Well I feel like I am making a basic mistake, but I am at a loss as to what. There are no errors reported in MK-Tool. No i2c errors. The GPS is locked. The compass is green. All the engines power up. However, the throttle does nothing. The machine stays at idle. I can see that the throttle signal is being transmitted to the CS8 in the channels panel. I have just replaced the power distribution board with a new one and upgraded the firmware to the newest stuff (90j/30h). Can anyone shed some light as to what is going on?
do you have a microSD card in the nav board? i have my CS set to not take off if there's no card in there. do you have a graupner mx20? does the MK telemetry screen tell you anything? mine says "ERR: NO SD CARD" when I do that.
William if you upgraded you will have to do all the calibrations again, and a compass calibration. I can pretty much guarantee that once you do the compass calibration your problem will go away.
william you can also turn that off under the misc tab down the bottom. Also if you flying near metal objects or flying inside turn off your compass and click ''ignore compass error on start up''
If you have done all fo the recalibrations then the other item could be that the spot you are sitting on has a magnetic variation of more than 10 degrees. That to will not allow the motors to start. You can see this value on the MX20 if you go into the text version of the MK readouts and then press and hold the SET button for about a second. The first screen will look like this. Pressing the SET will change to this Incl needs to be less than 10 degrees variation. If it is more simply move the copter to another location with less metal.
I'll check. I don't have an MX20, but I assume that information is in MX-Tool. I did try it in four different places in all of which it has worked before.
where you flying near metal or anything metallic if that was the case if you dont have the compass effect to zero and the ''ignore compass error on start up''. It will just sit at idle with no errors. Thats my suggestion
I think the compass is broken. It shows an inclination of 14 degrees and an azimuth of 281 degrees no matter what the orientation of the CS8 is. @#$%#$!!! I also noticed that when I finish compass calibration it would end with a single beep rather than the two beeps that the documentation said it should. When the gyros are calibrated the compass goes from green to red and the azimuth changes to -1.
Were you able to perform the compass calibration procedure? Casey's recorded a video at http://www.quadrocopter.com/How-To-Videos_ep_72-1-2.html Andy.
Yes. Aside from the single beep at the end, it appeared to work. Except that it would do all it's clicking right at the start and no more clicking as the CS8 was being turned over. It didn't use to behave like that.
Hi William: In which case I'm sorry to say that I think your comment applies: I think the compass is broken. @#$%#$!!! Just as a last resort, though, can you remove the battery plate and post some images of how the MK boards are installed on the main hub and on boom #1, presuming you have the NaviControl and GPS boards, please? Might be worth having some other eyeballs checking that.... Andy.
HI William I believe when you finish the calibration you get a "DAH DAH" with 2 beeps not just one. One time I rolled the copter in the wrong direction and it gave me one beep and it didn't calibrate. One time I had a problem with a BL and it started flaking out and the copter would not take off. It gave me about 15% gas but not enough to get the copter to go up. Then the one motor started twitching and I just had to replace the BL. After I replaced the BL it was all good. Not saying you have a bad BL but something is telling me to check the PDB since you said you just replaced the PDB. It wouldn't hurt to make sure you have all the LED's correct under the board just to verify the board is good. Another thing you can verify is to make the addresses for each BL are correct.
On MKtools, flight ctrl settings, on the easy setup tab, make sure you've unchecked the parameter that reads mode: motor start/stop--> gas 0 &motor switch on/off. That (eventually) will allow to start stop the motors anytime desired by taking the throttle to lower left corner, and stop them by taking the same throttle to the lower right corner. It worked for me. Hopefully it somehow helps.
Springboarding off Julian's idea -- could you post a screen shot of the MK Tool "Misc" window, please, William? Then we can double check those settings. Thanks Andy
I have all green lights on the ESCs. I can control each motor individually in the Motor Test section of MK-Tool. So that all seems fine. Also the temperatures and current draw seems normal.
I can't find my camera. Edit: OK Found my camera, but it's not charged. I had to post that I couldn't find my camera before it would turn up.