I have a SpeedyBee F405 V3 stack (with a 50A ESC) and I am trying to test the motors (and their direction) via BetaFlight (usb & bluetooth) and/or esc-configurator (usb) using their respective sliders, before I solder on any other components. 

When I first started testing, I had the FC to ESC wiring reversed (see below). When I plugged in the battery, via ViFly smoke stopper, I could get 2 of the motors spinning through esc-configurator via Chrome and 1 spinning through BetaFlight - I also felt all 5 beeps from each of the motors. After lots of playing around, the last 2 beeps disappeared, and then I eventually worked out I needed to fix the wiring issue. After fixing this, I am again having trouble testing the motors. I am aware that I may have damaged something on either the ESC or FC, however I thought I'd just ask the question before I go soldering or replacing components. I did notice some bent pins on the ESC when I was fixing the wiring and made sure to straighten them the best I could.

I have 2 motors (motors 3 and 4, soldered to the right hand side of the ESC) that output 5 beeps (I can feel the vibration when touching the motors - however motor 4's vibration is weaker than motor 3's). Only motor 3 actually spins using the sliders in BetaFlight or esc-configurator. Motor 2 outputs the first 3 beeps but I cannot feel any vibration for the remaining 2 beeps. And motor 1 no longer outputs any beeps.

I should note that before I fixed my wiring reversal issue, the motors on the left side of the quad were the ones that could spin, not the right. However, esc-configurator would still recognise these as motors 3 & 4, which is consistent with the wiring mishap.

I tried connecting to esc-configurator via Chrome and I noticed that they could read both ESC 3 and 4 - however on my second try it could only spin and read motor 3. I have put that log below. I have also put a dump from BetaFlight. I then tried downgrading the firmware to 4.3.2 which did nothing. I then changed the motor protocol from DSHOT300 to DSHOT600 - also no change. When I tried MULTISHOT (which I believe is not supported) it tripped the smoke stopper when I tried to fire up motor 3 - noting that there was no change when I used the sliders for any of the other motors.

At this point I'm not experienced enough to know what could be going wrong - other than I may have blown something - however I used a multi meter to ensure that I was getting 5v across each 5v pad, including the LED ones. I also checked the 9v, 3v3 and 4v pads all which show a voltage within tolerance. ViFly smoke stopper has been used throughout the entire process - not brave enough to try without that yet.

Does anyone have any ideas of what I could try next? Else I'm going to buy a brand new stack and at least 1 new motor 

If you use smoke stopper and try to run motors, the current limit could prevent your motors from running. If you are just testing motors, it is hard to mess up the wiring. If you are worry, you can post a photo of your wiring for us to check. I would just test without the smoke stopper. Use the smoke stopper for the other components you plan to wire later.

Yup. A smoke stopper’s only purpose is to check for a short on initial battery plugin. After that- it’s useless and it will trip if you pull too much amperage through it by, for example, trying to run up motors or power a digital vtx.

Remove the smoke stopper and try again.
If it didn’t trip on initial battery plugin, you don’t have a catastrophic short- so the smoke stopper is no longer a useful tool.

As voodoo said, if you wire in another component/peripheral- then go ahead and use that smoke stopper on first battery plugin to make sure nothing has a short. Then remove it.

Based on your incorrect wiring diagram, in theory, the only thing you might have killed was your mcu- but we know that’s not the case because you can connect to betaflight. Having the motors in the wrong order on the wiring harness wouldn’t kill anything.

(14-Oct-2023, 03:56 AM)voodoo614 Wrote: If you use smoke stopper and try to run motors, the current limit could prevent your motors from running. If you are just testing motors, it is hard to mess up the wiring. If you are worry, you can post a photo of your wiring for us to check. I would just test without the smoke stopper. Use the smoke stopper for the other components you plan to wire later.

(14-Oct-2023, 05:45 AM)Lemonyleprosy Wrote: Yup. A smoke stopper’s only purpose is to check for a short on initial battery plugin. After that- it’s useless and it will trip if you pull too much amperage through it by, for example, trying to run up motors or power a digital vtx.

Remove the smoke stopper and try again.
If it didn’t trip on initial battery plugin, you don’t have a catastrophic short- so the smoke stopper is no longer a useful tool.

As voodoo said, if you wire in another component/peripheral- then go ahead and use that smoke stopper on first battery plugin to make sure nothing has a short. Then remove it.

Based on your incorrect wiring diagram, in theory, the only thing you might have killed was your mcu- but we know that’s not the case because you can connect to betaflight. Having the motors in the wrong order on the wiring harness wouldn’t kill anything.

