I had what I thought was a minor crash with my Iris+ and broke an arm that I replaced. Of course had to unsolder and resolder motor wires to the ESC. Now she won’t even try to arm (I don’t even get the uhuh sound when arming fails due to bad prechecks). All the while the LED flashes blue. I thought maybe calibrate the ESC but following the procedure to power up unplug, then power up again (with control throttle max) Pixhawk doesn’t give the long steady tone that it is supposed to upon entering cal mode.
Everything else seems to be fine post-crash. GPS locks on, vehicle rotates on the HUD so compass is functioning. So everyting looks OK except the props don’t turn, which is sort of important.
It just seems like Pixhawk is not seeing or communicating with the ESC. Nothing looks deranged and all the cables look OK. SD card is firmly mounted. I am stumped. I have a new ESC board coming but honestly I am not confident that is the problem. Anyone have any ideas or a way forward?
Well, my Iris is back in business! It wasn’t the repair or ESC after all.
Since the Pixhawk was making all the right startup sounds and the Pixhawk LED was flashing standby I went back to the basics and decided to do a radio calibration. Once I connected MP and went to the radio cal page all the controls responded properly in range EXCEPT throttle and yaw. They didn’t move at all. Too much of a coincidence. So… I opened up the FrSky transmitter and found the connectors for the left stick half unseated. Then I recalled I was so shocked by the event that I dropped the transmitter in the grass to retrieve my crashed Iris. Must have been just enough to loosen those connectors. Anyway, now after an extra disassembly and reassembly I know my way around the insides of Iris.
All is not perfect however. My ham hands had difficulty reconnecting the main LED plug and I ended up breaking off the connector base from the LED. Then I figured out how to pop out the lens and pry out the led mounting plate which would have been the best way to reconnect it. I need to get a new one from 3DR… but Iris will fly just fine w/o it in the interim.
