Hello everyone,
My SP140’s ESC unfortunately stopped working during my last pre-flight… The controller now arms randomly, and the ESC start beeping 6 times rapidly after some time (from just after powering on the battery to few minutes after). Sometimes the motor does not arm at all, sometimes it stays armed and sometimes it unarms while running.
Nothing new happened to be in this situation : I had not tried to change the wiring, firmwares or my starting procedure.
So far it does not seems to be battery related (2.2kWh v1.6 battery, tested at 97% to 80% capacity).
ESC’s wiring still is well connected, and reconnecting did nothing.I updated the controller from 5.8 to 6.0 and nothing new happened. I then tried to check the ESC, but couldn’t manage to get anything new. Here are screenshots of the configurator :
By using APD Configurator switch Win lang to English, otherwise the app will not work properly.
Regarding to 6x tones issue, it’s caused that there is no connection between throttle and ESC, or the connection is interrupted randomly, broken wire connectiot or something like that.
Twice during preflight my throttle completely turned off (blank screen), while armed. I could not wake it up or rearm until physically disconnecting and reconnecting the battery. Simply flipping the battery switch off then back on was not enough. I don’t recall hearing any beeps.
I suspect it could be an old bug that was already addressed. I was several versions behind. So yesterday I updated to the current version off the firmware. I’ll reply here if the problem happens again.
I’m on the current firmware version now and still having this problem. It occurs between flipping the physical switch on the battery and some time until I am ready to arm the controller. As I am about to arm the controller I see that it no longer has any power. The screen is off. The only way to get it back up is to physically disconnect and reconnect the battery plug.
Is it possible that this is a timeout in the BMS instead of the throttle controller software? I wonder if this is related: After charging completed the BMS stops responding by Bluetooth and seems to be off if I let it sit for a while.
I had the same issue for almost a year and found out that if I accelerate the motor every few minutes on the ground while getting ready it will keep the connection going. I also thought that it was a bug or timer of some sort. In any case, I know about it and accepted that. Matter of facts, it happened again three days ago and I had to ask a pilot to disconnect and reconnect the 1/2 hour battery while I was standing, it worked fine after that. I have an older SP model version 5.6.
I’ve just had this issue twice on my 2nd flight with the V2.0 4.8kWh battery. Here’s a video of the incident.
My first flight was 44min without incident other than the old “Battery Error” issue I had with the V1 battery.
In an attempt to resolve the battery error issue, I updated my remote from 5.6 to 5.7 and used the APD tool to disable logging.
On my 2nd flight, after taking off I had set cruise at about 10kW but 1-2 min later, as I tried checking the BMS app, the motor shut down and the ESC started doing the 6 beeps thing. Luckily, I was able to regain power by turning the battery off and on.
Unfortunately, the engine shut off again just 20min later while I was cruising at just 3.1kW. I was able to restart it the same way as before and fly another (slightly stressful) 35min without incident.
The BMS app looked completely normal and I had never experienced it on the V1 battery so I assume it was something to do with the software changes I made.
I’m going to try reverting the controller back to v5.6 to see if that changes anything
UPDATE: It seems like @nfairfield has figured it out in this post! It’s caused by RF interference.
Both of my incidents happened as I was holding a phone next to the controller. It seems obvious in this second clip because it cuts off just as I pulled out my phone and held it against the controller.
Hi, I am not sure if that is related to this incident, but the ECS can easily unarm the motor in the event of a loose PWM connection (either on the throttle side or ESC side). APD’s and some other brand’s ESC set themself in safe mode if the PWM signal is lost, and beeps 6 times.
That was the problem on my original post. Paul kindly provided me a second throttle cable that resolved my issue (maybe a faulty soldered wire). It only happened once again, but due to high vibrations (the servo connector simply unhooked itself from the ESC).
