Don't calibrate SimonK ESC's ?

[barneyg]

In his charming posting style I spotted this from Timecop :

And you don';t need to calibrate simonk Escs, well, the rctimer 10A garbage you got you do, but normal ones you don';t.

And while he can be brusk TC should at least be correct on this since he worked with SimonK in developing the Afro ESC';s.  It also aligns nicely with my understanding of the SimonK and MultiWii/Megapirate/Baseflight/Cleanflight etc code and practical experiences but I';d not had the confidence to say it out loud when the common mantra is always

calibrate your ESC';s

How many people still build quads with anything other than SimonK, BHeli or similar ESC';s these days ?

My current 450 is running on MultiWii 2.3 with the extended range option set, I';ve rebuilt the SimonK firmware to match (and turned on Comp PWM) and did absolutely no Calibration of ESC';s and all the motors are perfectly in sync.

NB Once you have calibrated SimonK ESC';s the only way to remove that calibration is to re-flash them and re-flashing always removes all calibration.

[Hands0n]

Just to add my own tuppenceworth in this thread. I agree 100% with what has been posted.

In my own case, flying a TBS Discovery with APM 2.5 flight controller, Afro 30A ESC and Emax MT1806-930KV motors I had followed diligently the mantra to calibrate the ESC after building and before any serious flight.  Pretty soon I found that after one or two flights, when changing LiPo, that one of the ESC (always the same one) would flash the sequence indicating "Stuck Phase B" according to the manual. 

Try everything I could think of, including re-calibrating, it made no difference.

Then I read on the HK forum that one shouldn';t calibrate Afro ESCs at all, in Timecop';s own words

Actually, no you don';t. They';re already pre-set to wide usable range, and unless you know what you';re doing, recalibrating them will only reduce the throttle range.

Now I don';t know how that relates to "Stuck Phase B" red flash of death, but having reflashed my 30A ESC back to stock and not calibrated thereafter I have flown for hours without a repeat incident.

Making this topic sticky for now as it may benefit other Afro users who are suffering this same fate.

[teslahed]

I believe Afro ESCs have a throttle range of 1060 to 1860 - same as the Naze32. That';s what the manual says;

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uploads/310964900X365809X4.pdf

I recalibrate all mine to run from 1000 to 2000. I believe i get better performance if i have more clicks of resolution to work with. I then recalibrate my Naze32 to go to 2000 at max throttle. This gives me the full range of power with a higher resolution than I';d get otherwise.

If you can';t be bothered with all that for probably very minimal gains in performance then timecop is absolutely right - don';t recalibrate. Doing it my way is a bit of a faff.

If you recalibrate your Afro ESCs to 2000 without altering the values on the Naze32 then you';ll just miss out on a load of top end power from your motors. That would be a shame.

[Hands0n]

Clearly there are benefits.

However, I';m using APM and this odd red LED behaviour is very apparent. The only way to get around it has been to reflash to stock. I cannot find any sane explanation as to why either way, save that it works

Something to watch out for.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[barneyg]

defaults in the repo for SimonK are:

STOP_RC_PULS   = 1060   ; Stop motor at or below this pulse length
FULL_RC_PULS   = 1860   ; Full speed at or above this pulse length
MAX_RC_PULS   = 2400   ; Throw away any pulses longer than this
MIN_RC_PULS   = 100   ; Throw away any pulses shorter than this

so setting minthrottle to 1060 and maxthrottle to 1860 in your FC will get the most out of your SimonK ESC';s (assuming you haven';t tweaked or recalibrated them

[teslahed]

If you calibrate them to 1000 to 2000 then;

FULL_RC_PULS   = 1860   

becomes

FULL_RC_PULS   = 2000

and;

STOP_RC_PULS   = 1060 

becomes

STOP_RC_PULS   = 1000

then instead of 1060 to 1860 steps of resolution ( 800 steps )

you get 1000 to 2000 steps of resolution ( 1000 steps )

In theory this will give you the same power levels but a finer level of control, which is why i do it. In practice it probably makes no noticeable difference, just makes everything slightly trickier to set up.

[flybywire]

Seems to be a lot of fuss here, my understanding of esc calibration is simply to introduce your tx range to the esc.  I can';t see how it can do any harm.  I currently have over 20 Afro';s on various multi';s, and the only ones i haven';t calibrated are on my 250 with cc3d, simply cause i didn';t bother calibrating, and the cc3d setup can sense the range itself.  I suppose unless you use some weird kind of ranges, the afro';s and most modern multi esc';s will work pretty well, calibrated or not.
Just my observation as a loyal Afro user and enjoyer.   

[teslahed]

I';ll be the first to admit what i do is totally unnecessary. Whether or not a slight increase in resolution makes any real world difference - i simply couldn';t say.

I just do it because i';m a perfectionist / pedantic like that. And i';ve always done it that way. Don';t bother unless you like messing with the settings like i do.

[weavo56]

Are we talking about altering internal settings or just setting the Tx  range in these esc s .
I thought you should always set the Tx  range of the esc you are using no matter what make it is .
I';m I doing harm to these simonK  esc';s  .
What about 250 quad motors running at 2400kv  don';t they need the high sync  setting  to work correctly ?

Graham

[malc]

calibrating is not the same reflashing them --- so what does calibrating do???

[flybywire]

calibrating is not the same reflashing them --- so what does calibrating do???

Loosely speaking, it divides its max resolution across your tx';s lowest and highest throttle points in a linear way, least that';s my understanding anyhow!

[atomiclama]

Well the readme from the source code

https://github.com/sim-/tgy

Throttle Calibration and Programming

Since the 2012-01-04 release, the input throttle range may be calibrated. This should be used whenever PWM input mode is used, including where external resonators are present, to set the usable throttle range.

So that';ll do for me, I';ll stick to calibrating mine.

calibrating is not the same reflashing them --- so what does calibrating do???

Have  look at the readme it describes it quite well.