power problems (pro mini)

[tovrin]

it started awhile ago, but i only recently tied all the events together.

I was flying low but aggressively and made an unintentional hard landing, the motors suddenly stopped and the ESC's rebooted. I had to pull power to the paris board to get it functional again. i assumed a loose wire and tightened everything down, making sure the wiring was solid.

the problem resurfaced once or twice more, but always during a rough landing (or more likely now that i understand, a hard throttle as i was trying to correct the hard landing), i still assumed something was loose, and started resoldering things.

then i got my GY-86, and had a few soldering issues, and i suddenly started losing power to certain pins, like my i2c 3.3 and 5v pins, i originally blamed the GY-86, but finally got the i2c errors sorted by learning to solder them better, used a pin labeled 4.4v and powered my GY-86, all was fine, so i blamed my original soldering for the power issue, assuming i had splattered across a ground or something.

a couple days ago it happened again, but there was no hard landing, i was low flying in the woods, and it suddenly powered off.

i rebooted it, and the arduino wasnt turning on. i hooked up the gui, with no lipo and everything looks fine, i plug in li-po (no props) and get no power to ESC control. no ESC beeps, nothing. but when i unplug them from the board, they beep like normal. (normal - they beep like they are getting no control signal)

I assume the pro mini fried something with its electric output because the paris board looks fine. I ordered one, should be here tomorrow.
any thoughts?

[copterrichie]

are you powering the promini via the RAW or the 5 volt pin?

[tovrin]

im not sure how the paris board powers the promini, im powering my paris board from the ESCs

[tovrin]

my pro mini showed up today, i knew it would arrive without its pins installed, but not without any pins. ugh

[tovrin]

got pins, soldered everything as carefully as i could. the pro mini booted up, i loaded the 2.1 sketch, had a lot of i2c errors, noticed my cables were pushed together, i fixed the problem, rebooted it, it worked, no errors, i calibrated the acc, i clicked calibrate mag, it froze. no sensor movement, no i2c error, no debug, no cycle time, well, it was there, just no moving.

I rebooted, no change, i checked all my soldering, i reloaded the sketch, and i got a sync error. oh no.

i rebooted it again, stared at it for a minute and suddenly it started working, then stopped. every now and then it would start again.

ive checked everything i can, i even plugged in my old promini, it boots up, but only via ftdi.

the frustration is building, i dont know what if i did something when the i2c wires crossed, or if it was just a bad part.

[bill516]

By pro mini boots only via FTDI do you mean that if you load the blink sketch and apply power via the raw input you dont get a blink. Can you remove your imu from the paris board and connect it to the pro mini by itself then use the GUI to see if it does the same, if not then it would appear there is a problem on the paris board. Have you tried to flex the board when its working to see if it stops, if it does you might have a trace thats broken or cracked, thats magnifying glass time to try and find it.

Could you put some pics up to see if we can see anything obvious, if often the case when you get a problem like this that you cant see whats in front of your eyes.

[tovrin]

ill try to post some pics, im presently building a shield for my dueminalove, using a seeed protoshield.

the original promini will load and display any sketch up till you tried to make use of power output (on pwm ports or i2c ports), or use anything but ftdi to power the promini.

i tried replacing the promini to determine if the paris was bad or the arduino but im getting different results from each promini.

[bill516]

Which FTDI do you have, I have one that has the header that flat sits underneath the board, but I found that the connection had a strain put on them by the cable till eventually it broke a soldered joint, easy fix but I was having problems before that with it not uploading to the pro mini unless I hit the reset button. After I re-soldered I put a tie wrap around the header so its secure against the board and the tie wrap takes any strain off the connector, not had a problem with it since. It might be something to look at if you are having problems with separate boards.

[tovrin]

my original promini still partially works, i can upload to it and everything just fine, i just cant control ESCs from it anymore, nor will an ESC power it.. the FTDI connection i have is built on to the paris board and has no strain. i took my IMU out today and have gotten my new dueminalove shield almost fully assembled, i have tested the imu so far and it rocks, still have to solder up all of the RX connections, and the ESC connections. I am only going to use the one BEC this time instead of all 4 ESC BECs. I dont think, in my case, it made any difference but its one less thing to worry about.

[bill516]

Have you checked the traces that go to the pins, they are very small and dont take much to melt/break or generally make them unusable, guess who did it. OK I admit it, it was me but it was on the A4 and A5 pins, I ended up having to solder wires to the pins on the chip and route them through the holes in the board with hot glue support. It was tricky but it made my pro mini usable again. If you use a pin on the end of your multimeter probe you can check the output from the chip and then where it connects to the pins on the edge of the board, if you get a reading at the chip but not at the board edge you will know the trace has got damaged somewhere, most likely where you solder the pins in. I dont have a Paris board so I'm not sure how the board gets its power but I assume that the 5v from the esc is routed to the raw pin on the pro mini. If you take the power from an esc to the raw pin on the pro mini does it not work, if you have the blink sketch loaded then 5v to raw and aground are all you need to see the led blink, if it doesnt blink then its not getting power from the raw pin. Its all probably a moot point now that you are getting your new toy working.

[tovrin]

I will get the paris board working again, i want a small house sized copter too, and have everything but a frame and FC for one right now. wmp and nnchk is perfect such a toy.

[tovrin]

well, my luck or soldering hasn't improved, i managed to burn out my IMU, i think, im requesting the local hackerspace to look at it for me, but basically when i was wiring up my power connections, a drop of solder conected the Vin to where my IMU was plugged into ground, and now when i power it up my IMU lights up, but no communication, in fact it locks up the GUI, and causes me to have to reload the sketch. am at my wits end, so like i said, I'm requesting professional nerd help. these guys are all about Hoverfly, since the owner is a senior member of their club, and is local to Orlando.

I cant see paying $450 for a FC that doesnt have GPS, but im poor...

[tovrin]

spoke to the hackerspace, and they verified my initial diagnosis, my original promini has a voltage regulator problem. my new pro mini has a malfunction problem.

where i was wrong is my gy-86 is not fried, they connected a bus pirate to it (I want one of these) and it was acknowledging, whew.

apparently there was a single thread of wire touching still, was completely invivisble to my old eyes, but he used a nice pair of magnifying goggles and spotted it quickly.

am waiting for my replacement promini to arrive.