I have a Skyline32 Acro (it says v1.1 on the board). ESCs are Emax BLHeli 12A

It came out-of-the-box with Baseflight, which I pulled off and flashed Cleanflight (v1.14.2) shortly after building my quad.

Cleanflight seems happy in configuration mode: sensors and tx/rx all picking up well. When I plug my battery in (while FC powered by USB) the ESCs don't 'trigger'. (By 'trigger' I mean their power-up beep/tune cycle.). If I 'save and reboot' in cleanflight, the ESCs then trigger and at this stage the motors spin up at a low rate. While connected via USB I can arm (motors spin faster) and then 'fly' - motors react appropriately to TX input.

If I try to 'clean' start the quad, i.e. no USB, the FC boots, then the ESCs 'trigger' and motors spin. Arming and 'flying' doesn't do anything.

I'm setting up an aux switch for arming - so it is not stick position dependant.

If I flash baseflight onto the FC (version b6a002e/2015.08.27) - it all 'just works'. I can set up my aux input to arm, do bench tests through baseflight, etc.

When I connect my battery while the FC is USB powered, the ESCs 'trigger' right away. The motors don't spin while not armed. Arming and 'flying' works as expected. In fact, I could calibrate my ESCs using baseflight - I was not able to do it on cleanflight.

Without USB power, the quad powers up appropriately when battery is connected, can be armed and flies well (assuming a competent pilot )

All my baseflight/cleanflight settings are default with the following changes:

• aux input for arming, and another for angle/horizon/rate.
  
• oneshot enabled
  
• accelerometer calibration
  
• magnetometer calibration
  

Observations/notes:

• I let my motors spin when armed - just so I can see they're armed.
  
• The Throttle values all seem to be the same between Baseflight and Cleanflight
  
• My board orientation/yaw is 0 (FC facing 'forwards')
  

I hope this all makes a bit of sense to somebody.

I've trawled the forums and been through these posts, but they don't seem to quite describe what I'm seeing:


http://intofpv.com/t-skyline32-advanced-help
http://intofpv.com/t-signal-not-getting-to-motors



-Ray

(Edit: changed topic for Baseflight - not betaflight)

You might check your failsafe settings in cleanflight to make sure nothing is awry there.
https://github.com/cleanflight/cleanflig...ailsafe.md

Thanks. I have tried turning cleanflight failsafe off - just to rule it out.

Have you tried disabling oneshot just to see if anything changes. Also just out of curiosity, what are your settings for min & max throttle and min command?

I haven't tried disabling oneshot - I'll give that a go (oneshot works with baseflight)

numbers from memory (if I recall correctly - I'll confirm as soon as I get a chance to jack in):
throttle min 1150
throttle max 1850?
min command 1000

Also, min_check needs to be greater than the lowest throttle value in the receiver tab. (Raise min_check or lower your throttle end-point in the Tx to make sure this happens.)

Ah. gotcha.

Thanks folks. Let me give these a try. It'll be a couple of days, but I'll post some feedback as soon as I have any...

Hi...

OK, some results. (I've also now tried betaflight, but the results are almost identical to cleanflight, so I'll omit it for clarity)

First off, disabling oneshot just causes the motors to spin really fast (disarmed)

I've tried various combinations of min throttle/min command. Same thing holds out -
Baseflight: motors don't spin when not armed, spin up (to min throttle level) when armed, and 'bench flying' is possible with and without usb connected. ESCs 'trigger' as soon as battery is connected in usb mode.
Cleanflight: motors spin (at min command level) when not armed, spin at (min throttle level) when armed, and 'bench flying' is possible - only with usb connected. ESCs 'trigger' only after a FC reboot when connected via usb (usb connection first, then battery connection). Without USB, the ESCs just don't 'trigger' - I can see the FC is armed/unarmed, but I get no spin.

I've Disabled all Failsafe settings.

The defaults are min throttle/min command: 1150/1000 (baseflight) 1150/1000 (cleanflight) 1150/1050 (betaflight)

From the Cleanflight/betaflight docs:

Quote:Minimum Throttle - Set this to the minimum throttle level that enables all motors to start reliably. If this is too low,
some motors may not start properly after spindowns, which can cause loss of stability and control. A typical
value would be 1100.
Minimum Command - This is the "idle" signal level that will be sent to the ESCs when the craft is disarmed,
which should not cause the motors to spin. A typical value would be 1000.

What is the motivation for making minimum command above min throttle?

My rx/tx lowest level for throttle is 1013.

I'm happy to stay on baseflight for now, but I'd like to have the options to move to more maintained fw...

-R

In Clean/BetaFlight, what is the value for min_check?  (Use CLI to find this value, either dump or get min_check).  Default I think is 1100, but it's worth checking.  It should be set higher than the lowest input from your Tx.

Here's a little video from Josh Bardwell with everything you ever wanted to know about throttle settings (if that even relates to why yours is not working):

Thanks. Good video describing the interaction between them all. Some good info I can put into practice even staying in baseflight.

min_check is 1100, I've set min_command to 1025 and min_throttle to 1075. (my rx throttle min is 1013.)
(btw, I do have motor_stop disabled)

My gut feel is telling me the issue relates to how the ESCs don't 'trigger' when connecting the battery on cleanflight (only after a FC restart) whereas on baseflight they 'trigger' immediately on battery connection (whether or not I'm usb connected at the time)

My power connection is Battery -> PDB (this one) -> ESCs. The FC gets powered by a BEC from the first ESC.


-R

Signal and power from the first ESC. On the remaining 3, are you connecting signal and ground to the board or just signal?

The ESC header leads from the FC only have a signal wire. (First one has GND/5v/signal)