I was flying, I banked the copter and it crashed. Is this the wobble-of-death?

The wobble of death crashes are typically due to MINTHROTTLE being set too low (ESC tab). It's important to verify this setting for each copter build because it is different across many brands of ESCs.

What happens is during banks sometimes a motor throttle level (as commanded by the Quadrino) may drift below the minimum throttle level of your particular ESC and the motor will go into shutdown. When an ESC shuts down it will take some time to spin up again. Thus, the copter control system and other motors go kind of crazy because they are trying to compensate for a down'd motor. Only with significant altitude may the copter recover.

Sometimes I am able to make a motor spin down while the throttle is just beyond the start-up threshold where the motors are at the lowest power level. If some motors start and others don't, then the MINTHROTTLE set in the Quadrino Firmware Config is definitely too low. Increase the value in increments of 25 until all motors start and stop together while toggling the throttle threshold. Also, with the motors spinning at the lowest power, do banks with the roll and pitch stick. The copter should be too under-powered to actually move much but the motors should never power down during the motions. In other words, the Quadrino keeps the motor output above MINTHROTTLE so as to never cause a motor to enter the shutdown state when in flight.

For proper flight operation a MultiWii board must have it's MINTHROTTLE value set just slightly above the internal minimum throttle level of your ESCs. Unfortunately, there is no way to read or determine this value other than by trial and error. Furthermore, different ESC brands, and even different batches can have different min throttles. Also, setting min throttle too high will fix the wobble of death issue but may cause your copter to take flight the moment the motors are turned up. It is for this exact reason the default value of the Quadrino is set quite low (1175). By the way, calibrating your ESCs together can bring the ESCs min throttle down to a lower point and is highly recommended.

Code
wobble-death
Author
Colin MacKenzie
Date Created
2013-06-20 20:44:50
Date Updated
2013-06-20 20:45:48
Views
4192