Okay so I removed the smoke stopper but I am still having the same issue. Using BetaFlight, only motor 3 will spin and it only works after I go into the "Motor Direction" menu and tap the motor number from there. In fact on my second attempt just now, it will only spin through the "Motor Direction" menu. Perhaps this is a software issue?

Any ideas?

Try it via esc-configurator.com instead of betaflight.

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And double check your harness pins.

Maybe try reflashing the fc, making sure you have the correct target, making sure that “full chip erase” is selected, and making sure that you select yes to applying custom defaults on first reboot.

(14-Oct-2023, 06:07 AM)Lemonyleprosy Wrote: Try it via esc-configurator.com instead of betaflight.

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And double check your harness pins.

Exactly the same in esc-configurator - I've attached the log

(14-Oct-2023, 06:10 AM)Lemonyleprosy Wrote: Maybe try reflashing the fc, making sure you have the correct target, making sure that “full chip erase” is selected, and making sure that you select yes to applying custom defaults on first reboot.

Still same result after this.

I adjusted the harness on the FC side, slightly and now have 2 motors spinning (3 and 2). Perhaps when my new wiring harness comes from AliExpress I will give that a go.

I’m gonna say that most likely your esc is dead, but, fair warning, I could be wrong.

Edit- based on your last post, I’m gonna say that it’s not your esc and it’s your wiring harness, jacks, or pins.

(14-Oct-2023, 06:25 AM)Lemonyleprosy Wrote: I’m gonna say that most likely your esc is dead, but, fair warning, I could be wrong.

Edit- based on your last post, I’m gonna say that it’s not your esc and it’s your wiring harness, jacks, or pins.

When the new harness comes I'll have another go. In the meantime, is there anyway I can check if my ESC is dead? Doesn't look like a lot of places I can stick the multimeter.

did you check the harness by the multimeter?
mesure directly on the plug of fc and esc might help.

(14-Oct-2023, 06:28 AM)angent56 Wrote: When the new harness comes I'll have another go. In the meantime, is there anyway I can check if my ESC is dead? Doesn't look like a lot of places I can stick the multimeter.

Check for continuity between each motor pad and the positive and negative battery pads. If any of the motor pads has continuity to positive or negative, you’ve blown a mosfet and the esc is toast unless you’re capable of hot air work.

So I've finally been able to sit down and look at this again. New wiring harness is all plugged in and I can still only get 2 motors to spin (motors 2 & 3).

Over the weekend I'll de-solder the motors that aren't working and see if I can test them - or even swap the pads with the working ones.

I'm really at a loss here and I think I'll just have to bite the bullet and buy a new ESC and FC stack - might as well start fresh on it. Does anyone have any good recommendations?

Do you have RPM filter enabled? Maybe try disabling or turning on bitbang?

Quote:SnowLeopardFPV Wrote:
The SpeedyBee F405 V3 FC is riddled with a number of design flaws that give all sorts of hardware conflicts. To name but a couple, you can't use DSHOT and RPM filtering without turning on DSHOT bitbang (which you shouldn't have to do on an F4 FC) due to dma/timer conflicts, and you can't switch on both analog OSD and blackbox logging at the same time due to an SPI conflict, so you have to choose one or the other. I think they must have tasked a trainee with the design of that FC without it then being peer reviewed by an experienced designer.

Also if you want to test if it as an ESC problem, you can swap the wires in the harness (ie motor 1 with motor 2) and if motor 1 spools up and 2 does not, then it is likely the FC and not ESC.

(29-Mar-2024, 03:11 PM)mstc Wrote: Do you have RPM filter enabled? Maybe try disabling or turning on bitbang?


Also if you want to test if it as an ESC problem, you can swap the wires in the harness (ie motor 1 with motor 2) and if motor 1 spools up and 2 does not, then it is likely the FC and not ESC.

Okay so I played around with a few of those settings and nothing worked. I switched Bidirectional DShot ON/OFF (which I think is RPM filtering) with a combination of Bitbang ON/OFF (via CLI) - and no changes in which motors spun. Except they did spin intermittently with Bitbang OFF and RPM Filtering ON - as your post mentioned.

I then swapped the motor 3 & 4 wires in the harness and found that the same physcial motor spun even when in a different virtual position. Looks to me like I ended up with 2 faulty motors. I will desolder these motors and test them. If that doesn't yield any results I will order 2 more motors and see if that will solve my issue.