Problems with brand new F450 + NAZA

[ChopperAddict]

I have just had a very useful PM to tell me where I can buy spare PMU's quite reasonably, so have ordered 2 of the brutes. I am fairly convinced now that this PMU is dead. I have tried every trick in the book to install the driver, but nothing works. I have even done it the hard way from Control panel - Devices - Add legacy device, but although that found the relevant file when I pointed it to the extracted version of the RAR, it still failed, telling me that the driver was installed, but may not work !!! I checked it in the list of devices and sure enough, it was there now, but with a yellow exclamation mark on it.

I plugged NAZA in to a lipo, plugged the PMU into a USB extension lead I have on my bench leading to the PC, and checked the devices list, still there, with exclamation mark on it.

All seems to point to the PMU being somewhat screwed doesn't it ? Not very good with a brand new kit.
Ian

if you dont remember the .rar file then ya, you skipped over that part. if you did do it, in your pc, look at start, devices and printers and with naza plugged in it'll show as being so there. That's the pc seeing the imu plugged in and the driver part installed correctly

 

[kloner]

if the yellow warning thing is showing next to the device, you don't have it installed right and it'll wont work. Have you tried different ports on the pc for the usb connection? like physically move the wire from one plug to another.

When you botch a driver install and start installing over one another you can get some weird stuff to happen. You want to install it clean. in older windows, you used to be able to boot in safe mode, when you did, it'd show all your driver installs. like you see that device, it'd show all 11 times you tried and you could delete them. not sure if is still like that. when you just run a pc normal, it only shows the one that boots in the devices

you are powering up the tx and quad before plugging it in to the pc yea?

If you had it all plugged in when you were trying to install it would be a huge problem. install the driver with nothing else going on and nothing plugged into the pc

 

[ChopperAddict]

Hey kloner. bunch of stuff there for sure. Firstly, I do not get even the slightest blip from the LED on the PMU - Zilch - nothing. I have not tried different physical usb ports on the machine, but will do so this morning. As you say, installing drivers over and over can lead to horrors in windozzzzzzze, but sadly you cannot safe boot any more, or not in vista, which I am using.

I do power up Tx and quad before connecting USB lead, but have tried various combinations of that. According to the driver install, it claims that it cannot find a device to install a driver for, and only offers Finish or Cancel - dead stop again.

Could a faulty PMU cause all of this grief ?
Ian

 

[Billywiz1307]

Sorry Ian, apart from this being a lesson to anyone else buying "cheap" direct from China, I have to say as a holder of a PPL, you will be used to checklists and it seems that the, albeit random instructions, for the NAZA and Flamewheel haven't been followed. And did I see in the photo's that some red leads had been cut? Where does it tell you to do that?

 

[ChopperAddict]

Hi there. Yes I suppose it may indicate a problem from buying cheap, but then everything is in there and seems fine, apart from this one problem...


As you say, I am indeed familiar with Check Lists, not that you could call the instructions provided with the kit or NAZA anything close to a reasonable checklist. However I am pretty sure that it does say somewhere that if you are using the 30A OPT ESC supplied, then you SHOULD cut the red feeds as the power is provided by this pesky PMU. Also I was just looking at some other threads and found this answer from someone :-


you have to cut all the red wire's. the led unit is a bec and puts out 5 volt for naza and receiver.

Can anyone give a definitive answer to this question of the red wire ?

I will double check in my instructions in the PDF about this as well.
Thanks - Ian

Sorry Ian, apart from this being a lesson to anyone else buying "cheap" direct from China, I have to say as a holder of a PPL, you will be used to checklists and it seems that the, albeit random instructions, for the NAZA and Flamewheel haven't been followed. And did I see in the photo's that some red leads had been cut? Where does it tell you to do that?

 

[vinnygogo]

with normal esc with a bec, you should indeed cut the red wire. but since the dji esc's are opto's without bec, you dont need to.

 

[kloner]

I hit f8 when my vista machine was booting up and it has safe mode options. might take a look just in case it's a bunch of failed driver instalations hanging ya. wasn't there something in the post that said you had problems installing the software part of the driver?

so your saying that with the LED and X3 wires plugged in, when you power it all up, theres no lights even not plugged into the pc? if so screw the driver not installing, you got a hardware problem. even when a rx isn't there, it flashes orange over and over. does the rx bind and hold a solid light on all that are lit up?

