Running before walking. How to build this copter?

[shortsonfire79]

Thanks for the help once again Motopreserve. I calibrated two of the motors, but I did it wrong. When I throttle up, the motor is off, and when I throttle down, the motor is on. I'll have to figure out how to fix that! Hopefully I don't need to program the ESCs... I feel like that would be a ridiculous task for me.

Thanks for following along Ultrafit! I'd love to build my own multi with parts that I choose some day.

---

So I think I figured out my problem...kinda. The receiver that came with the transmitter/kit doesn't have all the necessary ports (roll, pitch, throttle, rudder) to hook up to my control board, or any wires at all. I think this is why I didn't know what the control board was for, not knowing how to hook the two together... I went to my local hobby shop to buy a new receiver, but they said that they didn't have any that were specific to Hobby King transmitters.

I just want to verify this before I go and buy a different receiver from Hobby King. Which, I'm looking at and not seeing any that would match the description of what I need. After watching the video series above (I've gone through it several times throughout this build) the guy there uses a Spektrum AR8000 receiver, which is sold standalone without a transmitter. Do I NEED a receiver specific to a Hobby King transmitter like my hobby shop says? They sell receivers there, but like the AR8000, they don't come with any of the servo wires needed to connect the receiver to the control board, and the store doesn't sell female-female servo wires.

The fact that they said that I need a specific receiver to a specific transmitter seems off to me. I'd imagine that I could buy any other receiver and get it to link with my transmitter... If I can use any ol' receiver, I'm just going to go back to the hobby store, I'd really like to get this thing flying before I go back to school!

 

[Motopreserve]

Is the receiver in the photo above hours? If so, you have everything you need except servo wires - which any hobby shop should have. They need to be 3 wires with connectors on the end. Look up that specific receiver and see if there's a manual. That receiver has more than enough channels to get you in the air. You need at least 4 servo wire sets.

If your throttle is working in reverse - you need to reverse that channel in your transmitter. Do you have a manual for that? Transmitters definitely need their corresponding receivers (each company speaks it's own language) except for some of the HK Orange brand.

 

[shortsonfire79]

Oh great!! Yeah thats mine. I thought I was going to have to shell out a bit more for a new receiver. I'll assume that the 1-4 (of 6) channels on the receiver line up with the 1-4 (of 6) channels on the control board as well? That would make sense.

Found the a manual-like thread somewhere on HK's site, and I managed to flip the channel! It was just a switch on the transmitter...easy... -_- Marked " <rev - nor>" sheesh.

Thanks again! If I can get past programming the ESCs, I think I can find a different hobby store with female-female servo wires and get this in the air tomorrow.

 

[Motopreserve]

Making sure the FC is hooked up correctly and all sorted out will be the key. You need a way to mount it, and make sure the arrow is facing forward (which I think will require you to mount it diamond shaped).

 

[shortsonfire79]

Yay! So my 3" male-male cables finally showed up(just over a month later... shipping from China :dejection! The blasted thing still doesn't work. Individually, each motor will work when hooked up to the receiver port 3. When connecting RC port 3 to the throttle port on the control board (seen below picture) it just beeps. I tested all 7 channels on the RC hooked up to all 4 ports on the CB, same results all around. I flipped the cables around so ground was facing the opposite direction and they still didn't work.

I looked here for the channels on the hk-tr6a receiver.
Roll,
Throttle,
Pitch,
Yaw

Note: I know the control board has an arrow on the corner facing forward, but I'll just condition myself to figure out how to get it to fly forward.
Thanks a lot Motopreserve, you've been a massive help on this project.

 

[Motopreserve]

First off, where do you live that you had to wait a month for servo wires????

2nd, no. No no no. You MUST face the board the right direction or you'll hurt yourself and others!

Have you calibrated the ESCs??? That may be why they're beeping. WATCH THIS. You basically hook each ESC up to throttle output on RX. Then put throttle all up on Tx. Power up RX/ESC with battery and when it beeps - put the throttle to the down position.

That tells the ESC what full and minimum throttle is. Do it for each of them individually.

The channels from your RX need to be told what to do from the Tx. Find out which channel in the Tx does what - then plug the RX in accordingly to the rudder, throttle, elevator and aileron ports of the FC in the photo above.

Also, do not plug in the wires various ways to try to get it to work. You can really damage something by flipping the ground or power to the wrong pin. Make sure you look at a schematic/manual to find which pins do what. Check out the manual link below - all the secrets are in there

Make sure the dpt switches on top right are configured for quad (1 down, 2 down, 3 up, 4 down). Then you need to figure out how that FC specifically wants a quad-X setup... IE which motor is front left, front right etc.

The manual for the board is HERE. The link you provided for the Tx didn't lead to any answers for me. There must be a manual on the HK site for that too.

 

[shortsonfire79]

I bought my wires through Amazon, the estimated delivery was Feb 12th so I'm fairly happy about that. haha I guess I'll have to reposition the CB then.
The ESCs have been calibrated and the dpt switches are configured for an X quad correctly.

