Help Naza not behaving, all over the place

[Bruiserbill]

Hello all I am brand new to this forum, thank you for having me.

The issue I am having is that I have a 550 with naza, gimbal with gopro, Video tx 1000mw and the main battery is 3s 5000mah, battery for video transmitter is 3s 1100 mah. Once the bird get into the air it will dip on one side heavily the level itself out. and sometimes it just goes backward on its own and I have to stick in the opposite direction to save it. I have had it flying nicely at times but others it does its own thing. I am frustrated and not sure where to go from here. Any suggestions or people who have had a similar situation.

the roll and pitch gains are set at are set at 210, and attitude at 120. yaw 145 and vertical 200. Radio is spectrum dx7s if that matters.

Thanks

Bill

 

[DennyR]

Sounds like a bad mag. calibration also I found that basic gain is better around 130 and Atti much lower say about 60.

 

[kloner]

the gains seem really high, what esc's do you run?

if you took a wine bottle and try setting the 550 on top, does it balance in the middle?

 

[Bruiserbill]

Sounds like a bad mag. calibration also I found that basic gain is better around 130 and Atti much lower say about 60.

what is the mag. it seems the lower the gaims the worst a problem

 

[Bruiserbill]

the gains seem really high, what esc's do you run?

if you took a wine bottle and try setting the 550 on top, does it balance in the middle?[/QUOTE

the esc are stock I have not tried balancing it on a wine bottle I have balanced it from the arm tips. pick it up by the arms and see if it rotates.

 

[birdseyeap]

How does it behave with the video TX turned off? A full watt transmitter is quite hefty and can significantly reduce your receiver sensitivity. I have a similar setup with a Flame Wheel 550, NAZA, and 1W 910 MHz tx. I also have a camera gimbal with servos that clued me into the problem. When I turn on the video TX the servos start to jitter a lot. Without the servos it wouldn't be evident how bad the signal was. I did a range test with the video tx off and got about 100 paces. (Futaba and Spektrum say you should get at least 30 paces.) With the TX on I lost half of that range. With a lot of experimentation I found a 900 MHz low pass filter ($27) from rangevideo.com I could add to the TX antenna and got my range back and fixed the interference problem.

Good luck, and don't give up!

 

[kloner]

this dip he's describing keeps popping up everywhere around here. i think theres a motor/esc problem with the newer arf's

Bill, what video tx are you using?

 

[birdseyeap]

I tried to start my own thread, but the browser locked up and it didn't post. So, since my problem seems very similar I thought I would just jump in and post it here.

I have a Flame Wheel 550 with the NAZA+GPS, camera gimbal with GoPro, and 910 MHz video tx. Have about 20 good flights into it and it has been working great. After one crash caused by a battery coming loose, it has been acting up. The worst problem is going into reverse and slight right at high speed along with other gyrations. I've seen several posts/videos of similar behavior, called "lockover", I think. Here is a video of my most recent crash.

My speculation is that the prior crashes have the props out of balance and vibration is confusing the gyros. The strange thing here is that during the ballistic gyrations of the hex, the camera gimbal was able to stay relatively level. That leads me to belive that the gyros were ok. Possibly an ESC or motor going bad? If an ESC or motor failed, wouldn't the torque of the opposing motor cause it to spin instead of just reversing? During the flight it did stabilize for a few seconds before going for it's final backwards dive into the forest. Any suggestions would be appreciated?

Here is the hex hovering rock solid on GPS just minutes before ascending to take the video when it flew out of control.
View attachment 6373

Thanks in advance,
Dave.

 

[Tahoe Ed]

Dave, because of the length of the video, I would rule out Props and Vibration. I would look to the connectors between the motors and the escs. As you use them, they heat up and may fail. You had another period of instability before you eventually crashed. Just my observations.

 

[DesJardins]

I'm voting bullet connectors... I have had my F450 go down twice now.
Each time I had 20+ great flights then BAM the flip down to the ground. Move the bullets around and when it didn't snap an arm it was great a whole second pack.

It's a bummer but I'm going to have to either change the bullets or direct solder.
I emailed my flip vid and comments on the bullets to DJI support direct but that went unanswered.

 

[Bruiserbill]

How does it behave with the video TX turned off? A full watt transmitter is quite hefty and can significantly reduce your receiver sensitivity. I have a similar setup with a Flame Wheel 550, NAZA, and 1W 910 MHz tx. I also have a camera gimbal with servos that clued me into the problem. When I turn on the video TX the servos start to jitter a lot. Without the servos it wouldn't be evident how bad the signal was. I did a range test with the video tx off and got about 100 paces. (Futaba and Spektrum say you should get at least 30 paces.) With the TX on I lost half of that range. With a lot of experimentation I found a 900 MHz low pass filter ($27) from rangevideo.com I could add to the TX antenna and got my range back and fixed the interference problem.

