I have HobbyWing Platinum PRO V4-60A ESC, which probably has very basic RPM signal through the yellow wire.
I got it to work by putting the yellow wire to servo 5 port on Matek F405 WTE, using GPIO,
and got the RPM displayed on Yaapu.
I was wondering if it is possible to not use a servo port, and use one of the UART rx port instead.
Hi, it’s not possible to use UART with this device. In order to use UART you need to have a BLheli ESC (e.g Flycolor ESC or APD ).
I looked into those, and it seems those types of ESC’s don’t seem to have built in BEC for some reason.
I guess Matek F405 WTE has built in BEC, so it would not be a problem to use them.
but wiring Lipo battery to FC and ESC would be tricky for traditional heli, due to location of those components in the fuselage.
yeah, because it’s not needed. Flycolor makes a version with a 5Amp BEC though.
If you use a telemetry capable ESC you can set the battery monitor to ESC telem, actually simplifying cabling. Split main Batt cables into two lanes, one larger section for ESC (normally at the front of the frame - so short length) and one thinner section goes to FC. I don’t use Matek inbuilt volt/current sensor anymore, ESC telem is the way to go.
It is good only as long as ESC current is significantly greater than avionics+servo current if it isn’t or you are idling (idle or motor off) on the ground for prolonged time battery calculations will be off (battery consumed will be underestimated).
It is justified to use this setup, normally on ground avionics current consumption is 0.1-0.2 A . In flight 0.6 A average. Engine consumption is one order of magnitude bigger. I tend to prefer knowing what’s the true engine consumption to validate my estimates, rather than knowing overall system consumption.
I got a Flycolor ESC, and it has Ground, Signal, Telemetry (Tx).
where are these supposed to be connrected on Flight controller ?
I’m guessing TX to one of the UART tx ? and Signal to UART rx ?
is it necessary to connect the ground to FC ground ?
Hi @David_Jacobs ,
Signal and Ground are connected to HeliRSC output channel of the servo rail, telem is connected to one of the available uart RX.
since ESC and FC shares battery negative, is the ground connection still necessary ?
Yes, connect also ground level signal.
the motor is working with Flycolor ESC.
but I don’t think it’s using dshot600 at the moment.
still need to figure out how to get ESC telemetry data from UART rx.
Hi @David_Jacobs , did you look through this page:
https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-esc-telemetry.html
yes I have looked into those pages.
Ok! What sort of issues you having then? It should be trouble free to get esc telem through. Feel free to post here (possibly with a param list) your issues.
in DShot ESC section, it says
Set MOT_PWM_TYPE for the desired baud rate and reboot the autopilot
but I can’t seem to find where MOT_PWM_TYPE is.
also, in one area, it says set SERIALx_PROTOCOL to 16 which is ESC telemetry
and in other are, it says to set that to 2 which is MAVLink2
Mission Planner > Configure > Full Parameter List
Protocol needs to be ESC Telemetry. MAVLink is for connection to a ground station.
MOT_ parameters are not on the full parameter list,
unless there is some tricks to make them appear on the list that I’m not aware of.
Hi @David_Jacobs , first, did you flash your board with the “bdshot” version of the firmware right?
If so, look into “SERVO” parameters and set SERVO_BLH_MASK, SERVO_BLH_OTYPE and SERVO_DSHOT_ESC accordingly.
this is correct, set it to 16.
One thing to remember, whenever you enable DSHOT on a servo output, all servo outputs under the same timer will be DSHOT, so you can not use them as traditional PWM.
does BLHeli32 extended telemetry only work while the ESC is in dshot mode?
or does it still out put telemetry when in PWM mode too?
Yes, only Dshot mode