I’ve never experienced this before. We took a new build out for it’s maiden flight. I armed in alt-hold mode, throttled up, and motor A didn’t seem to spin up above 15% or so, while the rest of the 3 motors (it’s a quad) spun up appropriately. I tried arming in stab mode as well and it displayed the same behavior. I decided to check in motor test. and motor A spins the same speed as B,C,D, at any throttle percentage. Any ideas on things to check? The motor orientation is correct, the props are on the right way.
I recalibrated the accelerometer which seemed to help with the motors spinning up. That said it won’t take off at full throttle. It’s like the throttle is being limited? It behaves the same in stab, althold, and poshold modes. This tune worked great on a nearly identical build. The only difference is this build has 400kv motors, where the previous build had 600kv motors. 600kv seemed like a bit much, so we went down to 400kv. I thought the tune might be a bit looser on the 400kv motors, but this is extreme, and doesn’t seem like it’s the motors fault.
Here’s a log doing the described behavior. The props and batteries are the same as the 600kv build. 13x4.5 APC MR Props and 10500mah 6s Li-Ion batteries. Thanks for the help!
The current sensor is calibrated. I’m running Dshot which doesn’t need ESC calibration from my understanding? I’ll try switching it to PWM instead of Dshot and calibrate.
On the 600kv build that flies great, it draws about 15A in a hover, and about 25A at full throttle. AUW is around 2600g
Good to know on the vibrations. I wonder if that is partially due to never making it off the ground? The 600kv build had very minimal vibrations.
Well then that’s your problem. The 600kv was working because it provided just enough rpms, but it also wasn’t correct. 6s 600kv 13" should be minimum 75A full throttle, if not over 100. Switching to 400kv revealed the problem. I’m curious what made you think 600kv was overpowered considering you were far underpowered. Ironically, when it’s all working correctly, 400kv is a good change for your setup IMO. I’d bet it’s definitely a problem in ESC signalling.
PS. I’m unfamiliar with DShot, but I’m pretty sure you still have to tell Ardupilot the PWM range of DShot. Can’t leave the RC3 pwm boundaries at default, i think. Someone else can give more accurate information. I think DShot is covered well in the wiki.
I should specify that was full throttle in poshold mode, so not true full throttle. During motor compass calibration I saw around 70amps at 80% throttle, so that sounds about right.
According to a few motor thrust charts from KDE and Tmotor for comparable motors, the 400kv 2812 should still have enough thrust to get the bird in the air.
Yea that definitely seems to be the issue. During a motor compass calibration it still only hit 15A at max throttle as you noted earlier. Any other ideas as to why it wouldn’t be able to draw more amps at a higher throttle? I tried switching to PWM and calibrated the ESC, but it gave the same result. The ESC and wiring are identical to the 600kv rig that flies great.
Thanks! I checked those parameters and they are what they should be at. We put a set of 600kv motors on and it flew as it should. The 400kv we had custom wound might be under 400kv as motors tend to not be their excat stated KV. Thanks again for help!
ok so you must have wound 275kv or less, because around that KV is the point your copter won’t even hover… you can test that theory by running 2 of your 6s in series, it should fly perfect
Yea we’ve been going to experiment with 4s in the near future as I hear you actually get an efficiency gain due to switching losses on the ESC at higher voltage. It’s a 700mm frame.