Hi, so me and four other people are trying to build a drone and have chose a PixHawk Cube+ with a Mini Carrier Board for the FC. We also have the Taranis Q X7 Transmitter as well as the FrSky X8R. We are using Mission Planner for the ground control software. We don’t have a gps (yet). We’ve been working at it for quite some time now and have ran into a problem with configuring.
The firmware is already set on the FC, and we have everything connected; the TELEM1 port is connected the SmartPort on the X8R and the RCIN port is connected to the Sbus. We followed a binding process and I believe the transmitter is binded just fine to the X8R since the X8R is green when both devices are powered. However we are unsure if the settings are correct. We also followed a general channel input guide, but we are unsure what to do when it comes to the Fail safe.
On mission planner we calibrated the positioning, but have a problem after. I found out that since we don’t have a safety switch I disabled that in the parameters. Before we used a telemetry to SPort converter cable but was able to make a custom cable instead (Now we use the custom cable).
Now here’s the problem, we’re not sure if we have to Radio Configure. We try to do the radio configuration but the green bars don’t show up at all. We try to move the sticks and buttons on the transmitter but nothing pops up, so we hit complete and “Bad channel 1 input, canceling” comes up. So we try to do the ESC configuration, not sure how to tell what ESCs we have so we put normal. We follow the ESC configuration instruction and hear a few beeps. Try to move the sticks on the transmitter and nothing happens. I believe our ESCs are connected to right ports on the FC considering we looked up the diagram of the motor number.
Not sure if we are doing anything wrong or missing anything. However if anyone out that might have something that can help us move along in the right direction It would be appreciated!!
Jokes aside, could you post a .param file with your parameters?
I have a few ideas and that is the easiest way to rule out most of them.
(Also as a general hint: most people here hate guessing games and are much more willing to help if you provide a .bin flight log file or a .param file for the parameters from the start)
Yes, you do have to do that. If the bars aren’t green there’s a problem between the receiver and FC. Either in hardware (i.e. wrong connection) or in software (i.e. wrong configuration). This should be fixed first. Troubleshooting this is easiest when I have a .param file to look at
I hope you know the brand and type of ESC you have (i.e. “Holybro” (brand) “Tekko 35A” (type)), if you put that into google you should find what protocols are supported. If you don’t know the brand and type try a reverse image search on Google and find it that way. Also report back here when you found that out. You can get an overview over the different ESC protocols here.
That is to be expected for multiple reasons, mainly the missing RC calibration.
You can actually test this in mission planner in the setup tab under ‘Optional Hardware’ → ‘motor test’. That way you can also check if the ESC calibration was successful or not.
Lastly I highly recommend to read and follow the How to methodically tune (almost) any multicopter using ArduCopter 4.4.x guide. Download the .zip folder with the param files from the guide, edit each file to suit your copter and upload them one by one as you read along. The guide tells you what to do and which file is needed at any given time. Do not skip any steps! Anything that might seem like a shortcut will result in a worse tuned copter in the end.
If you have more questions feel free to ask, we were all beginners once.
Hi Janno,
Thank you for getting back to me with some suggestions. I apologize for the late reply, and also the lack of information. However, I have attached the parameter files here:
