Hoverfly HFP + GPS using Herkules II v4 ESC board - first attempt

[jrlederer]

as an interim project to hold me over until I go to NAB next week, I decided to do what is described by the title of this post. BorisS & redridinghood, I decided to post here because I couldn't figure out how to attach an image to a private message, though I have no problem doing so in a thread...hmm? Here is a repost of the question i sent to each of you via PM:

I was hoping you could help me out a little with my new interim project that I decided to take up between now and NAB, which is that I've decided to slap together some of the many unused electronic components that I have laying around my shop. Specifically, a set of Hoverfly Pro + GPS board, a set of 4 Axi 2218/20s, and to power them, a Herkules II v4 board, which is what I am having problems (I think) with.

I've followed your posts on how to create the micromatch cable to PPM outs with one plug containing the 8th micromatch grounding wire, and then added simply a deans plug to receive power from the 4S Lipo I will use as a flight pack. Then I went ahead and used the programming cable to upload PPM 8Hz 16DEG AFW1 to each of the 4 outputs successfully following the directions on Andreasbaier.de website. Then I taped into the deans power feed a supply for the HFP boards so that they will be able to talk direct voltage measurements from the flight pack.

Once all assembled, I plugged all the motors cables (3each) to the extensions that I soldered well to the Herkules II boards via gold connectors, then used the tap with servo cable to power the flight boards, then attached my receiver to the FC, and finally plugged my flight pack to the finished setup. Well, the Hoverfly boards are getting power as they sound their startup tones and LEDs, and the receiver lights up n connection with my transmitter, but there are no lights on the Herkules boards nor do the motors sound any initializing tones as I expected they would, despite my measuring 16 volts across one of he Mosfets on he Herkules ESC. So that tells me that the Herks are receiving full power, bu I was under the impression there ought to b some type of visual indication tha they are working properly, am I doing something wrong that you are able to identify by my description?

I appreciate you taking the time to help me troubleshoot here, as I think I must b extraordinarily close to having this setup airborne.

Thans again,

Jonathan


​

 

[jrlederer]

progress update

BorisS replied and asked whether I had seen his video describing how to make a custom micromatch cable (used by Herkules to interface with either PPM or i2c - firmware dependent and can be changed easily via programming cable).

Here is my response with a quick pic I took showing the test subject. I am using a cheapie frame just because its all I had laying around, but I obviously have some reservations about really deploying a setup airborne whose frame costs less than does one single motor. Its a little comical, but what I'm trying to do is test the electronics to get everything working as it should, then I will most likely go ahead and grab another Droidworx frame to keep the theme constant in my collection, but for now, some Align trex 500 booms and a generic centerplate will have to do.

BorisS, I decided after watching your tutorial vid to do it a different way, but the results are the same. Ok, and AFW on or off? Here's a pic of my micromatch cable. I did, in fact, see your video showing how you did it, but I did it a bit differently, just because it, initially, seemed that it would be easier. This is because I am pretty good, after all the years doing it, about crimping the little servo pins to create custom-length servo cables. I might have to change this cable ultimately, to distribute ground to each of them, as for some reason i see, to recall that a testbench setup i had tried many months back did not respond when i had only the signal cable without ground reference along with each signal. before i do this though i will await response from you or another user because its a pain in the butt that, if i can avoid, i would prefer to.

View attachment 3813View attachment 3814
As you can see, instead of cutting the micromatch cable and soldering on extension servo cables, i simply crimped the individual PPM cables and placed one connector (signal wire) into each servo plug, then connected them to the appropriate ESC port of the Hoverfly Pro board. Tell me what you think. I cant find anything wrong, after checking with my multimeter for continuity and no shorts just as you did in the video.

 

[BorisS]

Looks fine ! For you future setup try to keep the ribon cable as short as possible. Knowing from you PM that the Herk board shows no response from the signals they are getting from the hoverfly board, please take the Hoverfly boards out of the equation at the beginning and hook up a servo tester to one of the ESC units or all dosent matter and see if you get the LED to light up and eventually the motors to start spinning.

