EMAX Simon Series Calibration problems

[Shoggers]

Hi all,

I';m new to the forum, building my first quadcopter with the following parts:

450 frame
EMAX Simon Series 40A ESCs
Sunnysky X2212 motors
DJI NAZA Lite + GPS
Turnigy 2200 3S Lipo
1045 props
Turnigy 9x Transmitter/receiver

I got it all built up, and everything connected correctly, props on, and gave it a quick test flight indoors.
The quad took off easily with throttle at only about 50-60%.
I gave a slight side movement and then decided I needed more space, but ultimately everything was working fine.

I then disconnected battery, and took the quad and receiver outside to give it a test.

When I turned it on, the motors spun up slowly and the throttle only seemed to be working up to about 10%, then the rest of the range had no effect.

I have done the throttle calibration for these ESC (BLHeli firmware)
I have gone through the full reprogram and tried multiple settings for each individual ESC.

I cant get the motors to spin fast enough to lift the quad.
Nothing has changed since my initial flight where it lifted easily.

Has anyone got any ideas what could be causing this?

When I connect an individual ESC to channel 3 on my receiver and calibrate, I still dont think I';m getting enough speed on the motor, so I think this is not related to the NAZA in any way.

Thanks.
Ian

[Hands0n]

Hi Ian,

I have seen ESC temporarily be in a state where they';re not responding to throttle stick movement as well as they should. But a battery pull and replug sorts it. Rare, but I';ve seen it. 

Before anything else - could you describe how you are calibrating your ESC?  Just to make sure that there';s nothing wrong at that basic level.  Apologies if this sounds a daft question, but usually best to get the basics out of the way

[flybywire]

Flat lipo?

[barneyg]

You haven';t accidentally turned on some kind of altitude hold have you ?

[Shoggers]

Thanks for the replies, I have just figured it out...

Being totally baffled, I decided to de-solder the connections from the power distribution board, and make up a power connector to connect a battery directly to 1 ESC.
I connected the battery, and receiver, and ESC directly to throttle position.
I powered it up, and straight away I noticed that I was able to get full throttle.

I then connected it back up to the power distribution board on my quad and tried again - SLOW SPEED !!!!  Were getting somewhere here.
Then I got a multimeter out and tested the power distribution board, and it seemed there was poor connectivity from the positive terminal on the battery.
On closer inspection, there was a defect on the board - a bit of the coating had peeled away.

The reason the motors were still spinning but slowly, was that power was getting to the ESCs via the 5V from the NAZA power supply (which was soldered directly to my battery connector!

A lot of pulling my hair out, but got there in the end... cheap frame kit!!

[flybywire]

Nice one mate, better to find these things out whilst still on terracotta (as old ';two jag';s'; would say!)