Tau Labs A few questons about getting started

[Bartman]

I'm beginning to try to get my old XAircraft Quad flying on a CC board but I'm having a problem with the motors/esc's. Obviously there's no guarantee that the XA ESC's will even work but right off the bat I can't connect the CC board to the ESC's because the motors will spin up immediately. Is this a sign of incompatibility or just settings that have to get sorted out. In the video where James says to hook up the ESC's and then connects the battery, I can't do that so I've had to connect a 4 cell to the receiver to get GCS to recognize my receiver.

Any suggestions? I'm going to start over from the rescue step and see if I've missed anything. I did load the pwm version of the firmware but it was a guess so maybe I missed something.

Thanks,
Bart

 

[Bartman]

from the wiki

Tip for calibrating ESC's

<table class="noteMacro"><colgroup><col width="24"><col></colgroup><tbody><tr><td valign="top">

</td><td>Caution, you will be able to start your motors. Please remove all propellors & make sure the motors are clear.</td></tr></tbody></table>
It is possible to use the config output panel to calibrate all your ESCs at the same time, here is how:
On programmable ESC's like the Turnigy Plush, you can do the following.

1. Remove all the props first & disconnect your battery from the ESC's, then power your board through USB.
2. Go to the output config panel in the configuration gadget & check the "test outputs" function & confirm that you want to continue.
3. Move the slider on all ESC output channels to the max value you like e.g. 1850µs or 2000µs. (You can link the outputs in order to calibrate all esc's at the same time.)
4. Now apply power from your battery without disconnecting USB. Your ESCs will boot & beep accordingly, indicating that they received a high throttle setpoint.
5. Move all the sliders back to 1000µs, the ESC's will beep several times and will all be calibrated properly.

Very easy, just make sure you remove your props so that you don't get any nasty surprise if anything does not go according to plan.






when i do this the motors have finally decided to cooperate until i get to step 5 and attempt to move the sliders to the left. about 3/4 of the way to the left the motors spin up and then won't stop regardless of where i reposition the slider to.


any ideas as to how i can get my esc's to cooperate?


thanks,
bart

 

[jes1111]

Might be something to do with the update rate? What do you have that set to for the first four channels? XAircraft have "their own version" (inside joke) of high-rate PWM - maybe their ESCs don't like anything but 400Hz.

 

[Crash]

Bart,

Can you post a direct link along with the copy/paste. Things change fast with OP and WIKI and most other things for that matter.

I could very well be confused or just plain wrong but maybe the motors have to be reversed with the check boxes on the output tab.

Kirk

 

[matwelli]

i always do the esc's individually with my transmitter/ reciever, dont use the FC, it sets em to 1050/1850 (lo/hi) then i set values of 1040 and 1850 into the FC using the GCS

 

[Bartman]

in reading the XA wiki it appears they use a control range of 200 to 1200 micro seconds (how do I type the symbol mu?) so I set 150 to 1200 in the output page and the esc's are behaving themselves which is a minor victory. with the default range of 1000 to 2000 they were always near max so they acted accordingly.
the problem now is that i can't seem to get the "update rate" area of the page to come alive so I can't adjust those values. I also don't have a "get current" button on the output page so maybe that's an old reference?
thanks for the replies. i'd really like to see if my X650 can be resurrected with the CC board. I sent the XA FC and AHRS to emowillcox and it's been lost in the mail. what kind of banana republic are we running here that stuff is getting lost in the mail every other day!?!

 

[Bartman]

i always do the esc's individually with my transmitter/ reciever, dont use the FC, it sets em to 1050/1850 (lo/hi) then i set values of 1040 and 1850 into the FC using the GCS

matt,
the XAaircraft ESC's are all ganged together on a board from XAircraft so there's no "normal" way to any of it. I'm finally able to sit here typing with my CC board configured (as far as I can tell) and powered with a 3S lipo without the motors screaming away.
i may be completely wrong about all of this but i think i'm making progress.
thanks for chiming in
bart

 

[Bartman]

here's the XA wiki page in case anyone needs to go to sleep in a hurry

http://www.xaircraft.com/wiki/UltraPWM%28en%29

in the interest of not assuming anything, i can use an old Futaba 72 mhz radio, right?

 

[Crash]

Did you assign motor channels in the aircraft tab?

That could be why the 'Update Rate' is inactive.

The 'Get Current' button is so last month. I wish they would bring it back.

You firmware version may be useful to know.

 

[Bartman]

here's where I'm at (I intend to do a thread about making an XAircraft quad fly with a CC board but for now I'll just post here)
I set the motor channel ranges in the output tab to 100-1300 and I redid the "Test Outputs" step to set the neutrals just over 200. I then set the arming process and was able to arm and disarm the motors! Success! But, i still can't reset the "Update Rate" so I think that that explains why I've got no throttle response other than armed and max and slow to no response to the throttle stick.
ideas? it seems that removing power and reattaching it helps the CC board to digest any changes.

