FlyMentor Setup By Ivor Hill PLEASE READ FIRST!!

[Ivor Hill]

Originally Posted by batman72

Well, from what I saw, I had no control over the heli, it sort of like wobbled slightly and the next few seconds, it came crashing down on the tarmac. Obviously it could be how I wired the ESC and the receiver. Initially I mounted the ESC in front of the heli right beside and below the battery tray. The FM was stuck to the right side of the heli just below the main gears and the RX was stuck to the left of the heli, also just below the main gear. Due to the size of the Towerpro H40A ESC (Good ESC but the size is not good for 450 heli frame), I could not properly fit the Align Canopy. Hence I shifted the ESC to the bottom of the heli, right in front of the CCD camera of the FM. I'm not sure if this setup had the ESC to close to the receiver and causing inteference. Furthermore, my receiver's antennae wire was tied together with the servo wires, hence that could also be a possibility of causing interruptions to the signal. It could also be the ESC might have been to close to the FM controller, causing unnecessary interference.

I heard that if you used those metal 'O' rings and wound the servo wires and ESC BEC wire round it, it will reduce the interferece. Is this true?

Anyway, I just bought a new ESC today, the EMAX 40A, which is was smaller than the Towerpro H40A and I should be able to fit that inside the frame right below the battery tray of the heli. I was comparing it with the Align 35A ESC, which was very small and was mounted just below the battery tray too. However, I was afraid my motor would burnt the ESC as it required 40A ESC.

Hence, tell me if wiring up the servo wires, BEC wires, FM wires are important and antennae wire should be tied not near to any other wires to ensure proper signal reception. What about the 'O' rings? Will it help reduce inteference in those servo/BEC wires?

It is generaly considered that ferrite rings are not needed with 2.4 systems but I always fit one on the esc wire fitted as close as possible to the reciever. Never heard of them being fitted to servo wires.
The antenna wires should be kept as far away from other wires as possible and not cross other wires or run along side carbon fibre. If there are 2 they should be set 90 degrees to each other.

[Razoredge]

Originally Posted by batman72

Well, from what I saw, I had no control over the heli, it sort of like wobbled slightly and the next few seconds, it came crashing down on the tarmac. Obviously it could be how I wired the ESC and the receiver. Initially I mounted the ESC in front of the heli right beside and below the battery tray. The FM was stuck to the right side of the heli just below the main gears and the RX was stuck to the left of the heli, also just below the main gear. Due to the size of the Towerpro H40A ESC (Good ESC but the size is not good for 450 heli frame), I could not properly fit the Align Canopy. Hence I shifted the ESC to the bottom of the heli, right in front of the CCD camera of the FM. I'm not sure if this setup had the ESC to close to the receiver and causing inteference. Furthermore, my receiver's antennae wire was tied together with the servo wires, hence that could also be a possibility of causing interruptions to the signal. It could also be the ESC might have been to close to the FM controller, causing unnecessary interference.

I heard that if you used those metal 'O' rings and wound the servo wires and ESC BEC wire round it, it will reduce the interferece. Is this true?

Anyway, I just bought a new ESC today, the EMAX 40A, which is was smaller than the Towerpro H40A and I should be able to fit that inside the frame right below the battery tray of the heli. I was comparing it with the Align 35A ESC, which was very small and was mounted just below the battery tray too. However, I was afraid my motor would burnt the ESC as it required 40A ESC.

Hence, tell me if wiring up the servo wires, BEC wires, FM wires are important and antennae wire should be tied not near to any other wires to ensure proper signal reception. What about the 'O' rings? Will it help reduce inteference in those servo/BEC wires?

I had a crash with my hk450 yesterday. First flights was good(only hover to dial in the flymentor) Started to try some pitch pumps an lost control of the tail. This was with the TowerPro H40A ESC. I have been flying this for some time without any problems(With only analog servos and without Flymentor). I think the bec is to small (1.5A) to keep power up after I installed the FM and a new Digital tail servo. The heli was about 10ft from me when it browned out, so I don't think it was the receiver, but the higher amp draw from FM & Digital servo.

[Orangephoner]

hi i just got the flymentor and i plugged it in to start setting it up and the light on the usb cord lights up but not on the main flymentor unit. so i cant set it up cause it says there is no device.
any advise?
thank you

[batman72]

Hi Razor, what you say make sense. Recall my previous post about the ESC getting too hot? FM was drawing a lot of power from the receiver (due to the digital tail servo). Furthermore I mounted an additional HK401b gyro to the existing FM gyro. I suspected that the heli was choking up on power before it had the brown out and fell to earth. I recalled before the heli fell, the controls were erratic like my inputs from Tx were distorted, then it hung there 30m above ground for a few seconds, wobbled n crashed down. I was thinking of getting a separate UBEC of 3A above but due to space I just bought the new EMAX ESC which comes with 2A of power for the BEC. I hope that is sufficient to power the receiver, FM, HK401B n servos.