Based on what you've told me, I've figured that ch 2 is elevation, 3 is throttle and 4 is rudder. Ch 1 beeps seven times then pauses and two more when I try to use the aileron control. Ch 5, 6 and bat don't have any reaction.

I assume ch 1 is aileron so I plugged it and the rest into their respective spots. Plugged in the motors in their respective X configuration and they all still do the slow beep. LED2 still flashes red as well. :/

 

[Motopreserve]

Short,

first, if you don't have a local hobby shop - there should be Many places that at least have servo wires that can deliver sooner than 1 month. Please don't tell me you are in the USA. Bali, maybe. Anywhere else - MUCH sooner than a month

you really need to download the manual for all the components. I don't recall telling you which channel carried which signal - unlikely since I'm not even sure which model Tx you have, and different manufacturers have different protocol.

Did you follow all the directions from the flight controller manual for the ESC calibration, and everything else for that matter???

The Tx manual will tell you which channel is carrying all the signals (aileron, elevation, throttle and rudder). Don't "figure," be SURE. Then make sure the proper RX channels (which will be dictated by the Tx) are plugged to corrosponding channels on the Flight Controller. Make sure all the signal, power and ground wires line up correctly on both RX and FC. The pin layout will definitely be in the manuals.

The Tx manual also has notes about the blinking red light on the FC. Troubleshoot from there.

The ESCs could be a number of things, but you really need to be methodical about figuring it out. So start with placing the FC properly on the quad. Double check all your wiring. Make sure the battery is charged. Then go from there.

 

[Motopreserve]

Uh oh...

I hate to be a buzz kill, but that transmitter may not work with that flight controller. I just looked at the manual for the board again - and it needs PPM. You need to find out if that transmitter send PPM.

after a very quick search it seems that you may need to hack it or get some type of module that changes it somehow.

 

[shortsonfire79]

I hate to be a buzz kill, but that transmitter may not work with that flight controller. I just looked at the manual for the board again - and it needs PPM. You need to find out if that transmitter send PPM.

after a very quick search it seems that you may need to hack it or get some type of module that changes it somehow.

Yay more waiting! I've been reading the manual for the rx here and I don't think it tells me the channels. Page 14 looks like it, but I'd have to reconfigure it through my pc. I don't think it does the PPM thing, it doesn't mention it at all until the translation page.

Sorry about not seeing the fc manual before, I had hit quick reply before you edited it so it didn't refresh. Thanks for finding that for me! I did actually have the motor server cables flipped (ground facing in when they should have been out) and I really hope that didn't hurt it.

I had a local hobby shop at home and they could have ordered the parts for me, but by time they would have arrived, I would have been back at school, so I just ordered them online and they had a ways to travel. Yes I'm in US, California to be a bit more specific.

Edit: I had previously calibrated the ESCs via throttling up/down on the Tx. Just read and performed the Control board calibration and the ESCs all sang to me and did what the manual said it would. After putting things back to normal and turning the Tx on and plugging the battery in, the same single beep every few seconds persisted. No response from throttling the Tx.

The LED2 was flashing red meaning "No signal input, please check whether the transmitter is on" which probably means the Tx isn't talking to it correctly.

 

[mbowser]

I had an i86 board when I started my build that I accidentally ruined when I dropped a screwdriver on it. The manual was tough to follow because I'm new to this hobby and the translation is not great. I ended up piecing together the right way to set it up from a number of sources. The controller is a knockoff of the eagle n6 board and if I remember correctly the manual was a bit better for it. You should be able to Google it. The program settings are determined by 2 things: the type of configuration you are going to build (x copter is default) is set with the dip switches. Then the ESC programing mode is entered when you turn down one of the pots (I don't remember whether it was roll, pitch or yaw pot, but that is spelled out in the manual). The hard part was calibrating the escs by audio tone; you'll end up doing it a bunch of times.
Motopreserve is right on the arrow direction, that makes a huge difference and I believe it really needs to be centered equidistant from each motor (I'm not sure on ththe though).
I'm not sure about the transmitter, I bought a turnigy tx which is a similar low end unit from hobby king, but I don't know about the ppm signal. You should be able to get an answer in the hobbyking forums.
Good luck, your getting close,don't give up.
-matt

 

[Motopreserve]

If you look in your Tx software it should have a page somewhere that you can scroll to that lists what all the aux are doing. That will be the page that tells you what's what. There must be a default listed somewhere on the web if you can't run the software.

Just check out what that says, and make sure you are plugged in accordingly on the RX-FC.

But it the first thing you need to research is whether your board is needing PPM. and if the TX is sending it. I'm outta my depth there, sorry.

Youll get it. So close.

 

[Motopreserve]

It looks like you have to do all the programming in the computer - since there is no LED screen for it. In order to do that - you need a cable like THIS. This would be only if you want to try to hack the receiver to work with a PPM based device, as your FC is. I didn't read up on what that entails - but it's either that, or get a new Transmitter. But I think most FCs want PPM at this point, but I could be wrong. There also appears to be a converter where you can change PWM to PPM - that would require some research.

Honestly, it seems that it might make sense for you to find the cheapest 6 channel Tx that transmits PPM - that way you don't need to get into all the much of getting this one to work.

