Hoverfly problems and solutions with hoverfly pro board

rotor88

Member
hey guys ive been building a quad with the HFP and some reflashed 40A hobbyking red brick ESCs along with some rc timer 700kv 20A motors.
my first problem once the quad was built and everything was hooked up was that only one motor would fire up, after disconnecting the battery and trying again 2 motors would work, after disconnecting once more only one motor worked again WTF.
the motor that worked each time was the one with the regulator supplying the HFP (the other 3 ESC's had the positive disconnected). i connected each ESC and motor to a RX and battery seperate to the HFP, each motor/ESC combo worked fine.
i then soldered a 150 OHM resistor from the positive of each ESC to ground(except for the ESC powering the HFP)
all motors started at once life was good.

after an hour or so of flying the HFP would occasionally go into AL as soon as it was off the ground (although AL had not been activated)
it would also very rarely switch wildly between non AL and AL causing it to twitch and jitter almost uncontrollably, sometimes it would not engage AL at all staying in manual mode. i tested my TX and RX for pulse position change with an oscilloscope and could not find anything wrong there.
very soon after this problem developed a new problem appeared! i would start and fly the quad and it worked fine. then i would land, throttle down, and throttle up again shortly after. sometimes and without any prior misbehavior the quad would imediatley begin to yaw uncontrollably and i would have to put it down however possible(luckily it yawed straight away so it never gained much height) this problem came and went at random and NOTHING seemed to make a difference. at this stage i was pulling my hair out trying to work out what was wrong, while trying to determine what was the cause of the AL problem i had to quad plugged into the comp and was switching between AL and manual and noticed the box on the setup client wasnt corresponding to the switch position on my TX, i wiggled the servo leads that go between the RX and HFP board and discovered that the AL seemed to be engaging correctly, i wiggled them again the AL refused to follow the switch position( staying in AL or not goin into AL) the servo leads were brand new and appeard to have excellent contact and were not physically loose. i disasembled the servo leads at one end and found the wires to be nicely stripped and crimped to the female connector, i then took the other end of the servo lead appart and found that all 3 wires were COLD SOLDERED AND NOT/TO HALFED CRIMPED. after finding this i took each servo lead apart and found that one end of each lead was stripped and crimped correctly while the other end was poorly soldered and sortof crimped and sometimes not. all 20 of these leads from hobbyking were the same. i resoldered each lead and reconnected them to the quad. after 2 hours of flight therehas not been a single glitch,hick up,wobble or anything i couldnot believe it.

Also nearly forgot to mention random flips during the first few flights, i read that the bullet connectors between the motor's and ESC's are not always as good as you think they are! I couldnt see anything wrong with my solder job on the bullets but after soldering the motors to the ESC's i never experienced another flip :)

for those without the attention span.
uncontrollable yawing and AL problems were caused by tinytinytiny poor connections between RX and HFP board as a result of ****ty half arse hobbyking leads.

hope this helps someone.
 
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ChrisViperM

Active Member
Thanks for the info....but this is one of the reasons why I ALWAYS make my servo leads myself....get the correct lenght and know what's inside.


Chris
 
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Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
chris,
thanks for posting that video! i've been using that tool all wrong and thought it wasn't worth the time to make my own. now that i see how to correctly use it it's a lot easier than i thought.
thanks!
bart
 


DucktileMedia

Drone Enthusiast
Rotor8 you're not supposed to power the hfp with an esc. It tells you in the manual to directly wire the board straight to the battery harness.
 

rotor88

Member
Iris you are correct, there is no connection between the servo pins on the HFP board and the boards electronics. and my board isnt powered by the ESC! one ESC has the positive wire still connected and this passes 6v to the RX via the HFP servo connections. disconnecting that ESC causes the board to flash purple as the RX is not powered. the other esc's have their positive dissconnected to prevent the regulators fighting with each other. the regs happen to be switching regs and need a little load to keep the ESC happy.
 

mbsteed

aerial video centric
Removing the positive wire on the ESC (except one) is not in manual is it? Does anyone else do this? Is this really a problem if all the ESC's are powering their regs? I am having little jitters no matter how I set the gains so I am wondering if this is the issue.
 

Bowley

Member
Thanks for that post Rotor88, I have recently been having spurious problems of the same nature. I have completely stripped down my X650 X8 and am going to commence a new quad build to more stringent standards using the HFP.
 

Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
Removing the positive wire on the ESC (except one) is not in manual is it? Does anyone else do this? Is this really a problem if all the ESC's are powering their regs? I am having little jitters no matter how I set the gains so I am wondering if this is the issue.

marlon,

please start a new thread and we can discuss your jitters. i doubt it's because of your ESC wiring. in your thread list your equipment and what kind of jitters you're seeing (ie. when they're happening, if it's the heli or your mount, equipment you're using, etc.)

bart
 

rotor88

Member
Removing the positive wire on the ESC (except one) is not in manual is it? Does anyone else do this? Is this really a problem if all the ESC's are powering their regs? I am having little jitters no matter how I set the gains so I am wondering if this is the issue.
what exactly is jittering on your craft ?
with ESC's you will have a couple of options for the 5V wire. the first option if your esc's have switching power supplies is to just leave them all hooked up and see if they overheat.
if they dont overheat while all hooked up and running your flight control board (tested without props on) then you shouldnt experience any issues with them as the switchmode supplies will more than often operate in parallel quite happily.
how ever if you have linear power supplies running in parrallel then your escs will heat up quite quickly (while only running your flight control unit/receiver not motors) this will result in future failure of the esc's 5V output and possibly its motor output.
BUT ITS OK because if you have linear power supplies you can disconnect the power wire from all but one of your esc's and attach 120ohm resistors from your 5V power wires to ground, which will trick your esc's into thinking that they are running something so then they will run when they receive signal. happy days.
if you disconnect your esc's 5V wire and do not attach it to anything you may find that the esc's will not arm or will run sporadically.:nevreness:
 

rotor88

Member
Thanks for that post Rotor88, I have recently been having spurious problems of the same nature. I have completely stripped down my X650 X8 and am going to commence a new quad build to more stringent standards using the HFP.

no worries Bowley. ive had heaps of let gos and go bads with my quad and have never traced a crash back to the hfp board. its been awesome. one on board failure though is that i didnt secure my esc and rx wires sepperatley from the hfp board and this caused the little pins to become detached from the circuit board resulting in a few crashes. but thats only because of the g forces acting on the board from the unsecured wiring. now i zip tie all the plugs together at the board and zip tie all the leads near the board so as to isolate the pins from external forces.
 

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