Ivor, thanks for the advice. I'll be re-wiring the wires again tonight based on your advice and will start rebuilding my heli. The only component which has yet to arrive is the brushless motor. I ordered the Turnigy 2218 motor coz my previous Turnigy Typhoon 2215 motor had problems fitting directly on the motor mount of the heli. Hope it's good. Thx for the advice.

Hi Orange, assuming your FM USB drivers had been setup correctly on your PC, you still need to power the FM via the Lipo battery. Connect the FM to your receiver and power up the receiver by connecting the Lipo leads to the receiver ( USB wire from FM does not power up the FM controller). FM has a three wire pin coming from the FM controller: black, red and white. This is the power line to FM that needs to be connected to your receiver. I connect it to channel 1 of my Turnigy 9x receiver. Theoretically you can connect it to any channel on your receiver to receive power but since this 3 wire pin is to control the aileron servo, so it's connected to CH1. Then plug in the FM USB cable between FM n your PC. Assuming your FM drivers were installed correctly on your PC, you can run Helibal app n it should show that FM is connected.

For proper setup of FM, it is suggested that you plug in all your servo wires, gyro and CCD camera before even doing any tuning on FM because when you save the settings in Helibal, it send the signal direct to the FM controller via the USB cable and you can hear your servos and and see the LED FM status on FM controller in real time. Follow this thread, especially the ones I have posted and got plenty of help from Ivor to get FM working on my heli. Hope this helps.

[Razoredge]

Hi again Batman!
I'm going with the TURNIGY Plush 40amp this time, it has a 3amp bec that I hope is enough.
It fits under the battery tray and got good reviews. Hoping the mail services deliver my spare-parts i reasonable time and that customs don't hold it back for a week, like they did last time. We are getting some nice flying weather here in Norway now :-)

[Orangephoner]

Thank you so much that helped. One other question. Where do I plug the blue wire in? I have a blade sr. Also did I understand correctly that I don't need the blue wire if I'm going to adjust everything on the computer? Or just have it unplugged while its on the computer and use it in flight?

Christian

[Razoredge]

Originally Posted by Orangephoner

Thank you so much that helped. One other question. Where do I plug the blue wire in? I have a blade sr. Also did I understand correctly that I don't need the blue wire if I'm going to adjust everything on the computer? Or just have it unplugged while its on the computer and use it in flight?

Christian

This it what i says in the first post:
"If the blue wire is connected stabilization gain is controlled and adjusted in the TX and adjusting it in Helibal will have no effect, if it is disconnected stabilization gain is adjusted in Helibal."

If you have a free channel (eg. Gyro-channel) on your receiver you can plug in the blue wire to switch stabilization on/off

[Orangephoner]

ok so i keep running into problems setting this up.. i have all the wires plugged in correctly i believe. i havent even gotten to the part where i set everything up on the computer. cause now when i plug it in it and it scans for my device it says there is no device and not connected. the FM is blinking fast red in sequences of 4. which i think means its not communicating with my receiver. can anyone please help? do i just have something plugged in wrong? thank you for your help. this can be stressful. i can post how i have it plugged in if that would help. im installing it onto a blade sr.
thanks
christian.

[Razoredge]

Hi Orangephoner!
Are you running windows xp on your computer? Helibal is kinda tricky on vista/win7.
Did you set the usb adapter to a com port lower than 10?
Is your servos responding to stick input? If not, your wiring might be wrong.

[Orangephoner]

I'm running xp. I'm not sure about the usb. And I have the fm kinda plugged in. My heli isn't responding at all. The only thing it does is throttle up. . I might have the ones going from the heli to fm backwards. Ill check. But any suggestions? Do you know how it pluggs to the sr by chance

Christian

[batman72]

Open up Device Manager in Control Panel with the FM USB wire connected to your PC. Do you see the USB device having problems? Running on Windows XP should be easier i think. I did it the hard way on Windows 7 64 bit where I had to force Windows to accept unsigned drivers.

Just plug the FM USB cable into the PC without plugging into the FM controller. You should hear the computer beep that it has detected a USB device plugged in. In Windows 7, under Device Manager, you will see something like Virtual Communication Port. With the drivers correctly installed, you should see this with the COM port assigned to the FM USB port. Mine showed "Virtual Communication Port (COM3)". If you see that your Virtual Comm port has an exclamation mark on it, it means your FM drivers were not installed correctly. Hence you will never be able to connect the FM Controller to the PC and control it via Helibal. You will have to go back and troubleshoot your driver setup and make sure Window has set it up correctly.

