X-Copter acting like a three-servo swashplate helicopter

Hi! I’m in the middle of setting up my first multicopter, using a pixhawk with Mission Planner/ArduPilot. I built an X-frame copter, and flashed it with hardware as such, selected that frame type and class, and calibrated everything that wanted calibrating.

Unfortunately, it seems to handle (in testing with the propellers off) like a traditional helicopter with a three-servo swashplate and a tail rotor. I’ve spent two days reading forums and the documentation and I still can’t figure out how to fix it.

Hardware details:

  • Pixhawk 2.4.6
  • Spektrum DXe Radio Controller
  • 4x Castle ESC’s (these apparently can’t be calibrated, I have to set my radio controller to match them – side question: do I do that in the servo output page?)
  • 4x Lumenier LU3 700kv motors

Thanks in advance!

Update: I just installed and tried using QGroundControl, and it showed the frame class as Heli/X. When I changed it back to Quad/X, and rebooted the Pixhawk, it reset itself to Heli. I then checked in MissionPlanner, and it showed the same behavior (in the Full Parameter List, it keeps reseting FRAME_CLASS to 6, which is Heli, instead of 1, which is Quad).

Does anyone know why that’s happening? My next debugging step is installing older firmware on the Pixhawk.

Did you accidentally install helicopter firmware in it? Try downloading the firmware file for multicopter from here-> , load that firmware using the Install Custom Firmware option and try it again.

Your Pixhawk should take a fmuv2 firmware version. If that doesn’t work and it has the 1MB flash bug then go to the PX4 firmwares and download the v1 NuttX version.

Thanks! That was it. I swear I selected the Quadcopter when I installed the firmware (I did it twice in MissionPlaner), but it definitely had the Helicopter firmware on it.

Great. Glad you got it going. I don’t know why that happened but downloading the proper firmware and installing it manually usually works if the automated board detection, or firmware selection with the little pictures of vehicles doesn’t work for some reason. I’ve had that happen before too, except I ended up with multi firmware instead of helicopter and couldn’t figure out where my settings went :grinning: