[shane_d9]

After a bad crash one of my esc got destroyed. I reordered the exact same esc from amazon, but am have an issue getting it to work. When trying to set the idle, it needs a lot more to start spinning. The others are around 1025 all working great, but the new escs require around 1150 to start spinning, and when they do spin they are spinning pretty fast. I though it might be the motor so I swapped it out, and same thing. I've also tried another esc from the same pack. Do I have to replace all the esc, or is there a way I can get them to sync up?

Thanks all!

[TheOtherCliff]

calibrate and set neutrals
https://librepilot.atlassian.net/wiki/display/LPDOC/ESC+Calibration

[shane_d9]

The neutrals is my issue. All but the new esc are neutral at 1025 but the new one is 1150

[Mateusz]

I think it does not matter where your neutrals are on ESCs. For that you set neutral point in GCS. After calibrating all ESCs. I dont have all ESCs neutral point exactly in the same spot, that's why you need calibration.

[shane_d9]

I considered that, but by the time it kicks in, it seems to be going pretty fast.

[TheOtherCliff]

Do calibration and you will see that it also affects the neutrals; then set neutrals.

[shane_d9]

I feel like I'm not explaining this well, and unfortunately it's not letting me link a youtube video. I can do calibration on the esc all individually. It runs through as expected. The new esc is always different. When powering it up after calibrating, it beeps in a 2 second delay from all the others. Having had this quad working before, I know that should not be the case. I followed the calibration instructions 50 times step by step, and am unable to resolve this issue. I'm about to just scrap all simonk escs and go with something that works a little more consistently. Every video I've ever seen and forum I have read say to just calibrate them, but this is not working.

[TheOtherCliff]

Setting the neutrals is supposed to handle this case.  It is supposed to start each motor at it's individual neutral setting although I can't say I have personally tested anything with more than a difference of 10 or so in neutral setting.

Does it fly?

[Mateusz]

If you have the same ESCs, and you flashed them all with the same firmware version, they must be equivalent.
If you bought the same ESC, but different batch it might have different version of firmware, and behave a bit different, you could try flashing them all with the same firmware that is up to date to be sure.

Try calibrating them manually. Take off props, check if you took props, set motor range 1000-2000, test motor output, link all outputs and set them to maximum, than connect battery, wait for music beeps, this means ESC entered calibration mode, pull slider to minimum, wait for melody beeps, this means lower bound is set. Unplug battery to exit this mode. Now you have calibrated your ESCs from 1000 to 2000 range. Plug battery again, and set neutral points individually.

For programming SimonK ESCs this should do https://hobbyking.com/en_us/afro-esc-usb-programming-tool.html, but you need to know what exact firmware to flash them with. I can't help with that. Trying finding how other people flash your type of ESCs.

[shane_d9]

I'm thinking you're right. I calibrated as suggested, and that helped lower the neutral to normal level, but the new one just couldn't match others. Most likely due to firmware settings. I'll have to look in to getting that tool for replacing a single esc in the future. Luckily they aren't crazy expensive, so I bit the bullet and just soldered the other three new ones in. It's flying great now! Thanks for the help all everyone!

[shane_d9]

Setting the neutrals is supposed to handle this case.  It is supposed to start each motor at it's individual neutral setting although I can't say I have personally tested anything with more than a difference of 10 or so in neutral setting.

Does it fly?

It did, but seemed like it was fighting itself. Lots of wobble and would seemingly increase power all by itself. After calibrating and swapping all of the esc one of them still has a difference of about 10 (probably from a bad solder joint) and flys pretty stable.

[Mateusz]

It's still good to have ESC programming sticks around. SiLabs uses different one than AVR chips somehow. Anyways, you might want to change direction of the motor, or enable active barking at some point. It's just handy to have one and they cost ~$2 usually on ebay. You could also get DShot capable ESCs, they don not need calibration and are newer. so usually way smaller and lighter, though more expensive.

[AerialPerPlexity]

Is dshot available for lp 16.09?

[TheOtherCliff]

No.  It is in 'next' though.