Aero-M

[seth04]

My company has an Aero-M that has been on the shelf for several years and we are having trouble getting the motor to arm. I have noticed when I am in Mission Planner the battery voltage is showing at 0% when I use a fully charged battery and haven't figured out how to get it to read the correct voltage, I suspect this has something to do with not being able to arm the motor. I have attached a short video of the tones we are receiving on startup. Any help on where to go from here would be great. The employee who originally purchased the unit is no longer with us and we haven't been able to find any support.

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1...?key=OGZIek9ISFZFN2JZN3NFXzVzblNMTzZQMTRtZU1R


UPDATE:

We were able to fix the voltage reading by changing a few settings in the "Optional Hardware" tab in Initial set up. But we are still having trouble getting the motor to arm. It will beep/twitch one or twice when plugged in and that is it.

 

[RichWest]

Seems like contacting 3DR would be the best resource: https://3dr.com/support/aero-m/

 

[seth04]

Thanks!!!, We have sent a few emails but haven't received a reply from 3dr yet.

 

[RichWest]

Likely it's a simple fix, power monitor maybe bad. mRo or CurrentUAS maybe another resource, both prior 3DR insiders.

I'd give you $500 for the setup, as is.....

 

[seth04]

Thanks for the info, I will look into it. I don't think we are ready to sell just yet

 

[skyhax]

I see anything with a "start capacitor" and I start there,

 

[RichWest]

UPDATE: We were able to fix the voltage reading by changing a few settings in the "Optional Hardware" tab in Initial set up. But we are still having trouble getting the motor to arm. It will beep/twitch one or twice when plugged in and that is it.

Awesome. Keep plugging away, I'm sure it is something simple...GPS lock maybe...

 

[seth04]

I have found if I go to "force PX4 bootloader" I can arm the motor and use it manually but it also uninstalls the firmware. Once I reload the firmware and go through the initial setup I lose the ability to arm again. It appears that everything is setup correctly and I make sure I have a GPS lock, I have check and rechecked everything in the initial set up. I am sure it is something simple but we can't seem to find it.

 

[RichWest]

I'm way beyond my pay grade to be in this conversation. Just talking it through, it appears you have an error preventing the FC to start the motor. Possibly it's a calibration error, mag or level error. I'm unsure how/what arduplane handles these needs, I assume similar to arducopter.

Maybe hooking up to Mission Planner would reveal the type of error. That would be my direction to isolate.

 

[seth04]

Thanks for the input, that is what it seems like to me but I have recalibrated several times and it always say it is successful and appears to be giving me correct readings. I'll keep digging and see what I can come up with. Thanks for the help!

 

[artcuda]

I remember I had a unit that, upon powering up the bird, one of the motors would 'jerk' just a little. The unit wouldn't allow flight to occur as well. Turned out to be a bad motor pod. Well, a bad mosfet....which I replaced and all was hunky-dory afterwards. NOTE: I have no clue what the component is actually called. I just happen to have soooo many Solo parts laying around that I found an identical replacement, and Voila...Bob's yer uncle.