Trying to get Turtle Mode working

I am trying to get turtle mode working on a drone i just built, but when i switch to turtle mode i can move my sticks to spin the proper motors, but they did not reverse spin direction. I am wondering if there is something dumb i am missing.

This is the ESC i am using. I am using it stock and have not made any changes to it through BLHeliSuite

Following these directions, Turtle Mode — Copter documentation
I have set SERVO_DSHOT_ESC = 1

when I use my aux switch to go to turtle mode, it does, but when I throttle up to arm and move my right stick, the proper motors spin, but not in a reversed direction. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

240719_TestingTurtleMode.param (20.0 KB)

That’s for BLHeli_32 and you have BLHeli_S. No idea if it will work by setting this to 2 but worth a try. Or perhaps BLHeli_S won’t work at all. Wonder if Bluejay firmware would? You would want to use that anyway to enable Bdshot configuration.

I would guess that if the SERVO_BLH_RVMASK works to reverse a motor then it should work in Turtle Mode.

do i need to set SERVO_BLH_OTYPE to something besides 0.

i tried setting SERVO_DSHOT_ESC = 2 but motors still didn’t reverse.
should i get a different ESC would that be best?

No.

I don’t know if Blheli_S accepts reversing. Perhaps @andyp1per can answer.

No it doesn’t. I think BlueJay might but regular BLHeli_S not.

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can i flash bluejay onto this motor conroller or would it be recommended to get a different one if turtle mode is my main goal.

Flash Bluejay and try it. As I said you would want to do this anyway so you have nothing to lose. If it then doesn’t work replace it with a BLHeli_32 ESC.

i am having an issue right now where my motors wont spin after i flashed bluejay onto the esc.

i had a spare betaflight FC and I used that as my passthrough to flash bluejay onto the ESC, everything seemed to work fine, and before and after flashing, I was able to use the ESC configurator to spin up the motors.

Then I plugged the ESC into my ardupilot flight controller and through mission planner I tried to do a motor test, but nothing would spin. The motors make the proper start up sounds when i plug in the battery, and mission planner says ready to arm. If I arm, mission planner says it is armed, but again the motors do not spin.

In trying to track down the issue, I used the ardupilot flight controller connected to the ESC, opened the ESC configurator page and it was able to see the ESCs and I could see that they had the bluejay firmware on them… but now that I am running it through the ardupilot FC, even through the ESC configurator, I can not use the motor test page and get them to spin.

I assumed that there must be a configuration parameter in ardupilot i have not set preventing it from spinning the motors, but that wouldn’t make sense to me that even the configurator wouldn’t spin the motors anymore.

in the morning i am going to open the drone back up and plug the betaflight flight controller back into the ESC and test it that way. if that works… then i am not sure what the difference would be for the ardupilot flight controller.

also everything was working on this drone before i updated to bluejay, i have not changed any hardware i am just trying to get turtle mode working.

any input or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Make sure you have SERVO_DSHOT_ESC set correctly

what should it be set to

To the selection for BLHeli_S…

sorry, that was a dumb question, i didn’t have my computer in front of me when i asked and should have looked first. Yes I had the SERVO_DSHOT_ESC set to BLHeli_S. After some research i found what i was missing, i had MOT_PWM_TYPE set to normal and apparently to get it to work i had to set it to either DShot300 or DShot600. i chose DShot300 and it seems to work now. putting it all back together and going to test fly.

What flight controller?. Dshot600 is the typical choice, there are exceptions.

i am using the brainfpv radix2 hd
https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-radix2hd.html

i dont know much about the different dshot protocols, i am making a fairly heavy drone for research purposes, the most important things are small size and flight time, but still needs to be able to lift a load.
i am running 4 inch props on RCINPOWER WASP MAJOR 22.6-6.5 motors

Use Dshot600

ok i will switch and see how it goes