When this happens, what are you doing to re-bind the radio to the RX? This sounds really odd. I’m running Crossfire on a few drones and I’ve never had that issue regardless of the order I turn things off or turn things on.

What firmware version is your crossfire gear on? Are you using model match or multibind? What radio and radio firmware are you using?

I use Crossfire, among other protocols, and as Allister says that doesn’t happen.

My radio is TS16S running on EdgeTx. Details of my radio and crossfire below.

I have the same hardware on the same firmware but not using RC by Mavlink or XF Wifi.

I did not configure RC by Mavlink or XF WiFi. They are all the default settings and I don’t have an idea what they do. Do you think this is the issue?

I have just enabled FENCE as suggested. Are there other parameters that needs to be set?

You can check the other Fence params to see if they suit you and local laws.
Mainly you just want to check FENCE_ALT_MAX and FENCE_RADIUS, the default values are reasonable in most cases, especially for testing or until you run long missions.

On our tests the Holybro Ublox F9P with an helical antanna, consistently delivered 3D fix in under 30 seconds. Not cheap, not small, but damm fast! :slight_smile:

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Actually I tried setting up a simple mission last week at the flying site. Its just take off and then go to two waypoints and land. But after I arm the copter and then flip the switch to AUTO in my radio, the blades will spin and then immediatly disarm without even taking off. Did I miss a step? I’m dying to see a mission happen but did not succeeded.

You didn’t answer my other question: What are you doing to re-bind? Are you having to press the bind button on the RX each time? Are you having to trigger bind mode in Agent lite each time? How do you know it’s lost it’s bind? Please elaborate on that.

I think you have to raise the throttle too

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Opppssss. Yes I did. I will try it again tomorrow.

Or set a parameter if you want it to take off immediately. auto_options

Lot of horsepower on this thread :grinning:

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AUTO_OPTIONS,2

(you beat me too it)