Merry Christmas, Every Christmas should involve some flying! I just flew with a test weight on instead of the movi, and with two batteries and the problem did not occur, however when I flew the same configuration and only one battery the flutter condition as per the previous video did occur, so I think I may have been operating above the batteries C rating ... I posted the problem over on mikrkopter.de http://forum.mikrokopter.de/topic-post500606.html#post500606 and the feedback I received was that it was not software related ... Open to other suggestions. Merry Christmas Cheers Chris
Exactly what battery (batteries) are you using? And what’s your power distribution setup (ESCs, etc.)? Is there a chance one or more of your wires might be substandard, or maybe there’s a hanky solder joint somewhere? The currents that these copters can demand are pretty impressive at times.
There's no reason why you should be exceeding the battery requirements. As Steve recommends I would go over every power connection/wire.
G'Day Steve, The power distribution set up is all Freefly, PDB, ESC and batteries. The problem appeared to only be there when using a single battery, with two batteries in parallel it flew like a charm... Cheers Chris
G'day Chris: That's weird. Could it be something wacky going on in the airmass that was causing the FC to make lots of corrections? You've got me scratching my head on this one too. Andy.
Well I think I may have had two separate problems .... So I increased my test weights to 100g more than what the MoVI with pocket camera/adapter/tokina 11-16 lens combo weighs and went flying again. And burnt out motor 1, it just stopped after about 1.5minutes and landed on 7 motors. So I went home and replaced the the motor and speed controller with a new MT3515 and FF ESC straight out of their respective wrappings, and went back down to the park and flew again. The throttle setting was high to maintain hover, over 60% so working too hard, and just not flying right but the flutter/vibration was not present. So I reduced the test weight by 955g bringing it down to 2.5kg and it flew around perfectly no issues at all. Maybe my heavy lift build is just not a heavy lift build. The problem that I have is the MoVI with Stinger transmitter, and no camera at all is 2.2kg The build is (for the airframe) 3312g 500mm CS8 MK FC 2.5 running 2.01f MK GPS and Nav FF PDB and ESC Abusemark I2C converter GR24 reciever RC Tiger MT3515-400kv motors RC Tiger 15"x5.5" carbon props some LEDs and a bunch of zip ties and nylon mesh cable protection. Batteries (2569g) FF 9000mah 6S 25-50C batteries (x2) and gimbal (2215g) MoVI MR 250mW Mondo Stinger Kopterworx HDMI converter Turnigy 5V BEC Futaba R6208SB Receiver Camera (1133g) BMPCC Metabones F Mount converter Tokina 11-16 Total 9229g (20.35lbs) - Not working Unsuccessful test flights airframe - 3312g landing gear - 188g test weight - 3590g gopro - 222g batteries -2569g Total 9881g (21.78lbs) Successful test flights - 13-15 min airframe - 3312g landing gear - 188g test weight - 2622g gopro - 222g batteries -2569g Total 8913g (19.65lbs) I understand weight is critical, but this seems to be very sensitive. When I run these three weights through ecalc, the hover throttle only changes between 48-55% but both the hover throttle and motor temps are much higher in reality. Cheers Chris
Chris a couple of questions. Are you using the Abusemark straight out of the box with no programming adjustments? Did you do all of the Abusemark settings for the ESC's and Min Motor in MKTools?
G'Day Gary, I did the ESC Calibration using the bind-plug, and set the minimum throttle settings as per page 2 of the Abusemark manual. I ended up with a min gas setting in MK tools of 17. All motors would spin up at 15 using the motor test, and stop at values lower than 12. The only other thing I have done to the I2C converter is to solder the Octo bridge, and put some clear heat shrink around the converter to protect it .. and some of Andy's recommended red nail polish just so I remember which way everything gets connected up again. Cheers Chris
We need data logging on ESCs for these hard times. I think the problem source here might be the ESCs. Maybe they don't get along with I2C converter somehow and causing this. It's very unrare to blow a motor with %65 throttle in 2 minutes. You're having this issue for the second time. There are lots of setups over there with MT3515 handling much more payload with 16 and 17" props. I think you have no other option to try other ESCs. In this case, ıf you need a reliable setup you should move to BL Ctrl 3.0.
Ozkan several people have run this setup successfully. There might be something faulty that's causing the issue but the combination of parts itself shouldn't be burning up motors like they are. I think the motors are past their efficiency range but not enough to see what Chris is seeing. Chris I don't have experience with the converter or the freefly motor controllers but troubleshooting electronics for 25 years I suggest looking at one thing a time and start with the simple most obvious things first such as checking all settings and wiring. Make a checklist and eliminate one thing at a time. I would look closely at the main power board and swap out the IC2 converter if nothing else works.
Chris, is this the 2nd motor #1 that burned? Did both burning incidents occur using the same flight control board? If so check for balance using the MK tools graph. Make sure the dot stays centered. Maybe gyro calibration is off or the rig isn't balanced we'll causing the same group of motors to work harder than others. Just throwing out some ideas.
Is there anyone else than Chris who uses FreeFly ESCs and I2C converters with MK? Chris, can you post some close up pictures of your bird? Wiring, cables, etc. Edit: If we look at this benchmarks: The motor doesn't get hot enough to smoke under 10 min runtime with %100 throttle. So it looks like it's related with the current supplied by the ESC.
Yes Gary does and I believe Josh did. Quadrocopter also flew a couple birds with this past summer with this combo too.
Ozkan, I fly that setup on 4s and 5s. With this setup I didn't lose any power after switching to the converter from my original 12c ESCs nor am I experiencing any issue. Been running this setup for quite a while now. I'm planning on switching over to 6s and 400kv motors soon.
G'Day Howard, Yep second time motor 1 burnt out the other motor that burnt out was #4, the balance was good, the test weights where hung from the gimbal mounting plate centre, I'll recheck the accelerometer calibration, however I think that is ok, because the machine hovers and stays put when flown in manual mode. I was flying my other bird this morning, which is an identical build, however it only has a 2axis brushless gimbal and D800 on it, and it performed pretty well, but it was lighter than flying the MōVI. I should test this bird with the same weights to see if it generates the same faults, but am a little bit loathe to burn up more motors.
G'Day Ozkan, I have looked at those charts and with my setup if those charts are right I shouldn't be able to smoke a motor. I did look at the documentation for the MK BL3.0 and it was talking about high current spikes when used with non MK motors, maybe this problem relates more to the FC/i2c combination. Not sure, still looking for the solution. Thanks Chris
Chris recheck CG. Just because its hung from the center plate doesn't mean anything. You need to either suspend your rig and check CG or put it up in the air and check the balance with MK. I would do both actually.
Yes, check for balance using the MK graph as Dave and I have mentioned. Read here: Balancing The Cs 8
A little off topic, I'd like to use the new flt controller with the Abusemark 12c converter...I hope there isn't any voodoo coding in the v2.5 controller that will cause any issues.