Historical project documentation. Content is maintained in GitLab.
Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting Guide
In this page you can find issues and their solutions to problems that you encounter before or during the flight of your NG.
General
| Problem / Issue | Description |
| Short between VCC and GND | Check for solder bridges, inversely connected diodes and electrolytic/tantalum capacitors (they may become permanently conducting (or explode) when a negative voltage is applied to them) |
Flight controller
| Problem / Issue | Description | Solution |
| During start of hovering coper motors are going to full power flipping the NG over | Sensor calibration is OK. Calibration values are looking good 1000 and -1000 etc. Hovering and turning slightly aside in the hand yield strange motor behavior | FC is mounted incorrectly. The white triangle in one edge of the FC should point always point to motor 1 (ie, forward in quad HAL and 45° left in quadX HAL) |
| BLC test HAL doesn't spin up motors (`set HW.HAL blc`, `set BLC1 25`, `on`) | Your BLC/BLC Firmware/Motor combination may require a certain minimum amount of throttle to spin up | Use enough throttle, e.g. "`set BLC1 6000`" (max is 65535, but do NOT try that). Also note that the throttle range has been changed in Sep. 2013, the maximum used to be 255. |
| JTAG doesn't work | You've wired the JTAG pins (connector X1) directly to your JTAG programmer. | You have to put 10kΩ between RTCK (X1 pin 6) to enable JTAG on the LPC2148. Or you can just use the JTAG adapter PCB that came with your flight controller PCB. If you use the adapter, it's jumper has to be bridged. |
| Copter starts to drift after flying for a few minutes | Possibly too much vibration | Put vibration dampeners between FC and frame |
HW-0.22-mini specific
| Problem / Issue | Description | Solution |
| FC not powering on | 12V input after the fuse is ok, 5V is not ok. | Check power switch and boot switch for solder bridges |
| 24bit ADC is not found | Check IC16 for solder bridges | |
HW-0.24-mini specific
| Problem / Issue | Description | Solution |
| Onboard GPS doesn't work | GPS chip not powered | Populate R68 with 0R |
| Onboard GPS doesn't work | Not initialized or not configured properly | See `help venus`. Try `set HW.use.gps onboard`, `set HW.uart1.mode auto`, `venus attach`, `venus init uart1 store`. |
| Onboard GPS doesn't work | Bad solder joints - the Venus GPS chip is the hardest to solder part on hw-0.24. | |
| UART1 doesn't work | It's not possible to use on-board GPS and UART1 at the same time since they share the same microcontroller pins. | Disable onboard GPS: `set HW.use.gps 0`, `set HW.uart1.mode auto` |
NGBLC-4mini
| Problem / Issue | Description | Solution |
| NGBLC4 motors not beeping and not running | Flashing of ATMEGA is OK. I2C-Bus is showing the motors under Show Devices | Check IC104 for bridges and correct soldering |
| Motor start problem and not running fast | Motor is beeping while turning on the BLC via FC. During starting the motors the propeller is swinging left and right and finally runs but not with full power | Check all 22k resistors by HIN Pin of IR2304 |
| NGBLC shuts off on lab power supply when starting the motors | Standby current usage should be around 100mA at 12V. Powering on the motors requires a much larger amount of current (several ampere), which your PSU may not be able to deliver. | Use a real battery. |