 

[kloner]

yep on the esc red wire part......... you also didn't want to cut it, next time unclip and fold it back, makes it easier to put back.

the dji kit plugs together as supplied, and you can't have something not plugged in or upside down to "try"

 

[tstrike]

If it's the stock f450 naza kit, I didn't cut any wires out, just plugged it all in and works like a charm. Maybe try getting the kit back to stock by reconnecting the wires to the opto's and go from there.

Hi there. Yes I suppose it may indicate a problem from buying cheap, but then everything is in there and seems fine, apart from this one problem...


As you say, I am indeed familiar with Check Lists, not that you could call the instructions provided with the kit or NAZA anything close to a reasonable checklist. However I am pretty sure that it does say somewhere that if you are using the 30A OPT ESC supplied, then you SHOULD cut the red feeds as the power is provided by this pesky PMU. Also I was just looking at some other threads and found this answer from someone :-


you have to cut all the red wire's. the led unit is a bec and puts out 5 volt for naza and receiver.

Can anyone give a definitive answer to this question of the red wire ?

I will double check in my instructions in the PDF about this as well.
Thanks - Ian

 

[tstrike]

View attachment 4045 It's all right there in plain chinese to english translation, clear as a bell, yup, clear as a bell:nevreness:. Really, start by reconnecting everything and go from there.

 

[kloner]

when ya get it going, grab one of these, is 12 plugs to fix whatcha done there. mine are all trimmed to length now and redone with them. tin the bare wire before ya crimp it down

http://www.servocity.com/html/futaba_male.html

 

[ChopperAddict]

Well thanks for all the feedback guys, I have already resoldered the red wires (power) but it made no difference at all.

However I have made some progress by trying to think laterally. I am now quite firmly of the belief the I have a duff PMU, so working on that premise I decided to connect the quad to an 2200 11.1 v lipo in the normal way, but to also connect another (14.8v ) lipo via one of my testing BECs directly into the battery port on the NAZA. So Tx on first, then powered up the quad, and finally the additional power, and to my total surprise I got an initialization tone !!!!!!!!. :02.47-tranquillity:

I also got a solid green light on the PMU - real progress. So I though I had better try and install the driver while I was on the winning side. I quickly went into the device manager and uninstalled the clearly non existent DJI driver. Ran up the BAT file for the driver and YES, it installed the driver as well. Yippee I thought, I am there, well sort of anyway. :nevreness:

Ran up the Naza Assistant software and YES, had the right signs from the look of it, and both the Read and Write buttons were enabled. I set the first screen to 4 prop X and hit Write. Not sure if it did as I did not see any changes so the jury is out on that. The final test was on the next screen, setting up the transmitter. I assume that those slider should move when you move the sticks ? but they didn't, so I guess I am not quite there yet ????

Does that point to a bad PMU to everyone else, or could it still be something else ?
Cheers - Ian

View attachment 5580 It's all right there in plain chinese to english translation, clear as a bell, yup, clear as a bell:nevreness:. Really, start by reconnecting everything and go from there.

 

[vinnygogo]

yes definetly a dead pmu. the led works trough the led port as is the usb. so only the bec part of the pmu is broken. did you bind your receiver?

 

[ChopperAddict]

Hi Vinny, Yep I sure did bind the Receiver, I did it before it was connected to the naza gear at all. I have also rebound it several times. I have a friend of mine who is in to quads coming over this afternoon with a spare PMU to try out, so we will see if we are right about it. I think it is personally, but ......
cheers - Ian

yes definetly a dead pmu. the led works trough the led port as is the usb. so only the bec part of the pmu is broken. did you bind your receiver?

 

[kloner]

on the calibration screen, make sure the choice between d.bus and traditional is set to traditional, then hit write, then look back at the calibration screen for movement

 

[ChopperAddict]

Hi everyone

My mate Robbie came over later yesterday afternoon, together with his own 450 NAZA and DX8. We struggles for quite some time, getting the same results as I was seeing, so he suggested we bind HIS radio to my Rx and see what happens. Well, It was much the same and we were getting close to despair as we kept getting an error [[8] that told us to recalibrate our transmitter. Well both of them were fine and his is actually flying his quad, so that cannot be right eh ?