Boris

 

[BorisS]

Are you sure after flashing with the PPM FW that everything went well. Did you check the status log window ?

Boris

 

[redridinghood]

Jonathan

Don't connect the ground cable to the HFP. Make sure the micomatch plug is facing the correct way.

 

[jrlederer]

It appeared to flash successfully. I ticked the box 'open protocolwindow after processing' and saw the status and it looked as the results that are posted in the how-to page andreasbaier.de website.

 

[jrlederer]

I will try not connecting the ground cable to HFP now. Hmm...interesting you say disconnect ground, as posted above I seem to remember one trial I did at one point with a Hoverfly Sport that did not respond when not having a ground reference along with each signal cable, but I could be recalling incorrectly. Additionally, just because I thought its kinda wierd, I'll mention that even though I have tapped power off of the main battery cables to power the HFP + GPS, I am still having to power my receiver via a BEC off a different battery. Is it normal that supplying the board with proper voltage does not automatically provide power to the receiver? Maybe that has something to do with it. Should I be seeing any visual indication that the board is operating at least, like LEDs or anything??

 

[jrlederer]

Looks fine ! For you future setup try to keep the ribon cable as short as possible. Knowing from you PM that the Herk board shows no response from the signals they are getting from the hoverfly board, please take the Hoverfly boards out of the equation at the beginning and hook up a servo tester to one of the ESC units or all dosent matter and see if you get the LED to light up and eventually the motors to start spinning.

Boris

I do not have a servo tester in the classical sense. I do have, although I'm not sure it is a 'servo tester' officially, is a small unit that I power using a small 4.8v receiver pack via a servo plug which will exercise a servo to its endpoints back-and-forth. Is this what you are talking about? I usually use this tool when setting up single-rotor helis and flybarless systems to ensure i am centering the horn so as to mount the arm perpendicularly without having to connect to a receiver as I am building a bird from scratch to save myself a step later on when everything is together and then not having enough space to pull on and off the servo horns without special tool or disassembling a bit to provide access room.

Any other way to test the board is working properly? Should I try to connect the i2c to a stack of MK boards and load i2c firmware, so I can at least witness that the LEDs function?

 

[jrlederer]

Ok, major update! Good news and bad news.

Bad news: something is critically ****ed up now, most likely, as the Herkules began pouring smoke from the Elkos (i think that's what they're called -- the little components 4 pieces that were provided with the board to be soldered in place by customer). I am an electrical engineer who just graduated two years ago from a major four-year university in USA so it wasn't a poor soldering job. All I can say, without disassembling the stack to look closer at the board is that something burned and got so hot that it desoldered one of the 3 cables that I had going to one of the motors! I pray, though not confident, that I disconnected the battery soon enough to salvage the Herkules board and that it didn't damage the motor to which the cable was de-soldered.

After writing my last post about the way I was powering my receiver off of a separate small battery, I realized in writing that that there may have been two ground references somewhere in the loop. So after I went back to the setup and I removed the ground from the HFP as redridinghood said, and also isolated the power to the receiver by also only connecting the signal wires between it and the HFP board. Then I went ahead and connected the battery and...

Good News: when, after performing the above modifications, I plugged in the Lipo, magic! I heard all sorts of jingles coming from the motors, and four bright blue LEDs lit up and then it played a bunch of initialization tones, one of which was 'duh duh da dut duh da, charge!!' and then i went to arm the board so I could test the motors directions, and then <please refer to 'Bad News' above...>

how frustrating...Mr. Baier, if you are reading this, where did I go wrong? I followed directions so very diligently. Is there something out of my control at fault here? Just doesn't make sense, electrically, because I tested for continuity and shorts all last night to ensure that nothing I performed could cause problems. Please advise!

red and boriss. if you've read my other posts, you'd have seen me mention that it just so happens that I have sitting here 3 more brand new herkules boards!! Do i risk another and continue testing? At 500USD a pop, I'm hesitant, though not completely against continuing experimentation as it was just working!! i'd love to know what actually caused the stream of ill smelling smoke to pour from that corner of the board before risking another one of these costly boards. Please advise!

