Hi everyone! 
I´m new to the forum and quite new to this hobby as well.
First of all my name is Francisco and I am from Argentina.
I built my first quad 2 months ago (stock Flitetest Versacopter V2) and have now upgraded to a "250 size ZMR like frame" with new electronics while i wait for my Martian V2 frame from China.

I have RS2205 motors, DYS 20A "BlHeli" ESCS, Naze 32 Rev6 Full Version and 4S Battery (Tattu 1550 mah 75C) and a Matek v3.1 PDB and 6x4,5 HQ Props. Also FPV equipment but not relevant.

Thing is BLHeliSuite will not recognize my ESCS, maybe they come with another Bootloader, not sure and I don´t have a linker yet to program them. I´m able to calibrate them through BLHelisuite and everything but i cannot get the software to read them, i just get four ---- and of course can´t flash them. This is not the actual problem but i thought it was worth mentioning. 

The REAL problem is one of the motors just stops after flying for a while (Motor 4). This only happens on 4s. With a 3s battery I was able to fly for around 10 minutes without any issues.
When the issue occurs neither the ESCs or the Motors are extremely hot, just warm which is normal i guess.

I have recorded with Naze`s blackbox the issue, here`s the video:



After noticing this problem i double and triple checked all solder joints and it was all good. I resoldered the ESC to the PDB just to be sure. But when i examined the ESC itself i found the following:



It looks like the signal and ground wires from the ESC were shorting a bit there.. and that black spot doesn´t look good.
So i tried to separate them thinking this would solve the problem and got it to look like this (not perfect but i didn´t want to heat the ESC too much):



So, anyone has had this kind of issue? Could the ground - signal short have killed something inside the ESC?  Any recomendations? I will try to switch ESCs with another motor tomorrow if I have time, but I´m quite sure that the ESC is the problem, but why would it fail only on 4s? the extra 4v would heat it up a bit more and cause the failure maybe?
Thanks to anyone for taking the time of reading all this and sorry if some stuff is misspelled, English is not my first language 

Cheers from Argentina! 

Part of the problem could be that you are over-propping your ESCs. They are only rated for peaks of 22a (DYS BL20a right?). Your motors can easily pull 30a with those props.
I'd de- and resolder the signal wire and clean off any excess solder. Soldering iron set to 300°C, a little bit of fresh solder on the tip and this would take not more than a second to pull off an put on again. You wouldn't heat up your ESC that way (well at least not much!).

I'm very suprised that you are able to calibrate via BlHeli though you cannot flash or write settings on your ESCs. Your battery is still connected?

(26-Sep-2016, 08:47 AM)phara Wrote: I'm very suprised that you are able to calibrate via BlHeli though you cannot flash or write settings on your ESCs. Your battery is still connected?

Calibration is different than connecting to BLHeli suite - first one just sends PWM signals to ESC, second needs two-way communication.

@ch4kito: Is it possible that you choose bad interface? You should choose (Cleanflight) on whatever those ESCs are - Atmel for DYS BL20A and Silabs for DYS XM20A/XS20A if connecting trough naze32. If you are connecting trough arduino to a single ESC, pick (USB/com) option.

About motor stopping - this may be overpropping indeed as 6x45HQ are way too heavy here.

@ch4kito

my first question is the same as Phara´s did you power up your esc with the Lipo when you want read the ESC Firmware and so? (BUT YOUR PROPS DOWN!!!)
so far i know for flashing and reading firmware and so on the need power!

Next Step KonradS post!

Oscar has a gread tutorial here https://oscarliang.com/flash-esc-via-cleanflight-fc/

(26-Sep-2016, 08:47 AM)phara Wrote: Part of the problem could be that you are over-propping your ESCs. They are only rated for peaks of 22a (DYS BL20a right?). Your motors can easily pull 30a with those props.
I'd de- and resolder the signal wire and clean off any excess solder. Soldering iron set to 300°C, a little bit of fresh solder on the tip and this would take not more than a second to pull off an put on again. You wouldn't heat up your ESC that way (well at least not much!).

I'm very surprised that you are able to calibrate via BlHeli though you cannot flash or write settings on your ESCs. Your battery is still connected?

Hey Phara!
Yeah, i was surprised as well. KonradS explains the reason above
Over-propping sounds reasonable too. I didn´t even go above half throttle haha. I don´t have any 5x4 props buy I´ll try to get some soon to see if it solves the issue. Weird thing is that it is always the same motor that "stops", and none of the components are HOT.
I´ll try with diff props, if nothing happens I´ll try resoldering it.
Luckily I showed the pics to the store that sold it to me will give me a new one so I´ll have a that one to test as well.

(26-Sep-2016, 09:05 AM)KonradS Wrote: Calibration is different than connecting to BLHeli suite - first one just sends PWM signals to ESC, second needs two-way communication.

@ch4kito: Is it possible that you choose bad interface? You should choose (Cleanflight) on whatever those ESCs are - Atmel for DYS BL20A and Silabs for DYS XM20A/XS20A if connecting trough naze32. If you are connecting trough arduino to a single ESC, pick (USB/com) option.

About motor stopping - this may be overpropping indeed as 6x45HQ are way too heavy here.

Hey KonradS, thanks for that explanation. I tried both Atmel and Silabs just to be sure. I also tried it in another computer as well but no luck.
I´ll give smaller props a go

(26-Sep-2016, 10:40 AM)Kerni_fpv Wrote: @ch4kito

my first question is the same as Phara´s did you power up your esc with the Lipo when you want read the ESC Firmware and so? (BUT YOUR PROPS DOWN!!!)
so far i know for flashing and reading firmware and so on the need power!

