Hi Gustavo: I think you're probably at the point where you need to swap boards out, one-by-one, just to see if, for example, when you change to a different FC board, do the I2C errors stop. If you're a near your dealer, you might ask if you could take your Cinestar over to them and just try a replacement FC, NC and power distribution board. Only by being able to swap boards will be able to identify the cause, I'm afraid. I'm not sure where you are on the planet, so I realize this idea might be very easy -- or it might be very hard! Andy.
Hi Andy, I did the tests you indicated and apparently the problem is in the power distribution board, the FC alone does not generate errors I2C. I'm not near QC , I'm in South America, Perú Gustavo.
Nice work, Gustavo. Now the problem is that the PDB is really only a connection matrix to the BL-Ctrl boards. This means that any one of the Bl-Ctrls could be causing the problem. Is there anyone else in Perú with an MK PDB that you could work with just to swap out the PDB for as long as it takes to find out which BL-Ctrl might be causing a problem? Andy.
That's not good. I think you may have only these choices: 1. Ignore the I2C errors that occur on startup and check each GPX file to make sure that the number of such errors does not increase during the flight. 2. Attempt to diagnose which of the BL-Ctrls are causing the problem -- and the only way of doing that is to systematically replace them with a spare BL-Ctrl. 3. Purchase a replacement Power Distribution Board with BL-Ctrls, and return the current one to QC for analysis and repair. Sorry that you do not have better options. Andy.
Hi Andy, Looks at this file, less than a minute and low battery alarm. All batteries to full, radio and CS, after landing the battery was at 16.4. Any idea what is happening? Gustavo.
Gustavo looks like a battery at end of life. When it plunges like that after only a few seconds of flight there is something wrong with the battery. Been there and done that.
Hi Gary, I do not know how you measure the life of a battery, whether by use or old, I have 3 batteries and I buy new in November 2011, with about 30 charges each now. Gustavo.
Gustavo Partly by the physical outside. Are they 'puffy' which is an indication of high discharges? When you fly what percentage of power is left in the battery when you go to recharge? Many chargers will tell you how much is remaining. Or a small device like the Extreme Power Analyzer PA-010 can do the same thing. If you consistently fly to less than 20% then you will shorten the life of the batteris. I had several batteries that i left on full charge, rather than a storage charge, for about 3 months. Topped them off and went to fly and had the same experience that you just had. They were shot. Andy did some testing on them and they almost immediately went from a full charge to low voltage in a matter of seconds.
And those batteries from Gary went from ambient room temperature to 55C in two minutes -- I stopped the testing fearing a possible LiPo fire. How long a battery lasts is a direct function of how well you treat it. If you abuse it (as Gary says), you can trash a battery very rapidly. Andy.
I had a similar problem though not identical to yours. I was getting I2c errors in MK tools on start-up in both flight mode and navi mode I sent the power board, navi, and flight board to Quadrocopter. I hope Riley does not mind me posting his reply. Again, my I2c problem might be different than yours. Hello Jim, I plugged in your electronics and everything is working correctly. We had actually never noticed the issue you were having so we got in touch with the guys at MK. Basically in short, what they said is that it is completely normal to see that I2c error pop up in that window when you initialize your gyros. If it just stays the same after you initialize then all is well, but if the I2c counter continues to go up during flight, then there is another problem. After initializing yours, everything stays the same and there are no further errors. If you have any further questions feel free to respond to this email. Thank you, Riley Van Nyhuis Engineering
Hi Jim, thanks for that information, I think it's the same, only now I have other problem is that apparently the batteries died , I'm trying to find out how to check this. Gustavo
I've emailed with Riley and he confirms: 1. If you get initial I2C errors on gyro recal, that's OK. 2. What you need to look out for is an increasing number of I2C errors -- that's an indication of a Bad Thing happening. Andy.
Hi Gustavo: I'm not quite sure how to answer that question, Gustavo -- do you mean before you fly with it? If so, does your battery charger permit taking a fully charged battery and taking it down to storage voltage? If it does, then that will have far more rapidly that usual -- this process drains current out of a fully charged battery by connecting a dummy load to it and the battery will discharge at a higher rate. There are also other symptoms: the battery will start to puff up, or it will get warm when it is being charged. If you're asking how to know when you try to fly with it, you'll get a low battery voltage after just a few minutes of flight. The bad part is that it might fail catastrophically and the copter will crash. Does that answer your question? Andy,
Hi Andy, The excessive consumption of battery was the initial reason for this thread, I have a doubt regarding the symptoms of bad or dead battery, in my last flight after activated low voltage alarms and landing, the battery mark 16.4, (less than one minute in the air), should measure less? Gustavo
Was the 16.4 volts measured under load, or after you had stopped the motors? The reason I ask is that a faulty battery might have a voltage that looks OK, but when you connect a load, the voltage sags rapidly. However, when you remove the load, the voltage may bounce back up to a fairly normal voltage. I think what may be happening is that as some LiPo batteries fail, their internal resistance increases. When that happens it is like having a resistor in series with, say, the +ve connector on the battery. When you put a voltmeter across the +ve to -ve battery connections that internal battery resistance is present, but as there is almost no current, so there is almost no voltage drop. However, if you try to pull 60 amps, then (obeying Ohm's Law), the voltage drop across the batteries internal resistance is significant -- and that's what you are seeing. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_resistance That's my working theory, anyway. Andy.
Hi Andy, this measure is after landing. How I can know exactly if the battery is dead ?, I have a hyperion charger eos606i. Gustavo.
The typical signs of a dead battery, beyond the obvious indications (like bursting into flame) are: 1. The battery voltage sags quickly even when fully charged. 2. The battery fails to deliver the rated Capacity. 3. The battery fails to accept the rated amount of charge (the Hyperion chargers indicate how much charge was accepted, I believe). 4. The battery fails to ever completely charge up. 5. The battery gets hot while being charged. 6. The battery physically puffs up. There may be other indicia, but those are the ones that come to mind. Andy.