--jonathan

 

[BorisS]

Ok, major update! Good news and bad news.

Bad news: something is critically ****ed up now, most likely, as the Herkules began pouring smoke from the Elkos (i think that's what they're called -- the little components 4 pieces that were provided with the board to be soldered in place by customer). I am an electrical engineer who just graduated two years ago from a major four-year university in USA so it wasn't a poor soldering job. All I can say, without disassembling the stack to look closer at the board is that something burned and got so hot that it desoldered one of the 3 cables that I had going to one of the motors! I pray, though not confident, that I disconnected the battery soon enough to salvage the Herkules board and that it didn't damage the motor to which the cable was de-soldered.

After writing my last post about the way I was powering my receiver off of a separate small battery, I realized in writing that that there may have been two ground references somewhere in the loop. So after I went back to the setup and I removed the ground from the HFP as redridinghood said, and also isolated the power to the receiver by also only connecting the signal wires between it and the HFP board. Then I went ahead and connected the battery and...

Good News: when, after performing the above modifications, I plugged in the Lipo, magic! I heard all sorts of jingles coming from the motors, and four bright blue LEDs lit up and then it played a bunch of initialization tones, one of which was 'duh duh da dut duh da, charge!!' and then i went to arm the board so I could test the motors directions, and then <please refer to 'Bad News' above...>

how frustrating...Mr. Baier, if you are reading this, where did I go wrong? I followed directions so very diligently. Is there something out of my control at fault here? Just doesn't make sense, electrically, because I tested for continuity and shorts all last night to ensure that nothing I performed could cause problems. Please advise!

red and boriss. if you've read my other posts, you'd have seen me mention that it just so happens that I have sitting here 3 more brand new herkules boards!! Do i risk another and continue testing? At 500USD a pop, I'm hesitant, though not completely against continuing experimentation as it was just working!! i'd love to know what actually caused the stream of ill smelling smoke to pour from that corner of the board before risking another one of these costly boards. Please advise!

--jonathan

Hi Jonathan,

Andreas (Mr. Baier ) will probably not be reading this thread, but send him a mail and I think best is if you return the board for him to check out what went wrong ! To me it sounds more like one of the FETS didnt do what it was suppose to and did close or what ever. Just speculating here though. You have a chance of making a detailed Photo of the board ?

I cant see you doing anything majorly wrong to go sure before you prep the next board give detailed infos with fotos what your steps were.

Boris



I am really wondering what went wrong because there isnt much more than connection the Herk main power plus minus, getting the Elkos on and getting the PPM signals in to get them started up.

 

[ichwillnix]

Hi Jonathan,

can you please make a drawing with all the wires and cables to see how the complete system was wired? This is the first step.

Why the Herkules wasnt responding firstly could have more root causes (Here are a few assumptions):

- Wrong Software flashed? For PPM you have to flash PPM Software, for I2C usage (Mikrokopter) you have to flash I2C.

- If wiring was correct, maybe Hoverfly is not delivering a correct 0% PPM Signal. 0% meas less than 1.1msec pulse width. This is a safety feature of Herkules that it doesn't spin up when PPM is not at zero when powering up. So like Boris said, use a cheap servotester (10 bucks or so) or a Receiver output to test if the Herkules reacts with a stupid PPM Signal. When using a receiver, set the Servoway to +/- 110%. Escpecially the Spektrum Receivers are not delivering only +/- 95% Servooutput.
This is one reason why you have to learn the Hoverfly to different Receivers

- Maybe the wiring was not correct. If you are removing Ground from anyhwere, you have to take care which one to remove! Maybe you "back supplied" the Herkules or the via the intrinsic body protection diodes and this may have destroyed one micro or MOSFET. If the PCB is defect, it is hard to repair :-(

Jon, please make this wiring scheme and some detailed fotos of the wiring. Then we can discuss further on.

Best regards,
Andreas

 

[jrlederer]

ok i will do as suggested. hopefully a learning experience for all...enjoy!

