OK, so I also have 2 bricked Pixracers here now. None of them bricked while crashing though, and believe me, we have crashed often. To me it looks like they tend to brick if the power gets cut during boot… but not always, only sometimes. Is there such a thing as a “soft bricking” in Pixracers maybe? And can this be fixed somehow? Can someone maybe point me to a documentation of boot process for the STM chip?
OK, so I also have 2 bricked Pixracers here now. None of them bricked while
crashing though, and believe me, we have crashed often. To me it looks like
they tend to brick if the power gets cut during boot… but not always, only
sometimes. Is there such a thing as a “soft bricking” in Pixracers maybe?
And can this be fixed somehow? Can someone maybe point me to a documentation
of boot process for the STM chip?
The “bricking” people are talking about has a sepcific pattern; the stm32
chip gets very, very hot. Burny-hot.
If you’re not getting that, your device may be recoverable (or just
differently permanently stuffed, of course).
Nothing should be able to get soft-bricked when pwoered off at boot - but
anything’s possible.
What lights come on when you turn the thing on?
The stm32 boot process won’t tell you a lot - it’s the way its hooked up
to the LEDs on the board and the software that’s on there that will help.
But if you really want to know - google for “stm32427 data sheet”.
Thanks for your reply, but it actually it seems I have the same problem… only a solid green LED on the left side of the board and the stm chip does get very hot.
I’ll still take a look at the data sheet, maybe our electronics guy can replace the chip.
Thanks for your reply, but it actually it seems I have the same problem…
only a solid green LED on the left side of the board and the stm chip does
get very hot.
I’ll still take a look at the data sheet, maybe our electronics guy can
replace the chip.
If you look up earlier in this thread you will see someone did that with
some success. Good luck - let us know how you go.
I fly a few PixRacers as well (authentic, not that super-cheap China crap). Zero bricked so far, but when looking on the schematic I noticed a big difference to the Pixhawk: no buffers/level shifters on the I/Os, so every ESC lead is directly connected to a MCU pin. I would not be too surprised to see some crazy voltages on that pins in a hard crash of a racer, and the STM32 is not too forgiving here.
BTW, the China Pixhawks suffer from the same design choice (no buffers), so I would not be surprised to see the same behavior here.
I am flying no problem with the cheapest chinese PixRacer money can get.
On this particular product I cannot see what would make a release better than the other. Its the same STM and the dame Ivensense chips, same design same firmware.?
That is my experience also. I actually have one of each (AUAV and knock-off) and they both work equally well.
We assume that the knock-offs are like a box of chocolates. You only know what’s inside after you open it (Forrest Gump)…including the "in"famous pirated chips that some have…(remember CP2102 or uBlox?)
I’ve seen very good and very bad knock off flight controllers…and I also use both knock-offs and genuine
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I bought over time 2 AUAV and 1 Mrobotics Pixracers.
The first AUAV brick at the first modest crash 2 meters from ground, with a copter, the others two are mounted on planes and are well despite some minor crash.
After loosing tons of time because of Chinese Pixahawk clones I buy only Mrobotics boards, fair price , 80 $ for the X2.1_2 and great support.
BTW the X2.1_2 looks to me much better than the Pixracer and just a little larger.
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Is it possible that you could provide more information about this case? Thanks.
hi, Phil, really possible to replace the MCU? I have one Pixracer with such symptoms, can connect through usb, but isn’t recognized.
hi, Phil, really possible to replace the MCU? I have one Pixracer with such
symptoms, can connect through usb, but isn’t recognized.
Search backwards thorugh this thread. Others have done it.
Peter
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pkocmoud Phillip Kocmoud
November 8 Steven, please be honest here! You and I have had no less than 6
email exchanges since 11/5. The most recent were today. As I told you, I
will help you figure out what is wrong with your setup. I have also crashed
many Pixracers to the point of losing connectors and WIFI headers. None
have resulte…
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Peter Barker | Programmer,Sysadmin,Geek.
pbarker@barker.dropbear.id.au | You need a bigger hammer.
:: It’s a hack! Expect underscores! - Nigel Williams
In my case the PixRacer fly’s and fly’s on and on. One crash only, ( run out of battery in autotune), no problems with this pixracer. I have two of them.
The other PixRacer is in a plane, which has not been maiden-ed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0gtXAEfqZo
