Bloody multirotors !!!!!! This builds fighting me !

[Reman]

This is pretty much me just getting some frustration off my chest, And writing a progress note for my own reference at a future point in time. :)

The weather was perfect for flying yesterday........... So I decided to lock myself away and crack on with my folding Y6 build (Yeah, I know, I'm a moron !  ).

I'd already got it structurally to about 90%, and had wired up the flight power components (ESC's, PDB/BEC and motors), So it was just the wiring for the FC, gimbal, GPS, Bluetooth, Action cam power, 2x FPV cams and a 3 way video switch to sort out. I only wanted to get it to a state where I could test fly it LOS yesterday, But that didn't bloody happen.  :huh

First problem, I ordered an omnibus F4 clone from BangGood to replace the F3 I salvaged from my 450 hex (The original idea was just to break the 450 and rehome all the parts in a more portable folding Y6 frame..... But while it's in bits the urge to upgrade it a little got the better of me). All looked OK, But when I opened the bag I found they'd sent a version 2.0 board and not the v2.1 I'd ordered. The main difference is that the 2.1 has iBus solder pads, When the 2.0 needs you to use a uart for iBus. With all the stuff I'm fitting I needed all the uart's the board had anyway, So I couldn't lose one to the RX. OK, Report the problem to BG, Then as a stop gap I decided to use the old F3 board. I desoldered the straight pin connector strips from the hex's original F3 to replace them with the 90' pins I needed to use in order to fit it in the limited height of this new frame. After desoldering the pins I decided to power up the board on USB to check it was still OK...... Oh, Of course it wasn't ! It was totally soddin' dead. What else should I have expected ? 

OK, Not a major problem. I just broke out a spare F3 and after testing that I soldered on the pins. Retested and all looks good. After that I connected up the ESC's and FC power. This is where the next snag hit me.

All the ESC's were powering up, But the front bottom left one wouldn't initialize. After lots of checking wiring, solder joints and even soldering pins to yet another spare F3, I could see that the iNAV setup was fine, The ESC was fine, The FC was fine, And the motor was fine ?!?!? After a little more prodding it seemed that I'd completely lost power to that ESC. An hour later I'd lost power to 2 more (WTF is going on ?!?!?!) BLHeli could still see all the ESC's and even allowed me to update the firmware via the FC connection, So they had power getting to them, But to all intents and purposes they looked dead. I couldn't work out what was wrong............ Until the PDB let out smoke !

It was a basic no name PDB/BEC board that had 6 sets of ESC pads, plus 12v and a 5v outputs. I've used them before on quads and as the total amperage requirements of my 6x plodding 2212 motors is less than for 4x 2205 high KV screamers I felt safe using it. I can't work out how it failed as it didn't have any current sensing on it so it should be just direct copper tracks from the battery pads to the ESC pads. Anyway, I was getting angry at this point so I put it all away and decided to think about what to do next.

Today I finished work at a reasonable time, So when I got home I Desoldered the dead PDB, Slapped in a different one and retested. OK I now have all the ESC's getting power again, But something weird's going on with iNAV. It knows I've got a Y6, But it's only enabling 4 motors. I re (Re, Re, Re) checked the connections and everything looks fine. The front bottom motors do the "Power on" beeps, But don't initialize. If I swap the ESC plugs around it's always outputs 5 and 6 that aren't waking up motors.

I was going to reflash the board with iNAV and possibly Cleanflight again to clarify if the problems hardware or software, But the frames really tight and currently it's a bit of a pig to dismantle when I need to get to the wiring or Boot button (That's part of the 10% that structurally needs working on. :) ) So I'm going to shelve this one yet again for a bit, Only until the urge to throw it on the floor and jump up and down on it for 10 minutes subsides.

It's not a particularly complex build, But it's currently fighting me every step of the way. I build multirotors because I find it relaxing, Trouble is, This one seems to be going out of it's way to f**k with my chi........ Maybe getting a bit dusty will break it's spiteful spirit. LOL !

[ched]

Not sure if you know but you should be able to get into dfu mode just by typing dfu into the cli. Means you don't have to get at boot button!
I am sure you will figure it out, it will be something weird.
Good Luck.

[Reman]

Not sure if you know but you should be able to get into dfu mode just by typing dfu into the cli.

No, I didn't know that. Thanks for the tip.
To be honest, I'd usually use "ImpulseRC Driver Fixer" to push inaccessible FC's into DFU mode, But I was getting close to having a full on "Here's Johnny" meltdown at it, So I quit working on the thing before it started getting expensive. :)

[atomiclama]

Don't suppose you have  a scope?

6 motors can be problematic depending on the board and the mapping.

Can't comment on iNav but it works fine on my omnibus F4 and betaflight.

Which ESC protocol you using? Try using one of the old basic ones like PWM  just to test it out.

[Reman]

No oscilloscopes here. That's a bit too high tech for me. :)

It's a little annoying how this builds been going so far though. The hex I "Recycled" for the main parts to build this was chucked together in a couple of evenings, predominantly from stuff I had sitting about, and apart from the one time the VTX took a 15 second break during a flight (While unbeknown to me, my (now EX) spotter had decided to check the emails on his phone !!!!!) it worked flawlessly. Even that problem was solved pretty easily. It was a dry solder joint on one of the OSD pins I'd put on the FC.

I put a lot more thought into this rebuild, I looked at the originals weak points and worked out what I could do to improve them........ And hit problem after problem. I'll get there in the end, But I really thought I'd at least have got a LOS test flight in by this point.