OpenPilot GCS 1.0.0 Alpha (Pascal)

OS is Windows XP , fwiw

thanks for the replies
bart

 

[Droider]

Bart.. I didnt calibrate my hobby wing esc at all.. well I dont think I did coz my CC flew my little quad straight off no mither.. With all the problems i have had with my MK FC I aint had time to play with my little CC quad or post anything up about it but Ill try and post all my settings and set up this week..

DAve

 

[Crash]

here's where I'm at (I intend to do a thread about making an XAircraft quad fly with a CC board but for now I'll just post here)
I set the motor channel ranges in the output tab to 100-1300 and I redid the "Test Outputs" step to set the neutrals just over 200. I then set the arming process and was able to arm and disarm the motors! Success! But, i still can't reset the "Update Rate" so I think that that explains why I've got no throttle response other than armed and max and slow to no response to the throttle stick.
ideas? it seems that removing power and reattaching it helps the CC board to digest any changes.

OpenPilot GCS 1.0.0 Alpha (Pascal)

OS is Windows XP , fwiw

thanks for the replies
bart

I should have been more specific. What is the build date of the GCS? Also go to the firmware tab and see if it says the build date of the firmware. It may or may not show depending on the GCS build. Make sure that you upload the firmware that comes with the GCS build.

If you can export the UAV settings and post them here, I'll try to load it on one of my boards. I'm a little confused because I don't recall ever seeing update rate grayed out.

The throttle may be a different issue and the calibration did get better/easier in the last versions. It was a little confusing for me in the way it works.

The throttle stick has to be at minimum when 'run calibration' is unclicked. In the newer versions the 'centering' slider will automatically move to a point just above minimum throttle. In the older versions you have to do this manually. See pic below.

 

[jes1111]

It might be too obvious, but IME you do need to click "Apply" or "Save" on each screen before moving to the next. Also, you can use the ObjectBrowser to watch/check the settings "taking" in their respective slots. As Crash said - the channel update rates won't be activated until the motor channels have "taken".

 

[matwelli]

"apply" is dangerous, power down and its lost, it stores in volitile memory, click "save" religiously every time you change something

 

[Bartman]

I found the option in GCS under the Tools tab to erase all settings from the board. I then proceeded to do the rescue process again, unpowered the board, closed GCS and started over. I saved after just about every change of every setting and the "Update Rate" option never became available.
All of the steps went exactly as they should have but I just can't change the update rate so I still have no throttle response other than arm/disarm/idle/and full. I assume the throttle response is related to my inability to change the update rate?
Everything else looks great, nice board, nice interface, nice package overall.
Thanks,
Bart

 

[Bartman]

It might be too obvious, but IME you do need to click "Apply" or "Save" on each screen before moving to the next. Also, you can use the ObjectBrowser to watch/check the settings "taking" in their respective slots. As Crash said - the channel update rates won't be activated until the motor channels have "taken".

by "Object Browser" do you mean the file menu looking are in the upper right of the Configuration area? If I go to the Mixer Status line item and open it to show 8 mixer lines, each has a -1 even though I've set up Multirotor-Quad X and assigned mixer output channels AND pressed SAVE multiple times. Does the -1 represent unassigned channel?

 

[Bartman]

The line just above "Update rate" where it says "Channel" doesn't have the motor numbers like the ones visible in James' video, FWIW

i also posted this question to the OpenPilot forum

 

[Crash]

by "Object Browser" do you mean the file menu looking are in the upper right of the Configuration area? If I go to the Mixer Status line item and open it to show 8 mixer lines, each has a -1 even though I've set up Multirotor-Quad X and assigned mixer output channels AND pressed SAVE multiple times. Does the -1 represent unassigned channel?

yes, that is the Object browser.

I believe you are looking at the data objects though. My guess is that what you are looking at are the desired pulse outputs. You want to look at Settings.ActuatorSettings for the Update Frequency. Update freq is how many times a second the signals are sent to the ESCs or servos. It is not directly related to actual throttle value.

 

[Bartman]

With this problem resolved I can try to explain what was pointed out to me.

Apparently the bootloader software on my board was outdated and wasn't able to play nice with the GCS software. To update the bootloader software I had to use the Rescue process but instead of uploading board configuration software, the Rescue process installed new bootloader software. With that complete I was able to disconnect the board, run the Rescue process again to make sure the board's firmware was intact and correct and after that I could change the Update Rates.

XAircraft says their board functions at 500 Hz but the GCS only allows settings up to 400 Hz.....could that prevent my XA ESC's from functioning correctly or should they be ok with the 400 hz rate of the CC board?

hmm....

 

[Bartman]

I've got another problem, in the Flight Data area my throttle shows -1.00 when the stick is all the way back but it takes 90% of the stick movement to get the throttle value above 0 which is when they finally spool up.

Also, should the throttle trim be reduced to full zero or should it be left centered when calibrating the controls?

I'll keep poking away at this but any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Bart