Tau Labs RX wiring harnes
- Thread starter Kilby
- Start date
peabody124
Member
I'm confused. I see everything looks fine at the end but from the paragraph before it sounds like there might be an issue still?
If you are having problems drop by irc (click chat on the OP forums) and type peabody124 - it will ping me and if I'm at my comp we can talk real time (sadly I usually am). If I'm not there post a link to this thread and most of the guys can walk you through that video.
I wanted to say thanks btw for all the help on this. It floors me to see so much effort by an open source community, seriously. I'm tied up with my wedding next month, but as soon as some of that dust settles I'm looking forward to pitching in and helping in any way possible.[/QUOTE]
Kilby
Active Member
Srry to be confusing. The original problem of not have yaw servo working is still there. I think I just need to get my hands on the new GCS build for Mac when it's available. Any idea when that might be?
I would catch up with you on IRC, but I'm out of town right now and only have Internet access on my iPad.
I would catch up with you on IRC, but I'm out of town right now and only have Internet access on my iPad.
Gary Mortimer
Member
You have actually got a servo connected to see if its working Kilby? Don't forget when you do to set the pulse for the servo to 50 and for the motors 400. If you have them all at 400 you will burn the servo out.
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peabody124
Member
Hopefully by the end of the day. This is fixed already but one of the setting definitions changed (to allow yaw to be +180 degrees) and I want to make sure that isn't going to corrupt other settings.
Kilby
Active Member
Ok, so it continues. Just to recap, I was having problems getting my yaw to work in a tricopter set up. Thanks to the help of those in this thread I was able to figure out it was a bug in GCS overwriting some settings on save. A work around was shown in one of the videos, but it did not help in my case (manually setting the channel). I was able to send a signal to the yaw servo, but not from the yaw setting in the mixer. If I assigned pitch or roll to the servo channel it would move as expected from the input, but yaw doesn't seem to effect it at all.
Now, it gets worse. While in the process of troubleshooting this I decided to document my execution of the workaround suggested above. As soon as I started filming my actions, the coptercontrol board grew a mind of it's own and started randomly sending throttle signal to the board. I of course was not touching the radio, but the coptercontrol acted as if the sticks were being pushed all around. This carried on for about a minute and I captured it on video. Once everything stopped, it seems like there is now a power problem on the board itself. It will only power up from the USB cable, and it appears to send no power to the rx. If I plug the main battery in the board doesn't even power up. If I have the USB plugged in it will power up, and if I then plug in the main battery it will power up the ESC's and arm them, but nothing to the RX. I can at that time use the onscreen sticks and send signal to the board and it throttles up & down as requested, but as soon as I disconnect the USB link, the board powers down and I have nothing.
Any idea what this might be? How should I move forward in troubleshooting this? Should I just start over again with a fresh firmware update?
Here is the video I mention above.
jes1111, thanks for the Mixer info. That helped get my head around the GUI a little better, but it only confirmed that my settings were as they should be, but still no luck.
Gary, I did in fact have the pulse set to 400 and going to a servo. I don't think it's burnt out though, so thanks for giving me the heads up on that before it took a dive!
peabody124, I'll be watching for the new builds.
Now, it gets worse. While in the process of troubleshooting this I decided to document my execution of the workaround suggested above. As soon as I started filming my actions, the coptercontrol board grew a mind of it's own and started randomly sending throttle signal to the board. I of course was not touching the radio, but the coptercontrol acted as if the sticks were being pushed all around. This carried on for about a minute and I captured it on video. Once everything stopped, it seems like there is now a power problem on the board itself. It will only power up from the USB cable, and it appears to send no power to the rx. If I plug the main battery in the board doesn't even power up. If I have the USB plugged in it will power up, and if I then plug in the main battery it will power up the ESC's and arm them, but nothing to the RX. I can at that time use the onscreen sticks and send signal to the board and it throttles up & down as requested, but as soon as I disconnect the USB link, the board powers down and I have nothing.
Any idea what this might be? How should I move forward in troubleshooting this? Should I just start over again with a fresh firmware update?
Here is the video I mention above.
jes1111, thanks for the Mixer info. That helped get my head around the GUI a little better, but it only confirmed that my settings were as they should be, but still no luck.
Gary, I did in fact have the pulse set to 400 and going to a servo. I don't think it's burnt out though, so thanks for giving me the heads up on that before it took a dive!
peabody124, I'll be watching for the new builds.
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This makes me think you have a bad BEC. What does your ESC->CC wiring look like?
You should have 5V, Gnd, Signal from only one ESC connected to the outputs of the CC board. Every other ESC should only have signal. Can you check the voltage between the 5V and Gnd coming from the ESC?
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Kilby
Active Member
Hey Buzz,
I'll check the wiring today after work, but I have it installed exactly as you mention. It was working during initial testing, so I doubt it's the wiring since the copter never moved from the bench with props off. I guess the BEC inside the ESC could have gone bad, but that would be seriously strange timing to happen the same time I started having other problems like the runaway throttle.
Could this be some kind of firmware issue? Should I re-flash the board?
I'll check the wiring today after work, but I have it installed exactly as you mention. It was working during initial testing, so I doubt it's the wiring since the copter never moved from the bench with props off. I guess the BEC inside the ESC could have gone bad, but that would be seriously strange timing to happen the same time I started having other problems like the runaway throttle.
Could this be some kind of firmware issue? Should I re-flash the board?
Gary Mortimer
Member
Well its behavior that I don't think any of us have seen. Have you got a spare RX battery about with which to power the board and see what happens then.
peabody124
Member
Sorry you are having a tough time. I packaged up a new version of the latest firmware code and the tricopter fix: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6645063/OpenPilot-20110531-21741525.dmg
One caveat: after updating you will have to connect to the board, go to to the tools menu and select erase, and then power cycle the board. There are some issues migrating settings that I'd like to fix properly before publishing to a new version.
Next if the problem persists we need to figure out if it's an input or output problem. Did you see glitches on the controller gadget when transmitter was stilll?
One caveat: after updating you will have to connect to the board, go to to the tools menu and select erase, and then power cycle the board. There are some issues migrating settings that I'd like to fix properly before publishing to a new version.
Next if the problem persists we need to figure out if it's an input or output problem. Did you see glitches on the controller gadget when transmitter was stilll?
Kilby
Active Member
No luck. GCS throws an error upon loading and then crashes.
I have the error log at http://elevatedelement.com/coptercontrol/GCS_errormsg.txt
and the initial error message:
I have the error log at http://elevatedelement.com/coptercontrol/GCS_errormsg.txt
and the initial error message:
peabody124
Member
Crap. I don't see that when I start up but I do get a segfault when I exit. A bug must have crept into master. We do try!!!
I'll try and track this down.
I'll try and track this down.
peabody124
Member
Ok. It seems like GCS is thoroughly fucked on mac for now. You might want to try playing with the previous version until then. It will take me a few days.
Should work fine as long as you give Windows access to the USB. Please do report if this works for you, as I'd like to add it to the Wiki documentation.