Test your motors...

[JohnCC]

Chroma Camera Drone - Motor Test (2 min 1 sec)

Brand new 1 day old Chroma Camera Drone purchased on Black Friday. Called Horizon and they are sending me 3 new motors. But here's the deal; the Chroma flies. It's just noisy as hell. I can easily see someone who doesn't know how it's supposed to sound miss this problem. So give each motor a test.

All Chromas sold after November 1st have a 6 month warranty on all parts as of today.

[setishock]

The whine from the first one is what you want to hear. That's a healthy motor. The other three sound like bad bearings allowing the magnets in the bell to strike the armature. Or worse yet, the shafts are warped.
John I'd be looking at some other brand name motors. Will the 350qx motors bolt in to the pods? If they will then HK has some multi star hop up motors that seem to be light years ahead of the stock motors.

Might be worth while to check in to that.

[JohnCC]

I sold off all my 350qx stuff so I don't have it anymore, but the motor pods on the Chroma are a lot larger so I don't think they'd fit. These motors don't have bullet connectors either; you can only use Yuneec or Horizon brand motors.

But yeah, the rest are really messed up... I can't really say anything bad right now though about Horizon since they offered to take it back and warranty the entire Chroma, or send me new motors. I just went for the new motors since it won't void my warranty, and they said that because of this 'situation' . (Read: maybe because I uploaded a video) someone is going to personally test the motors to make sure they aren't junk before they are mailed out to me.

I might try to take apart the old motors once I have the replacements just for the hell of it.

[setishock]

Remember what I said? They're phasing one POS out to bring in another POS. Why do you guys keep buying this stuff?

[JohnCC]

Chroma is not the best, but it's not a piece of crap either. It flies nice. It's better built compared to 350qx because it's basically the Yuneec Q500+ in a different body shell / layout. I love how I can just throw it in a backpack and walk over to the field by me. I got solid 25 minutes of flight time and no LVC light with no camera and no skids. It doesn't have even half the flaws 350qx did out of box. They did design it better (Yuneec). I wasn't gonna pay $650 or whatever the hell they were first charging when it came out for a BNF, they were out of their damn minds. $425 is reasonable given the cost of the battery itself.

The props issue worries me but after plenty of testing in stability mode with my other Chroma I got for free, as long as you tighten the props all the way down and don't just stop when it starts to feel tight, you're fine. The props are indeed self tightening but you need to screw 'em on tight to begin with.

I'm too lazy to build and have a love/hate relationship with HH products.

That being said I do have someone building me a DJI F550 hexacopter with a really nice frame. Can't wait. That's going to be my "serious" machine, the Chroma is just my toy/new daily flyer.

[setishock]

If it's a pure DJI F550, you're gonna love it. If you use other parts then it's just a F550 frame.
Why aren't you building it?

[JohnCC]

Pure DJI F550 with DJI iOSD Mini / TS832

Paid to have it built for me. It's on custom made frame made by the builder so it was easier for me to just do that. Nothing like it available for F550 and geared for FPV/AP... yet

[JohnCC]

Horizon decided to just send me 4 new motors today instead of 3.

[setishock]

Hmmm That speaks volumes if you know how to sift out the BS.

Seriously John I'd get a tube of TriFlow lube and lube the bearings down good and let them stand over night. Loosen them up by turning the shaft by hand every so often during the night.

I kept my MQX's flying for years with some regular maint with TriFlow.

[Jake326]

My Black Friday Chroma has the same issue in one motor. See below video.

I called HH this morning and they are shipping a new "B" motor. Tech said it's available out of the California warehouse. Great customer service. He didn't need proof of purchase or link to my video. Just took my word and asked for my name and address.*

The tech also indicated this is not just a Chroma issue. Other helocopters and quads can have these issues.

https://youtu.be/EZeV9ZR9VAI

[setishock]

I'd write the big ole speech about the problems you guys experience, but I think most of you know how I feel and what I think. So I won't keep shoveling salt in an open wound.

But I will leave you with this thought. When you get a no questions asked part(s) from them and others are having similar or the same problems, don't you get that nagging voice in your head that says,
"You just paid full price to be a beta tester".

[JohnCC]

But I will leave you with this thought. When you get a no questions asked part(s) from them and others are having similar or the same problems, don't you get that nagging voice in your head that says,
"You just paid full price to be a beta tester".