Good luck, and don't give up!

I am not sure of the make of the transmitter, just know its 1000 mw. 1.3 ghz. I also notice a bit more jitter in the servos when i plug in the video tx. but regardless it acts the same. How does one test esc's?

 

[kloner]

it sounded great in the vid so like ed, not the props

feel each motor/esc/set of bullets after a flight and note whats warmer than the next. when you get the cg off a hovering MR like you have pictured with the cam and gimble out front and no counter weight, your loading up the front half more than the rear half....... if you hover 500 watts, instead of each motor using 83 watts, just for example the fronts run 150, next back 90, rear 20....... and it stress's the crap out of the other set. it can be done for a while, then it eats the motors.... might feel for bad bearings. Hold the leg under a motor and spin the prop. if it's gritty, it would be one to look at for heat as well

1.3 doesn't usually mess with the radio,,, but can. using those filters decreases range so i try getting the part interferring smoothed over better

no real test for seeing if an esc is bad, look for heat and keep it low and leave teh camera off at first, if no heat, fly the cam and check again

 

[birdseyeap]

Very good point.

Dave, because of the length of the video, I would rule out Props and Vibration. I would look to the connectors between the motors and the escs. As you use them, they heat up and may fail. You had another period of instability before you eventually crashed. Just my observations.

Very good point. As I sifted through the crash site, I did notice one ESC to Batt wire had come off the solder pad, but wasn't sure if that was the cause or a result of the crash.

 

[kloner]

if it came off after the crash, it should rip the solder pad off the pcb before the wire leave the pad. it is most likely why it crashed..... make the joints nice and wet, lotsa solder and don't move while it cools

 

[estiavilla]

I am also having some problem alike.

I have a f450 with Naza for quite a while, good flight so far, but recently it just drop out of the air and landed upside down, FC disarmed the motors, due to upside down...but when i saw nothing damage, i flipped it over, armed it and flew again with no problem at all.

Next, after some flight, while changing to fresh lipo packs, lift off to hover, it flipped again for no apprent reason !!!

I m confused now, checked all solder joints, is it the bullet connectors between the esc and motor ?

 

[DesJardins]

check the bullet connectors
check motors for damage
check wires & solder joints

probably the same thing I'm struggling with which simply seems to be bad connection from the DJI motor/ESC. I can't find any other reason it would randomly flip

 

[kloner]

any of you guys have a nice camera that does macro? can anybody post some pictures of there solder......... show the esc connections to the board best you can if possible

 

[DesJardins]

I can tonight, getting ready for my hour long drive to the office... Yay

 

[Gump]

Being new to the forums, and new to flying, I will say that I'm no expert. I can however say that after racing 8th scale E-Buggys for the past three seasons I have come to realize that bullet connectors are inconsistent, unreliable and wear out at different rates than one another. I have has them cause high resistance connections that would literally melt the plastic hard casings on the battery and give performance issues as well. I even had one melt the solder joint apart inside the lipo.
I would say that if you're flying expensive frames and expensive equipment, it may be in your best interest to eliminate bullet connectors from your frame and live with the hassles of soldering.

 

[kloner]

on a dji esc, the wires that normally go out to the motor are bullets that have a cut in them and there slid onto the pcb with silver solder. so a couple things happen, you can easily cause a short without solder skills.you get the esc's pcb hot getting it apart. The problem tends to be on the motor side and it usually sounds like a dry socket kinda solder problem, that or the cold socket from being moved. When this happens a coat of rosin gets between the wire and solder and usally will intermitently fail even though it appears to be wire going into a pool of solder. The easiest fix is to resolder all the motors bullets and re heatshrink them.

If that's not what's happening theres one more thing a bullet can do and i kinda remember this on my first rig. if you look at the motors side on the plug it has little pieces of metal flared out so when you push it together it helps make contact. You want those stretched out a little bit, just enough to make good tension but not so much it rips or otherwise looks broken. if that's not in tact, replace the plug.

However, all the normal stuff out of the way........ the wire goes into the motor and immediately starts crossing copper wire. inside the esc theres a crap load of fet's, there straight under them metal plates that are drawing heat off em,,,,, there are all levels of quality available. no reason a bad batch couldn't cause something like this. There ae so many factors,,,,,, just wish we knew exactly which one to target so could just fix em instead of wonder about em