New Pixhawk suspect its faulty or it could be me !!!!!!!

[Paul-H]

Hi all after waiting many weeks my first Pixhawk arrived today.

I sat and watched all the painless360 videos on YouTube so I had a good idea how to set it up.  Got every thing ready and connected it to my PC and waited form the ready chimes which unfortunately never came.  All it does is flash the main status light a few different colours. Double yellow. Red blue then settles on a constant yellow flash with on loud buz and that is just about it.  I tried setting it up in software and that throws the odd error about compass errors or GPS errors but that';s it. It will not arm are do anything useful.

Does the flashing yellow light signify anything, anyone got a clue as to what';s gone wrong and if it cash be rectified.

I made the big mistake in buying it from a China based eBay seller so returning it is going to be a right expensive pain, so kinda hoping its just something silly I have missed.

Thanks for any help with this.

Paul

[motofox]

Hi,

the double yellow flash means its not passed its own sensor tests and is not happy to arm - you can disable the pre arm checks for testing while your not flying.

make sure you have done all the calibrations and disable the internal compass as its a pain in the ass.
Also the radio has to be on for it to pass all the tests.
Basicaly everything has to be perfect or it wont arm, and mission planner will display the error message its reporting. But once setup the pixhawk is amazing to fly, the loiter and position hold is like nothing ive seen before.

yellow is prearm fail - flashing blue is passed tests and ready with no gps fix yet - flashing green is ready to rumble with gps fix

[Paul-H]

Thanks for the help

I have temporarily disable the pre arm tests and it is now flashing blue for awaiting GPS fix

Now the Dammed his is telling me its got bad GPS Health but without without another one to try to test which is wrong I will have to buy another GPS just to test it, and that will take a week or so to get here.

Never had any of these issues with the KK2 boards I have loads of, even if they can';t do a fraction of this board, when I get it working

And I will still have the problem of why it is failing its pre arm test as that was without the GPS attached and I can';t fly with it having an internal safety failure can I

I can';t find the setting to turn off the internal compass can you give me a clue as to what I should be looking for.

Any other thoughts

Thanks

Paul

[FlyingMouse]

Are you inside or in the open?  I know my GPS puck took about 15 minutes after powering up for the first time before it started to pick up any satellites, even now being inside it doesn't pick up any.
Pixhawk is a brilliant FC but it is very picky, but once set up correctly you will love it.
Keep at it; it will be worth it in the end. 

Here is a link to a "Table of Contents" that you may find helpful.

http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/common-table-of-contents/

[Paul-H]

Hi

Thanks for the reply

Yes I was trying to get it setup in doors.  It was sat on a window ledge looks for some signal and sure enough if I take it outside the GPS does lock quite quickly.

Still awaiting the arrival of the wireless link kit so unable to see any errors whilst its outside.

The original flashing yellow problem has for the moment gone away

The issue at the moment is with it outside and a solid green GPS lock light it will not arm, all it does is give a load beep.  I will stop what I am doing until the wireless kit is up and running as without that I am now working blind.

Thanks

Paul

[motofox]

solid green is good to go - are you pressing the safety switch on the pixhawk to arm it ?

[Baner]

It may seem silly of me, to think Paul But have you got all the ESC working if not it will beep but not arm.

[Paul-H]

Hi

Yes I am pressing the arming button.

The ESC have been tested and work fine, This frame had a K2 board fitted before I got the Pixhawk and worked fine, all I have done is turn the BEC off as the pixhawk is powered by its own module.

Paul

[FlyingMouse]

The servo rail is NOT powered from the power module!
So you will have to do like me use a bec to power the servo rail and also use a Zener diode.
See Painless360 2/2 Pixhawk seriers @ 2 minutes.30seconds and you will see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfQ-9MIHKkU

[Static65]

Have you tried raising the throttle after arming? And did you calibrate ESCs? One possibility is that the default MOT_SPIN_ARMED parameter is too low for your ESCs so the motors don';t spin up after arming.

You can test arming without a GPS lock. Get it set up inside with the props removed and arm it while in stabilize mode. If it won';t arm Mission Planner should tell you why. If it does arm but nothing happens it may be the problem I described above.

If you only have ESCs connected to the servo rail then you don';t need to power it at all, however if powered with 5V it will act as a backup in case the power module fails. The zener diode is only really necessary if you either don';t trust the power source you';re using for the servo rail or you';re connecting servos to it, as they can pull the voltage above the 5.7V cutoff when operating.

[Paul-H]

Thanks for all the help guys

I am going to sit on this until the 3DR Radio modules arrive, which hopefully will be by the end of this week, that way I will be able to arm it outside but still see what going on or going wrong.

I suspect to make things a little easier I am going to shelve the idea of getting this running on my Tri and just build a simple quad as there is much more info on setting the pixhawk up on a quad rather than a Tri or a plane.

Paul

[teslahed]

Take the props off. Then you can use a laptop running mission planner and arm the multi-rotor outside where it will get a GPS lock while connected to mission planner. It should give you error messages on the screen which may help you diagnose your problem.

Or use the radio modules when they come instead - means you can do it at a longer range and leave the props on safely.

Or install a bluetooth module and use one of the arducopter apps on an android smart phone. Range will only be about 20 meters or so but that';s still enough to perform a basic test hover at a safe distance.

My guess is the GPS or compass error is the problem. If you haven';t done the compass calibration exactly right that would prevent you arming. If you have a GPS lock but not a good on that can stop you arming too. If your accelerometers haven';t been calibrated properly that can also cause problems and if you move the aircraft after turning it on before it';s ready it can get confused as it';s calibrating the accelerometers. You will need more info to narrow it down.

[motofox]

Are you using emax esc ?

[Paul-H]

Managed to get outside today, once the monsoon had subsided, laptop in hand and everything fired up correctly so all looks to be ok.  Still too windy to try a test flight but at least I know nothings faulty.

Thanks for all the help guys

Paul