Hi all, my name is Bill and I'm currently working a VTOL plane drone project for school. The drone will be in a tri-motor configuration with servos mounted with motors in order to tilt them into VTOL/ forward flight configurations.

Putting aside the feasibility of a VTOL fixed winged drone in the time constraint of a semester, we are running into several problems regarding interfacing of the required components for the drone. The components used can be found as listed:

FC: Speedybee F405 Fixed Winged
ESC: T-Motor F55A Pro II BLHeli_32
Motors: U7-V2.0 Power Type UAV Motor KV490
Tilt Servos: Wishiot RDS5160 Servo 60 kg RC Digital Servo

Accessories:
Radiomaster ELRS Receiver
BZGNSS BZ-251 GPS
Runcam Link Wasp FPV Camera and Transmitter
Matek Digital Airspeed Sensor ASPD-4525
2x 3S in series for 22.2V

After flashing the FC with the corresponding firmware found on ardupilot's database, I plugged in/soldered the required components am ready to attempt to test the electronics. I've connected a laptop running mission planner to the flight controller via a usb-c cable and am able to connect to the flight controller but I am unable to test the motors/servos. When I go to mission planner > setup > motor test, the buttons are all grayed out on the page and unclickable. I'd assume there was something wrong the ESC and so I've disconnected it and hooked it up to an arduino which generated PWM to test throttle the motors. This worked and I was able to get the motors spinning, leading me to think that the ESC and FC are not compatible. Is this a possiblility and how should I fix this issue?

I've attached a photo of the wiring diagram below. I will look up how to access log files and will provide them if necessary as well. Overall this project is quite overwhelming and a lot to learn as this is the first drone I've had the chance to work on, and VTOL seems to be much more than my group had anticipated. Any help would be appreciated.
   

From (bitter) experience, Ardupilot is just about the most awkward, overly complex, and difficult to understand flight system going, with the longest and most fraught learning curve.  

Yes, it can work, but no, its not at ALL easy to work with. When companies like Hee Wing can get so confused they issue VTOL planes with an unstable and unusable setup, even to it being set for FC hardware NOT fitted, it sums up the base issue.

Have a look at the YouTuber "Painless360" and his work with an Ardupilot developer (no less) on set up for the above craft, it took them Six Months!!!!!!!!



Note their recommendation to switch the ESC firmware to Bluejay!

There's a reason SpeedyBee only give it two stars for ease of use compared to the main alternative in their sales info for that FC. (and I think they are being generous)

I doubt there's any other originating source of your issues!

I strongly suggest you get onto the Ardupilot specific online sources as this forum does not have many Ardupilot users, most here being race and freestyle quad users of Betaflight.

https://discuss.ardupilot.org/

Hope this helps, even though not the best news, and best of luck, I think you'll need it!!