We tried all sorts of things but eventually, and after a couple of phone calls to a good friend of his, we used his radio to go into the calibration screen and first of all set up the mode switch by adjusting the gear travel. After that, we were able to calibrate the sticks and it all started to come together.

So we switched back to my radio and tried the same trick - no success. Back to his radio to write down the gain readings so we could put them into my radio - YES YES YES, my radio started to work. rest the mode range, did the voltage check stuff and did the CC with my radio. TEARS OF JOY - my props spun up. :nevreness:

Double checked the props and switched the wires on one motor and she was airborne - just like that.

So it seems that the correct gain settings were certainly quite crucial in getting it all to work, but it is now flying.

We did a bit more fiddling with my Fat shark setup, only to find out after various testing that the camera I had bought was a 12v, so we rewired it to the lipo feed and now I have a flying F450 with working Fat Shark FPV

My eternal thanks must go out to Robbie for all his work yesterday, I don't think I would ever have worked it out without that help, but I also want to thank all you guys for all the suggestions you have made, I really do appreciate the help that 'i know is always there in the forum. I just hope that I can repay it by contributing my own help to others as I go along in Quads.

Fly safe and enjoy - Ian

 

[LeeT]

Well thanks for all the feedback guys, I have already resoldered the red wires (power) but it made no difference at all.

However I have made some progress by trying to think laterally. I am now quite firmly of the belief the I have a duff PMU, so working on that premise I decided to connect the quad to an 2200 11.1 v lipo in the normal way, but to also connect another (14.8v ) lipo via one of my testing BECs directly into the battery port on the NAZA. So Tx on first, then powered up the quad, and finally the additional power, and to my total surprise I got an initialization tone !!!!!!!!. :02.47-tranquillity:

I also got a solid green light on the PMU - real progress. So I though I had better try and install the driver while I was on the winning side. I quickly went into the device manager and uninstalled the clearly non existent DJI driver. Ran up the BAT file for the driver and YES, it installed the driver as well. Yippee I thought, I am there, well sort of anyway. :nevreness:

Ran up the Naza Assistant software and YES, had the right signs from the look of it, and both the Read and Write buttons were enabled. I set the first screen to 4 prop X and hit Write. Not sure if it did as I did not see any changes so the jury is out on that. The final test was on the next screen, setting up the transmitter. I assume that those slider should move when you move the sticks ? but they didn't, so I guess I am not quite there yet ????

Does that point to a bad PMU to everyone else, or could it still be something else ?
Cheers - Ian

After you installed the driver, did you update the firmware? My Naza was unresponsive until I did that. It is under the Tools menu on the top left side of the screen. If you cannot access the tools, it still means you do not have the driver installed correctly. The first time I installed the driver, I wasn't paying attention and Windows installed the generic. I had to go delete the old driver, and manually install the down loaded driver after converting in from a .rar file. If you think this is the problem, let me know what version of windows you are using, and I can take you through the uninstall / reinstall.

Lee

 

[ChopperAddict]

Hi Lee
Thanks for that bit of info, I will check it out, but only after I basically re-install Windoooozzze Vista Business. The day after we got it all up an running, Vista Business took violent exception and apparently decided to wipe out the entire registry !!!! or that is what the BSOD says. I now have to try and find my original Vista CD after moving back from the USA and twice here in the UK that could be quite a task.... Thanks Mickeysoft, just what I needed.

I "think" I do have the latest version (1.04) but it may well be I am going to have to go through the whole damned process again if it means a full new Windozzzzze installation. I really do hate Mickeysoft software.
Ian

 

[Jackella]

where do you fly Ian?,i'm in Blackpool and a Naza owner,just read your thread,could have helped you..sorry..

 

[ChopperAddict]

Hi Jackella
No problem, but nice to hear there is another naza owner locally. I have trouble finding decent flying sites around here in Poulton, it's all horses and stuff. I know of quite a good site in Bispham we could possibly meet at ? Whereabouts are you ?

Cheers Ian

where do you fly Ian?,i'm in Blackpool and a Naza owner,just read your thread,could have helped you..sorry..