Yep, but at the same time they still could have just told me to go f' myself. I've dealt with the same thing when it comes to new electronics... so I've almost just come to expect it. The Chroma isn't new, but it's a product that has definitely had a hard time, until now that HH price cut it (because they knew they were insane) to get a lot of attention.

From what I've gathered since posting this video, around 3 or 4 other people have motor issues. I got unlucky enough to have 3 making me the worst case of the bunch. The rest of them who tested didn't have any. Even the Chroma I have that crashed doesn't have any motor issues. I think it's luck of the draw and bad quality control at the factory that makes these motors.

Forums do tend to magnify issues where I'm sure tons of these are being sold and they're just fine. The tricky thing though is that a new user may not know they have an issue if only 1 is affected.

This is pretty bad regardless even if 25% are getting 1 bad motor let's say. I feel like in the future we're gonna maybe be seeing Chroma "fall out of the sky" videos where a motor gave out because someone didn't notice it was going out from day 1...

[setishock]

I agree with ya there. It doesn't hurt a thing if you put a brick on the legs and rev her up on the bench. If you watch my videos you'll see 2 things happen.
One is I let it sit on the ground to right before the time out kicks in. I'm listening to the motors. I can hear dog whistles so I have a leg up on most.
The other is I pop up to around 20 feet or so a few seconds. Again I'm listening to the motors and I'm looking for stability issues. Like drifting and bobbling around. Most of the time if I let it sit there parked, it sorts itself out.
Then she gets the spurs dug in her ribs.

Bench flying is dangerous. Take them Cuisinart blades off first. Some one needs to make a weight that you can screw on the shaft to simulate a prop load.

[JohnCC]

Ok, so I got the 4 new motors and 1/4 was bad and it's one of the motors I really needed. So I called up Horizon again and they are now shipping me a 5th brand new motor. For reference it was one of the "A" motors. I can't say I'm unhappy with their service being willing to ship me what I need, but this is crazy.

I am either just unlucky or there IS a QC problem with these motors that surfaces right away during production.

[SLYDoggie]

Originally Posted by JohnCC

Ok, so I got the 4 new motors and 1/4 was bad and it's one of the motors I really needed. So I called up Horizon again and they are now shipping me a 5th brand new motor. For reference it was one of the "A" motors. I can't say I'm unhappy with their service being willing to ship me what I need, but this is crazy.

I am either just unlucky or there IS a QC problem with these motors that surfaces right away during production.

That stinks. I bought my Chroma on Black Friday and all 4 motors passed the bench test and work fine in flight as well.

[JohnCC]

I've been flying it with the one new iffy motor though and it works. It's not anywhere near as bad as the ones in the video but I paid for this so I want it to be perfect.

Been doing speed testing in stability mode without any problems. But it's "whistling" while in-flight. I probably shouldn't be flying it at all but I'm tired of waiting to play with it. If it drops out of the sky on me, I'll cry. Hopefully they can just get me this new motor soon but it's probably going to be another week of waiting.

[setishock]

This is an old video when I was running a hotel in MS.

Jump to 5:40 and listen to the motors. They're supposed to whine. When they growl you get concerned. Means the bearings have dried out. A drop of TriFlow will fix that right up.

Playing around with my DJI Phantom (8 min 59 sec)

[RC chocolate]

DYS BX1306

[JohnCC]

Originally Posted by RC chocolate

DYS BX1306

Had to google to see what this meant -- but the problem is that Blade products, like most other premade quads, are highly proprietary. Those motors won't fit on the stock plastic body, and the connectors and entirely different. You're basically stuck with Horizon's motors for life.

[Spyder3534]

When I first got my 350QX I obsessed about the noise and feel of one particular motor. It clicked when I turned it by hand and I perceived it to be making an abnormal sound. I called up HH right away and they sent me a new motor free. I didn't want to tear the quad down after only owning it for a few weeks so I just continued to fly without replacing the motor; after a few flights the clicking seemed to go away. Now I've put over 150 flights on that motor that I thought was "bad".

I am not trying to minimize or dismiss your issue, I would just say in my experience I overreacted to what turned out to be not a big problem.

Cheers
https://www.helifreak.com/images/smilies/cheers.gif