What is the specific model name of the Tx you have??? The manual is for what I assume is identical model but sold under a different name.

 

[mbowser]

I might look to other issues before shelling out mite money on a tx. It sounds like you already got the tx working at some level with the throttle (even though it was reversed). I would think all the tx output to the receiver would be the same. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the issue though.

I had a tough time calibrating the escs on that board. The instructions were terrible. I remember it says something like "wait for the singsong tone". The interweb is your friend with this board. Lots of people use it and there are calibration videos on youtube. Google i86 or eagle n6 (same board).

Looking back at one of your posts, I'm thinking that it could also be the order in which you are turning things on. In not sure if this is true of all rc stuff, but this board you need the tx powered before powering the quad. Also, I forget the sequence for arming, but that could be it also. I recall that before arming it beeps every few seconds with red led. it goes blue once armed.

If it does turn out to be the tx,
I can't say that this is the best tx, but i'm using the turnigy 6x fhss and I'm certain that it works with your i86 board. I think I only paid about $30 for it.

 

[Motopreserve]

mbowser is right. There area bunch of things that could be the issue. There is a description of how to arm, as well as calibrate the ESCs particular to this board in the i86 manual.

But I think it all starts with whether or not the Tx transmits PPM or PCM (I think I may have misstated PWM before). Those are 2 different protocols, and I am pretty sure all (or most) multirotors at this point want PPM (definitely the Arduino based ones that I know of). I did a quick search and came up with a bunch of posts talking about how to get this particular Tx to transmit PPM. It involved software or hardware, or both - not sure.

Take a look at THIS link and you will see that this Tx comes standard with:

"9XR Standard Features:
• 8 Channel PPM/9 Channel PCM"

That leads me to believe that some Tx are PCM, others are PPM - or some now offer both.

Also, take a look HERE: a little outdated - but it discusses the PPM vs PCM deal.

 

[shortsonfire79]

Alright, so I threw this thing down out of frustration for a good while. Time to pick it back up.
Checked the FC and it is 50hz standard PPM. I checked the user-made manual for the TX and the only things it mentions about PPM are link>>"both output PPM signal in the same pin that "universal" PPM to USB cables use as an input." I'm not too sure what that means. Also:

is it compatible with any other receivers brand like spektrum or something or can be added more receivers

NO, it is not compatible systems. This is something different this time. These systems are using neither DSSS nor FHSS, but what the mfgr calls "PPM/GFSK"

I set up the RX/FC like link>>Eagle N6 instructions say. I ran the stick centering and ESC calibrations as per manual instructions. During ESC calibration, when powering on the quad I just get a constant red flashing, and when I lower throttle I get 6 blue flashes. The red flashes mean that the throttle stick is not in the lowest position; does this mean it thinks that it is already calibrated? When I power up the TX and then the quad with the X4 config I get 5 blue flashes on the FC.

Blue.

Flash N times when power on. Initialize success, N stands for the multicopter type selected, see “Multicopter Types Setting Table”.

The multicopter type is set to 0010, as #5 on the list states for a quad X4.

I figure that this thing just won't work with the TX/RX and RC combo. So I looked into that Turnigy 6X FHSS and its $30 on HK's site, but is out of stock and seems to not exist anywhere else. Would the link>>Turnigy 9x work? Encoder type: ppm/pcm. I've only been able to find it on HK's site, which sucks because I'll have to wait another month for it to show up. I also realize I'll need to buy another battery pack for this...

I'm pretty fed up with this build. Just under 8 months and I'm still fighting it. Thanks a bunch for all the assistance, guys.

 

[Motopreserve]

Hey Shorts! It's been a while. I tried to refresh my memory on your setup real quick.

Did you ever determine whether the Tx/Rx protocol will actually work with the i86 flight controller? If so....

I would say that the red lights are for if the stick is not in the down position (almost every Radio/Tx will have this type of safety feature so you don't spool up full throttle accidentally).

I would try the calibration procedures again. It has the light sequence that you should see in the manual you linked. Make sure you are following all the power up/power down after each calibration. Regardless of whether it is calibrated now - doing the procedure should overwrite and allow you to do it again. Which at this point seems the safest bet.

If I recall, you had no way to hook the Tx to the computer, correct? One issue may be that certain sticks are still reversed???

 

[shortsonfire79]

Hey Motor, thanks for replying. I'll try to recalibrate it again and see how it goes. I'm home this weekend so I don't have access to the copter, but I do have access to an RC store. I'll try to pick up one of those USB-tx cables before I head back to school tomorrow. I'm just ready to fix all the things...

 

[Motopreserve]

Hey Motor, thanks for replying. I'll try to recalibrate it again and see how it goes. I'm home this weekend so I don't have access to the copter, but I do have access to an RC store. I'll try to pick up one of those USB-tx cables before I head back to school tomorrow. I'm just ready to fix all the things...

That might be a really good thing to have for making sure the settings are all correct. Play it safe!

 

[daddywoofdawg]

these are pretty good info on soldering bullet connectors.