Go to the Hobbyking.com website under Files tab for the Flymentor which comes under the Gyro Stablization section of the website. Click on this link.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...on_System.html

There are many tutorials and drivers which has been uploaded by others. It should help you get started. Let us know if it works.

[Orangephoner]

I rechecked again and my heli is no responding to any imput. Do I have it wired wrong

Christian

[batman72]

What transmitter are you using? If you had the transmitter setup for Swash 120 degrees or Heli 120 on some Tx, then your mixing it set on in the Tx. Either change the Swash Type on Tx to Glider mode (If it has that) or Heli 90 if it has one.

Now, how you know you have switched off swash mixing. Do this test

Put FM aside. Connect all your servos to the receiver. Now when you move any of your left and right Tx sticks in any direction, there should be only one servo moving at one time. If you see multiple servos moving, like for example when you use the Tx right cyclic stick and move it left, then your swash mixing is turned on your Tx. Usually selecting Heli 90 will force only one servo to work per stick direction. Please note that reconfiguring your Tx settings to work in FM will jumble up all your Tx configurations. Hence, if possible, make a backup of your Tx settings before you reconfigure it for FM. I did this on both the Turnigy 9x and Hobby King HKT6A Tx and it worked!!!!. This is RULE NO 1 in Ivor's tutorial guide of this thread. If you cannot disable swash mixing, your servos will not move when you hook them up via FM. I had the same problem when first setting up FM and learnt this the hard way.

Now I'm actually setting up FM to use with the Turnigy 9x with custom ER9x firmware which I have just uploaded into the Tx. I'm still learning how to use the Tx with ER9x. It has so much more functionality than the stock 9x Turnigy Firmware.

[Orangephoner]

well i just tested it and they are all moving. i know how to disable my ccpm mixing on my transmitter but i dont know how to re configure it. could you help me ? i am using the stock blade sr HP6DSM transmitter.its a 6 channel. i just have the dip switches.
any advise?
and thank you again for all your help. im just so confused
christian

[batman72]

Don't worry, it is all part and puzzle of learning how to set this up. At least you know now why the servos were not moving when you plugged them into the FM. Your swash mixing has been auto enabled on your Tx.

However, I am not familar with your Tx with the DIP switches. I am sure each direction (on - off) of the DIP switch represents something. You should have a manual to explain what each DIP switch is for. Like my Hobbyking HKT6A Tx, it didnt come with DIP switches, but rather a USB cable which plugs to the back of the Tx and I use the T6Config program to configure the Tx. In there, I could see the Setup type which contains settings like ACRO (for gliders), Heli120 and Heli90. If the servos on your blade are angled at 120 degrees from each other around the swashplate, than your Tx should be configured for Heli120. Problem with these Tx, when you select Heli120, the mixing is automatically done for you by the Tx to ease your setup. The same thing came with the stock Turnigy 9x Tx. However, I noticed after upgrading to the ER9x firmware, the mixing of all 3 servos (aileron, elevator and pitch) will still have to be set manually. However, this would be good for FM, because the mixing has not been automatic set by the Tx when Heli type 120 is selected.

Hence, go find out what your DIP switches are for, I am sure one of them sets the type for your Tx.

[Ivor Hill]

For FM to conect to the PC it must be initialized ( green flashing led ) even if the Tx settings are not correct FM should still initialize and connect.
Fast red flashing LED normaly means no signal from reciever and that is normaly caused by the reciever not being bound. If you have checked and it is bound then check that the FM plug with 3 wires is connected to the aileron channel of the reciever and it is plugged in the correct way around.

[Orangephoner]

ok thank you . narrowing it down.
so i need to turn my swash mixing off on the tx for me to do this is that correct?
so i just need to find out which DIP switch i need to turn off for that to happen.
is the swash mixing the same as the ccpm mixing switch?

[Orangephoner]

so when i turn my ccpm mixing DIP switch off (#8) the Aileron servo and push rod wont move but the elevator and Aux1/pitch servos and push rods are alot more "dramatic" i guess you could call it. they have a much larger range that they move. (does that make any sense?) when i push forward and back on my right stick the elevator moves and side to side the pitch moves.
is that what i want?

[Ivor Hill]

No. Disconnect FM and plug you servos back into the reciever. If you have the dip switches correct only one servo will move for each stick.
Elevator stick will move 1 servo only. Aileron will move another servo, 1 only and throttle stick will move the third servo. One servo only for each stick movement.
Untill you TX is set to work in this way ( mixing off ) FM will not work.

[Orangephoner]

ok ill restate that .
i turned the ccpm mixing off.
when i move the throttle up the Aileron servo moves. nothing else
when i move my right stick up and down the elevator servo moves. nothing else
when i move the right stick side to side the aux 1/pitch servo moves. nothing else.
i think that is correct right?
sorry im being such a pain.