Spirit System

First of all I am using the Spirit (v 2.4.1) governor on my Trex 450 in combination with a Hobbywing 60 A V4 ESC i fixed wing mode without a problem. Governor works nice, auto bailout also, no issues with spoolup.


I have setup the governor on my Trex 550 DFC with a Spirit Pro (v 2.4.1). It is a 12s conversion running a Align 130 A ESC (so a Hobbywing really), running a KDE 550XF 565 kv motor. I also used a Scorpion backup guard with this setup. Tested it extensively on the bench and all looked okay. Got an ocasionall RMP signal is noisy message in the log though. Two first flights went very good, governor was easily tunned in real time (excellent Spirit feature btw).


For the next two flights I changed the following: moved the DFC arms on the swashplate to the inner hole in order to be in the optimal mechanical range of resolution (at least 90 on the 6 degree setting) and instead of the Scoprion backup guard I used a Optipower backup guard. Don´t know if you are familiar with these two but they do work slightly different. The Scorpion backup guard puts out around 5.5 V continuesly. The Optipower one once powered up senses the voltage and puts out I believe around 0.5 V less. In my case I am running standard servos so I am running 6V on the Align ESC BEC. 


First flight: Up into hover, IDLE UP 1, IDLE UP 2 and after a few seconds the motor shutoff. I was just around 3 m above ground so landed safely. Hooked up the WiFi module and logged showed first a "RPM signal noisy" and right after "RPM signal lost". Had to power down and power up again to be able to be able to start the motor again. Should have stopped here.


Second flight: Raised RPM sensor filter to 8. Took off, some pitch pump about a minute in flight all looked okay. Did some flips, stationary rolls all looked good so I started flying. After about 1 minute motor cut out again, this time it was not the optimum auto but got the heli down with minimal damage. Same messages in the log.


After bench testing two more times for a total of approximatelly 7 minutes of running without blades I was able to reproduce the behaviour only once.

I am a little bit scared of using the Spirit governor now untill I know exactly what is causing this. ESC does not go into any error modes.


My question is firstly: If RPM governor signal is lost will the Spirit automatically shut the motor off and require a reboot in order to continue?

Second can it be the Optipower backup guard causing the issue? Moving the DFC arms on the swashplate inwards would in principle put some more strain on the servos but that could hardly be causing my governor issues. Hope you can help Tomas.




Skickat från min F5321 via Tapatalk

Hello,

normally this should never happen, because Governor will not allow to decrease the throttle under a certain value.
Even if sensor reading is very noisy and even is the signal will left completely (PIT pin will disconnect suddenly) it will still work, just with a lower performance.
In this way you will see event that the signal was lost.

If you do not see any message like this, then the signal is OK.

So in my opinion the problem must be caused directly by the ESC, probably some protection. Something like this could occur, if the signal becomes invalid and then the ESC will perform halt.
Alternatively overcurrent protection was triggered (could occur if governor gain is way too high).
For example if you will set too high Throttle Range - Max. (much more than the ESC expect) than it will shut down. Default value for the ESC is 1940us. Did you performed a calibration of the ESC or it was not calibrated at all? If not and you have configured 1940us (or left default value of 1900us) then this shouldn't be a case.

If the unit was operating normally after the incident, then I think there these are the only reasons it could happen.

What Throttle frequency you have configured? It should not exceed 120Hz although 200Hz could work too.

Basically you can try to unplug PIT pin when the governor is engaged. It should work with no issue after this. No reboot is needed. Did it required reboot in your case?

Regarding Optipower backup guard I hope it can't cause the issue. If so, then it could cause rather an issue with whole system. So that it will be unresponsive/powered off or something like this.
If you had a full control for the whole time, then this will probably be not the case.

Okay. Checked soldering, pulled on wires and connectors while running motor, both on ESC, motor and into the Spirit Pro. Tried loading the head. Ran both with and without the Optipower backup guard. Was not able to trigger the condition. Throttle frequency is set at 60 Hz, governor response 5 and holding performance at 2. Throttle range is 1000-1940 us.

In order to setup the auto bailout this is what I have done:

Calibration on ESC was done with default range from ESC manual 1100-1940. I then raised throttle Hold to show 15% in the Spirit diagnostics and lowered the throttle range slowly in the Spirit software until the motor stopped spinning which was around 1020, then went to more clicks. The total range in the Spirit diagnostics is however 0-100 %. Is this an okay way of doing it?

Requested RPM shows up, auto bailout works. One strange thing which I noticed on the ESC settings when plugging it into the program box was that it showed a motor timing of 5 degrees, default setting is 15 degrees, don´t ever remember changing it to 5. I now changed back to 15. Can the ESC trigger a shutdown due to a too low motor timing?



Skickat från min F5321 via Tapatalk

Hmm, it is good that you have found it.
With some motors, timing is very important else during a higher load it could loose the synchronization and motor will stop.
It is sort of protection, similar to when the ESC detect a motor stall.

So it is possible that this is exactly the reason for such problem. If it required reboot to run again, then you have probably rebooted also the ESC. In this case it will forget the protection condition.

So maybe this is whole problem. Configuration seems to be good. So there shouldn't be really other reason for stopping except some sort of protection.

Yes, you are right. I am thinking this might have been the problem. I will update you if I find out more. Thank's.

Skickat från min F5321 via Tapatalk

Flew today with the 15 degree timing. No problems! No motor shutdowns. So it was not a Spirit issue, governor worked great!

Skickat från min F5321 via Tapatalk

Great! Thank you for the report.

I hope there will be no more surprises.