Dear Andreas, thank you so much for your support. It really means a lot that you are there when a customer needs you, and at such short notice! After the bittersweet success I had yesterday afternoon, I simply put all flight related activity on hold for the remainder of the day and switched gears to my chess playing habit which has recently become another time consuming obsession of mine. I needed something to capture my attention whilst I awaited responses to my posts in this thread yesterday. It was such an anticlimactic moment when the board, after making sweet sounds of initialization accompanied by the gorgeous blue LEDs illuminating brightly, began billowing the thick stream of white smoke from the corner of the board (from one of the Elkos). I reached the point of finally exhausting my focus on that subject and decided it was a good point to stop for the day and let my wits re-energize, so as not to work in a frustrated state of mind.

Anyway, I read your response and those of red and borisS, and I think its a great idea and have no problem taking a full spread of pictures that will start from exactly the point where I left everything yesterday. All wires are still connected and boards are still mounted. We will all be seeing the board for the very first time up-close since the smoke-out event it had yesterday. I, myself, am holding my breath to see if there is any visible damage to the board itself, as I happen to agree with BorisS in that I'd put my money on there having been a malfunction with the hardware beyond my control. I understand that everyone probably says this and that most times, it does turn out that it was user error and almost never is a faulty hardware. ** (see note at end of post)

Following the presentation that I will provide, showing the craft as it sits now, which is precisely as it was yesterday after correctly booting and thereafter, for reasons yet to be determined, 30 seconds later, spontaneously melting or burning a component and causing lots of smoke and a disconnected 1 of 3 motor wires of that corner of the board, I hope to either hear from the boss-man where I went wrong or confirm that it was a component failure (as I strongly suspect) and be given the opportunity to have it repaired and then, with approval from Andreas (boss-man) go ahead and give another of my 3 brand new identical boards a try with the same procedure. I'm looking forward to learning lots in the coming hours!! Bare with me for a little while as I prepare the camera and begin the documented disassembly!

Thanks everyone who is involved for your time and assistance regarding this project. It appears that I may be one of the first ones, at least publicly logging such, who is attempting to make this combination work out and hopefully this will help any/all people who attempt this setup in the future.

Cheers,
Jonathan

** NOTE (from above) **

Just a note to the skeptics out there: this incident happened with very odd and ironic timing, as just yesterday I was about to post a critique on someone's post who was heralding that a vendor was such a great person and how much of a good experience he had with that seller. The seller then came on and responded in the thread and gave a brief example of why he provides such great service. The story he used to backup his reasoning was that he knew how it felt to have bad service from a retailer since he, at the beginning of his multi rotor interest, decided to purchase an RTF quad that was frightfully expensive. Then, he recounts that he received this machine and took it out on location for a job he had lined up, and lo and behold, he crashed after only being airborne for half of a minute or so. This poster continued by saying that he was an experienced pilot, and so knew that the crash was not a result of poor piloting skills, but instead of an incorrectly assembled RTF aircraft by the seller he purchased it from, claiming thereafter that the vendor would not stand by him (the customer) and refund the money for the craft that was now a collection of broken parts. I ended up not commenting negatively cuz I knew I would get flamed for being pessemistic in a 'feel good' thread, but the point I was going to make is that is a terrible justification that he got badly serviced. Anyone with any experience knows well that even the best of us have moments of 'dumb-thumbs' or brain farts in general, so what was this guy trying to convey, that if I buy a quad from him then accidentally enable carefree mode on a switch while preparing for my first flight in my living room just to see how vibe-free it is or isn't and once I lift off get confused with why the controls not behaving properly and crash into my brand new 60" LCD tv and demolish both quad and TV, that this guy provides such service that he would offer to replace both items and punitive damages? Bull**** neighbor. So with that in mind, I intend to prove or show at least beyond a realistic doubt that, in my circumstances with this Herk board particularly, in conjunction with my certified skills in the field of sensitive electronics, is a situation that warrants a repair by the manufacturer since I am hoping that the reality is convincing enough to make him wonder what happened himself, since I can't honestly imagine that anyone could have possibly operated in a more thorough manner than i, myself, did. I look forward to hearing what the rest of this fine community thinks.