Next Step KonradS post!

Oscar has a gread tutorial here https://oscarliang.com/flash-esc-via-cleanflight-fc/

Hey Kerni_fpv.. yes! Battery was on, Props were off
Thanks for the tutorial I´ll check it out.

(26-Sep-2016, 02:00 PM)[email protected] Wrote: Over-propping sounds reasonable too. I didn´t even go above half throttle haha. I don´t have any 5x4 props buy I´ll try to get some soon to see if it solves the issue. Weird thing is that it is always the same motor that "stops", and none of the components are HOT.

There is always a chance that this motor or ESC is malfunctioning. If you don't have any props on hand, you can try cutting some down to check. I described my method of cutting on Oscars blog, see "Additional notes" in this article: https://oscarliang.com/airblade-assault-130-micro-quad/

BTW. with this method, set your calipers at 61.17mm (measured right now on a random 5" prop).

Hi cha4kito!

Yeah dude, your props are so freaking big for that ESCs. Try some 50 something.
About the ESCs, you need flash a bootloader (BLHeli Bootloader) in order to use ONE WIRE connection. I don't know why, but some ESC don´t come with Bootloader.
If you need any help, just call me, you have my number!!

SimonK bootloader will also do the job.

(26-Sep-2016, 02:22 PM)KonradS Wrote: There is always a chance that this motor or ESC is malfunctioning. If you don't have any props on hand, you can try cutting some down to check. I described my method of cutting on Oscars blog, see "Additional notes" in this article: https://oscarliang.com/airblade-assault-130-micro-quad/

BTW. with this method, set your calipers at 61.17mm (measured right now on a random 5" prop).

HA! You are a genius.. i don´t have a digital caliper but i´ll do it with some measuring tape to try, error should be equal in all props if im tidy... hahaha.
Ill give it a go in a few hours and report back! Thanks man.

(26-Sep-2016, 02:22 PM)KonradS Wrote: There is always a chance that this motor or ESC is malfunctioning. If you don't have any props on hand, you can try cutting some down to check. I described my method of cutting on Oscars blog, see "Additional notes" in this article: https://oscarliang.com/airblade-assault-130-micro-quad/

BTW. with this method, set your calipers at 61.17mm (measured right now on a random 5" prop).

Hey Konrads... something really weird happened...
I made the 5" props... 



I prayed to all the gods, put them on and gave it a go... 
I flew an entire battery, about 6 mins without any issues. 2 or 3 seconds punchouts, flips, rolls, you name it... First time i was able to fly more than 10 seconds with 4S.
A friend came up while I was landing so I put a fresh battery on, armed, hovered for a few seconds and BAM.. fell straight to the floor. Problem is I didn´t see if it was the same motor that failed. Broke a prop.
Very frustrated, went ahead and made a new prop to replace the broken one, put it on, a few seconds in, BAM, motor stops again...... but this time I think it was ANOTHER one, not the one connected to the ESC that had been failing.   (Broke another prop)
I´m not 100% sure which motor stopped but I had blackbox enabled (Hope there was memory left). It takes a lot of time to process 16MB of log data so I´ll download it when i get home from work and report back. 
I just wanted to update you all and share my frustration, haha.
Cheers!

Edit: Forgot to mention. After the full flight and the short ones that failed none of the ESCS were TOO hot, warm but normal. Could hold my hand on them for a long time without burning myself.

This is a long shot, but could it be a bad solder joint on the esc or pdb?

(26-Sep-2016, 06:42 PM)oyvinla Wrote: This is a long shot, but could it be a bad solder joint on the esc or pdb?

Hey oyvinla!
I thought so too, but i desoldered and resoldered the ESC to the pdb and checked all connections, everything looks ok. 

Could a single ESC failing cause the whole board to freak out and look like another motor is failing?
I´ll try each independent ESC with a prop on and my foot on the quad for a  while to see if one or more fail after a while as a friend suggested, haha. 

(26-Sep-2016, 06:54 PM)[email protected] Wrote: Hey oyvinla!
I thought so too, but i desoldered and resoldered the ESC to the pdb and checked all connections, everything looks ok. 

Could a single ESC failing cause the whole board to freak out and look like another motor is failing?
I´ll try each independent ESC with a prop on and my foot on the quad for a  while to see if one or more fail after a while as a friend suggested, haha. 

If one esc fails, you can see from the Blackbox log that the fc tries to compensate by sending full throttle command to that esc, while the others get zero throttle command from the fc. This is all natural, since obviously there is no thrust from that particular motor

Just to be on the safe side, you could strap it to a table with some load straps and run each motor from the motor tab in cleanflight/betaflight

(26-Sep-2016, 08:08 PM)oyvinla Wrote: If one esc fails, you can see from the Blackbox log that the fc tries to compensate by sending full throttle command to that esc, while the others get zero throttle command from the fc. This is all natural, since obviously there is no thrust from that particular motor

Just to be on the safe side, you could strap it to a table with some load straps and run each motor from the motor tab in cleanflight/betaflight

Awesome Oyvinla, that´s why i saw full throttle on blackbox on that ESC then.
I´ll take a look at todays flights when i get home, i hope they were recorded in blackbox. And I´ll also try that "bench test" hoping to see only that ESC failing.
Thanks!!

Update: Held the quad in my hand and ran almost a full 4s battery with the DIY props giving it throttle, yaw, roll and pitch commands, and playing around with the stabilization by rotating the quad and none of the motors seemed to have stopped or stuttered. 
I hate random stuff like this...