Cant arm the power system

Power System
1

Hi All,
Im a newbie to OpenPPG. I recently purchased a V3.5 second hand and it arrived yesterday.

I got the batteries hooked up and on the display on the throttle I have the message “Disarmd” with a voltage of 47.7V (partial charge left over prior to shipping). I have tried both buttons (single, double and triple clicks) and plunger throttle and I cant get the controller to arm so that I can do a ground test.

All of the motor controllers beep in sequence and the propellers all twitch slightly at the beep. I have searched the forum here and youtube to find instructions on arming or a fault finding check list but I havent had any luck. Everyone seems to skip over this part.

My paramotor has a custom throttle housing. I have attached photos below of the controller. The small push button under the display cycled through voltage/%/time but nothing else. There is also a plunger style button at the bottom with the led which is currently blue in colour. No noticeable effect from pushing this button.

Can someone please help with a solution as to how to arm this beast (or fault find) and also provide some details on what the plunger button with led is supposed to do.

Additionally is there any documentation outlining features/functionality and fault finding for the power system? If there isn’t I would be happy to contribute to the community by collating this information into a live pdf/webpage/forum topic. I’m a former industrial automation engineer, so this sort of thing is right up my alley. Basically full documentation for the required systems for each version released to give newcomers like myself a single point to educate themselves quickly. I’m talking about detailed information on setup, features, mods, upgrade path/procedures, fault finding etc with as many photos as possible. As the second hand market for the OpenPPG expands it is very hard for newcomers to adsorb the immense amount of knowledge contained within this forum as there is no real logical sequence to move through the thread topics.

It would be a real shame to not share the brilliance of the community who have gotten this awesome idea up and flying in a concise and cohesive manner with the wider paragliding community.

Thanks in advance!!

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2

I don’t see the LED button in any of your pictures. I only see two black buttons. Unless the previous owner changed things around, the led button is your arm/disarm button. Double click to arm and disarm. Sometimes it can get finicky and you have to try a couple times for it to arm. Not sure why, but it could be a software issue. I’m also wondering if there are any bad solder joints, or if there is a disconnect somewhere involving the led button. Might be worth it to open it up and find out. Maybe redo some of the led button solder joints. If you open it up, post a picture of where on the circuit board the led button connects, just to verify it is connected in the right place.

3

Depending on which the version and modifications you also might need to hold down the LED button while double clicking the other button to get it to arm.

4

Thanks for the advice. Depressing the led button (long travel plunger style) for a second or two and then double clicking the other push button did the trick eventually. It appears that the plunger style led button has slight corrosion on the internal contacts from lack of use so it didn’t make contact immediately and required some jiggling side to side before it worked.

5

That sort of summary and that sort of trouble-shooting guide would both be wonderful.

6

If you have any other problems with it I might have an extra batch 3 controller or two.
Also it might be worth upgrading to the latest batch 6 controller and hub that has the new telemetry and altitude support. We’ll be getting that hardware in in about a month (as long as the virus doesnt get much worse)