ESC Throttle Calibration not working? (Newbie question)

Hello,

So I am still rather totally brand new at building multirotors here and I do not know what I am doing wrong here.

I have a Parallax Elev-8 V3 Quadcopter. https://www.parallax.com/product/80300
I recently upgraded the motors and escs due to bad quality motors that came with the quadcopter originally. But now I am having trouble doing the throttle calibration with these new ones. When I do throttle calibration, the software I am using says that the escs are suppose to stop beeping at a certain point, but mine never do. The ESCs just keep beeping a musical tone that gets steadily longer per round. I did a test flight, and while the drone does go into the air, it has very unstable flight showing the Escs are not calibrated properly.

Here are the specs:

FC: Parallax Elev-8 FC https://www.parallax.com/product/80204
New ESCs: http://rctimer.com/product-152.html
New Motors: http://rctimer.com/product-139.html
Battery: 4S
Software used for Throttle Calibration: Parallax Groundstation

I did some research before typing this thread and I did find that the new ESCs are Opto, which probably changes a lot of things. However, I believe the previous ESCs(the ones that originally came with the drone) are Opto as well. The product description of the old ones say they are non-bec ( https://www.parallax.com/product/750-90015 )

The ESCs and the FC connect to the PDB on the quadcopter for power. I plugged the three wire connection from all the ESCs to the FC. Some say you need to remove the red wire, but I didn't?

I do not know what the problem is. I do not know if I need to do some sort of programming or anything for these ESCs or what to program them with. I am not even sure if the system I got now even works for a multirotor!

I would really, really appreciate any help on this. Again, I'm a just a beginner here! If anyone needs any more info, let me know.
 

JCLs

Member
First if not using any ESC for power then you should disconnect the small red wires and just use black and white leads. If you are using for power, only one of the red wires should be used. Am talking about power for receiver, camera, controller. I looked at picture of the original kit and red wires not visible on control leads!!!

I made a simple harness long time ago to connect all 4 ESC controller leads together in parallel and connect to what is usually throttle output on receiver. Then go through calibration. Takes a lot of possible issues out.
 

Most ESC's calibrate in a similar manner, I did mine one at a time. Its been a while but if recall I didn't use the FC at all. bind your receiver to your radio, Power up your Receiver separately and have the ESC control wire connected to the throttle channel of the receiver, Turn on radio, make sure receiver indicates it is communicating with radio, power up ESC with motor attached. Go through throttle cal procedure. There is definitely a sequence that must be followed. I would look for a you tube video. Pretty sure you don't need the FC to accomplish this.
To clarify the 3 wire lead thing on the ESC. The ESC only needs one wire from the FC to work (Not counting its main power), This is the signal wire and it takes the signal from the FC and tells the ESC what to do. There is usually a 3 wire type lead (connector) that you get but you only need one wire not all three. The other 2 are power wires from the ESC that "can" be used if your FC (or receiver) needs a source of power. So even if you did need to power up your FC or receiver you would only use the power from one ESC not all 4. On Some ESC's the 2 extra power wires are not even hot because the ESC isn't set up to provide this extra power, some are and if you don't need it then usually they are clipped.
 

JCLs

Member
I think wise to use black and white leads, not just white lead. But in his case looks like red leads need to be clipped.
 

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