Using M4 with BLDCs - Short How to

[whizz101]

Hello,

I'm having some problems with my new set up. I have swapped from a AQ6 to an M4 with with Jorgs 0r3 board.

The problem i have is this;

I am running a Hexa and have thus "hacked" on to the M4 to get motor ports 1-4. The two motors that i have running on ports 3 and 4 are working fine, but the 4 motors i have connected to ports 4-8 on the expansion board do not work when i connect a battery. If i connect to QGC and restart the board then normally the ports 4-8 start working. sometimes it takes a couple of resets.

I have tried changing the pwm points for the esc's and recalibrating the esc's, but this has no effect.

I suspect it has something to do with the esc's. When using this setup with my AQ6 I had a similar problem. When i connected the battery the esc's world not work straight away, i would have to hit the reset button on the AQ6 after connecting the battery, then everything worked fine.

However, there is no reset button on the M4. And there is no reset button on the andriod app, so this is a real problem as soon as i leave my laptop.

What bugs me is that the two esc's connected to the two hacked ports 3 & 4, work perfectly every time i connect the battery! What is the difference as far as the esc's are concerned between the ports on the expansion board and the ones i have hacked from the M4?

Has anyone else experienced this? Would it be possible to add a reset button on the M4 like AQ6 has?

Any idea's appreciated!

Tristan.

[aBUGSworstnightmare]

[whizz101]

[/quote]

Hi Tristan, M5 to M8 should start immediately, without any reset! Let us have more details on your setup:
- ESC type
- lenght of PWM cable to ESC
- how do you supply power to the expansion board/lipo voltage?

Joerg[/quote]

Hi,

I'm using tiger motor pro opto 40amp esc's, The pmw cables are the stock ones it comes with- 23cm. I am powering the board as per your instructions early in this post. I am supplying 6v to the battery connector on your expansion board and monitoring the lipo(6cell) on the adc pad.

I was using a firmware, AutoQuad 7 + Native HoTT for M4v2 PID - Version r445, from joebar.rc

To get around the problem of the motors on ports 5-8 not starting I had two solutions. One is just to keep turning it on and off again, normaly after one or two goes she starts up and all the motors are ok. If this fails i came up with another solution, after connecting the main lipo, and seeing that only the motoer's on ports 3 & 4 are working, i can connect 5v on the usb connector, then un-connect and reconect the main lipo. Now all the motors work....

However, as i found out yesterday, I have a problem. My first maiden flight was short as it was raining a bit and going dark. But i did the first maiden and all went great, checked the logs and all looked great, very low vibrations ect.
The next day i continued my testing. The first flight went well except for some erratic changes in my Hacc and Vacc. I put this down to being in a valley and flew in manual. No problems and landed ok.
The second flight however, i noticed some twiches in the yaw and decided to land and investigate. As i was hovering about to land the craft suddenly tilted forward and attempted to fly off! I immediately cut power and she nose dived into the ground. Luckily she was very low at the point she tilted so minimal damage...two broken props..

I have posted this issue as a new thread, But i guess it could well be connected to the issue i am having with the motor ports on the expansion board!

I have the logs of all three flights and would like to post them here, but they exceed the 5KB limit! How is everyone else sharing their logs?

Any help getting to the bottom of this would be very welcome. This is a rig that i use for work, and i am under contract right now! I am meant to working now!

I am going to order a replacement AQ6 as i now that that worked. But i was looking forward to the upgrade M4 with its uprated GPS system!

Sorry for such a long post!

I will add some photo's shortly....

[whizz101]

The logs of the flights can be found here

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/v21zkqa9zrrb ... mJ4sa?dl=0