VOXL Mini 4-in-1 ESC Status LED does not light up
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We have an ESC that has been giving us a motor whistling issue only on one motor. After confirming props were tightened correctly, then swapping the motor and verifying the ESC parameters, we decided to replace the ESC and that solved our whistling motor issue.
The only indication that something is wrong with the board is that the status LED associated with the ESC driving "whistling" motor does not light up.
The ESCs are all detected and the parameters upload correctly.
Is there anything else we can try to reset the ESC?
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@swickliff , can you please clarify, for this particular ESC channel, the LED never turns on, even right after turning the power on (when bootloader flashes blue led very quickly for 1 second).
If this is the case, it seems there is some sort of hardware issue with the board. Can you inspect it for any visible damage around that ESC channel that is not working? Was it involved in a crash, or was it behaving like this from the beginning?
Alex
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@Alex-Kushleyev I have just learned that this drone was involved in a minor crash and then it started whistling after the crash. It was caught underneath a chair and landed on it's landing gear on the ground, about a 1ft fall. We have several other drones with these ESCs that have been through much worse crashes that are still flying fine.
The LED never turns on, even right after power on (the other 3 flash quickly for 1 second).
There is a small chip on a mosfet on the ESC channel. That is the only visible damage I can see on either side of the board.
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@swickliff , thanks for the details. The red arrow is pointing to a Mosfet, it looks like it is chipped. That may or may not explain the motor whistling noise (i have had chipped mosfets that were working fine), but since the LED is not working, there maybe other mechanical damage on the other side. Since you mentioned that you do not see any other damage, the issue could be a broken connection between the MCU and the PCB (this ESC uses BGA MCU package).
It is possible that during this particular crash, the mechanical stress on the board was enough to break several BGA connections, in which case you would not be able to recover it. That is likely what happened because you are observing multiple issues which are essentially unrelated besides being connected to the same MCU (led issue, motor control issue).
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@Alex-Kushleyev
It's sad to hear it's probably a broken connection, but thanks for helping me figure that out.I have a second ESC with LED issues. Only 1 LED blinks, but no ESCs are detected when trying to upload params. Today I tried re-uploading the param at a baud rate of 57600 to see if the prams previously failed to upload correctly, but that didn't work.
I know this ESC has never flown bc the motors didn't spin when we did a test spin with "voxl-esc spin". There is no visible damage to any channels on the board.
Do you think this could also be a MCU connection issue? Or is there something else I can try to detect the ESCs?
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@swickliff, if only 1 out of 4 LEDs is blinking, that is very strange. When power is applied to the ESC, the bootloader on each ESC channel should always start and blink the blue led fast for 1 second. after that, firmware execution starts. If LED is not blinking at first, then there is most likely some HW issue that prevents the ESCs from booting. I am surprised that one out of four LEDs is actually blinking.
Our ESCs are all tested during production (including spinning), but if you think that you received the ESC in a non-working state (it was not damaged after receiving it), then you should submit an RMA form for a replacement. https://www.modalai.com/pages/rma
