I’m stuck right now because the PCB I bought doesn’t fit on my frame (round peg, square hole problem) so I ordered another one and am waiting for it to arrive (and my local postman is a fucking idiot who can’t figure out “16th floor” means “put it in the mail slot for 1600”). We decided to assemble the motor system so we could figure out what direction the props were spinning in — you need 2 to spin clockwise and the other 2 to spin counter-clockwise.
We soldered the ESC to the motor, plugged the receiver into the ESC, and used some alligator clips to connect the battery to the ESC. Then we turned on a transmitter for the first time! It was super exciting when, minutes later, we had a motor spinning!
The problem was that the motors were (mostly) all spinning the same direction, which was bad because we thought we’d crossed enough wires to have half spin the other direction. We starred at them for a long while. Russ had 1 motor that was spinning counter-clockwise, and we couldn’t figure out how it was different from another one that was wired identically, but was spinning clockwise. Until I noticed that one of the two ESCs was upside down (it’s just a bundle of wires and micro-controller wrapped in black electrical tape…). Russ unsoldered it, and re-did it right side up and it spun counter-clockwise! He’d accidentally done one of his correctly!
Unfortunately, I’d accidentally done none of mine correctly, so I spent some time right it all.
Hoping my PCB comes in soon so I can assemble the brains of the copter!
(Using terms possibly wrong: every writer/blogger I read says “PCB” and I didn’t know what that stood for. It’s “printed circuit board”. Which is correct…but not nearly specific enough. In this context, the PCB is a “power distribution board” and should be initialismed “PDB”. But no one does, that I can see.)
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