p.s.-> here's a photo of me (look closely and you'll notice me as I'm the only white-boy amongst my classmates -- kinda funny -- I stick out like a sore thumb!) as well as a pic of my final lab project -- a handmade 3" silicon wafer. Each of those little subdivisions contain wafer I described in my university clean-room lab for the class Introduction to Microelectronic Fabrication Techniques, just as a small proof that my electronic skills are up to par, officially Here is a quick run down that I wrote as the lead in to a 26 page final report that was due as the final project in the class for those who might be interested:

View attachment 3828View attachment 3829

Abstract:

Introduction to Microelectronics provides a basic comprehension of microelectronic processing and fabrication. The goal was to become familiarized with the process of IC fabrication as well as to learn how to operate in a clean room environment. The fabrication process for any IC technology is a mixture of a number of individual processes such as ion implantation, photolithography and oxidation, in addition to others that will be mentioned herein.

In this lab, two resistors, two MOS capacitors, as well as both a p-n junction and Schottky diode, were fabricated and characterized. The characterization laboratory test results indicated that our process created a well-patterned and clean device.

Introduction:

The laboratory portion of Introduction to Microelectronics explains by hands-on learning and example, the principles of semiconductor processing and device characterization in microelectronic fabrication. Through a complex and involved series of processes, integrated circuits are produced. In order to gain a basic understanding of the fabrication process of microelectronic devices, six processes were used: oxidation, photolithography, diffusion, metallization, etching, and ion implantation (doping). The wafers produced in this laboratory only used three masks, while the current state-of-the-art industry now produces wafers exceeding twenty masks. This laboratory served as a mechanism for understanding the much more complex operations that will face us, as engineers, in the years to come.

 

[jrlederer]

p.s. it might be a little bit because, since today is my birthday (04/12/19xx -- mystery age! wait, only girls do that ... I'm 32 today!!), I am being taken out for a late lunch by some old friends. I will get to taking pics asap though. Thanks again, everyone!

 

[BorisS]

belated habby birthday hope you had a good one !

Boris

 

[jrlederer]

belated habby birthday hope you had a good one !

Boris

Hey, thanks so very much for the kind wishes. I just returned home from a big birthday dinner with lots of family and friends. Had a great time, but pretty quiet and definitely not the kind of wild parties I've had in previous years. Imagine, home before the bars even close?! I must be getting old(er). Haha...especially that I'm not too drunk to want to deliver the photos and build log that I promised a bit earlier!! Wow, this was a very tame birthday, as by my usual standards I wouldn't be over my hangover/partying binge before 3 or 4 days time enough to stay up for a bit and deliver n my word I gave you all earlier -- primarily to show Mr. Baier what I'd done, not incorrectly I sincerely don't think so at least, but I'll let him be the judge and everyone else feel free to lend your independent opinions on the matter and hopefully the combination of the two can in the best case get the board that smoked replaced, down to the next best case which would be that it's safe to go ahead and simply replace the board (unknown, although not likely great condition after yesterdays mishap) with another brand new board of 3 new ones I have still laying around, and retry engaging the flight control so I can continue on to setting each motors proper direction of rotation, followed by mounting props and test flying this previously rarely seen combination of high quality electronics!

Sorry, but I must admit, I did have a couple glasses of wine so it seems when I look above tha I've written quite a bit when I really just wanted to give notice that I am gonna try to do he write-up with pics that I projected I'd get done earlier!

thanks again for the birthday wishes!

sincerely,

Jonathan

 

[hoverben]

First, of course, a belated happy birthday to you!

Secondly, I really wish I'd seen this thread a few days ago. I think it's great that you're experimenting with what you've got, and I look forward to the results if you are successful.

HOWEVER, I do want to remind anyone else reading along that, officially, Hoverfly products are incompatible with Herkules boards. Please only attempt this kind of conversion at your own risk.