Just about to start assembling my first Arducopter/Pixhawk/F450 kit. I’ve done a bunch of reading to get myself ready but there’s one thing that worries me. I’ve seen a bunch of threads that describe some challenges getting the 420 Lite ESCs to work but most people seemed to have resolved the issues. I’ve also noticed that my F450 kit came with 430 Lite ESCs. Does anyone have experience with these ESCs – should I assume that they can be configured the same as 420’s and whether they will work with Arducopter? There’s very little information on these ESCs even on DJI’s site other than an indication that there was a recent firmware update.
You should have no issues with DJI ESCs and Ardupilot, I have used then extensively, you just need to be aware that DJI ESCs are not calibratable so just set your RC pwm range from 1000 to 2000 and you will be fine.
That’s what I’m going to assume. And if anyone is looking for the spec I’ve uploaded it here. DJI sent me a copy yesterday but I still can’t find it on their site.
I haven’t completed the build yet so I can’t tell you if it flies but I can tell you I was able to get 3.5.2 to control all of the motors and I was able to adjust the speed on all of them. I haven’t put props on yet because I have a defective FC and I’m waiting for a replacement. In the next week or two I should have results.
Just my two cents. I’m flying a DJI S1000 stock (includign ESCs) with a Pixhawk: I have set (as suggested in several forums) MOT_PWN_MIN to 1120 and MOT_PWM_MAX to 1920 (those should be the ‘calibrated’ DJI ESC standard values); then you need to tweak MOT SPIN ARMED and MOT SPIN MIN to suit your build.
An update for others who might working with the DJI 430 Lite ESC. I’m happy to report that the drone flies well and I haven’t had any issues with the ESCs (compass is a different story). Some details on my settings based on my radio calibration (using Taranis X9D+). To get to these values I went through the standard radio/throttle channel calibration which gave me:
RC3_MIN=982
RC3_MAX=2006
My MOT_PWM_MIN/MAX are set to 0 so the RC3 values above are used.
Then I did a motor test in MP to determine at what point all motors spin. That was about 14%. Based on that test I set the SPIN values:
I end up with PWM values delivered to the ESCs like this:
armed: 1120
min: 1175
max: 1955
These are very close to the PWM range of the motor as suggested by Giovanni above although I got to it a little differently than setting it directly in the MOT_SPIN_MIN/MAX parameter.