Customer Disservice

March 16, 2015:

So! You want to know why there hasn't been an update on this for months, huh?

Well sit back and relax as I tell you the tale of return policies and warranties and bad customer service!

Where we last left off, there were several parts of my quadcopter that had broke. The flight controller and an ESC to be exact.

That was months ago. I filed the warranty claims and made the explanatory videos of the problems, and waited for Hobbyking to get back to me.

Three weeks pass, and still no response. They couldn't have taken that long to confirm that the parts weren't working, right? I expected replacement parts to be sent!

So turns out that when I checked their website and the status of my warranty claims, one of them was resolved and reimbursed with store credit (but I specified a replacement part in the claim!) and the other one had remained under initial evaluation for the entire three weeks since the parts arrived at their warehouse! This is ridiculous!

On Friday I chatted with a representative, and a crudely cut transcript is below. Click to enlarge.

Well, at least I'm getting one replacement. The biggest obstacle for this project is turning out to be getting the parts, not putting them together.

Suspect is armed

February 1, 2015:

This has been an incredibly frustrating turn of events.

My dad had ordered a new flight controller board to replace the one we didn't know how to fix. This turned out to be for the better, as this board had tons of documentation, and supported OpenPilot software, which is nice and user-friendly. Now I might be able to go somewhere!

The work started on January 31. I reconnected everything, double-checked the instructions ,and spent the better part of an afternoon reading up on how to set up OpenPilot software on my new flight controller. Going through the steps to load the software to the board and confirm that everything would be in working condition was simple enough, until I got to configuring the controls.

Evidently there's something wrong with the radio transmitter and receiver I got, because one channel doesn't work, and that throws off a bunch of the other channels. I spent an hour trying to get the controls to transmit correctly, but I gave up, and decided: No big deal, I just have to remember what throttle and yaw are actually controlled by.

And so everything should work now, right? Well actually... the accelerometer and gyroscope are having trouble, so I have to redo the process that clears the software and flashes a copy that's up to date onto the board.

NOW, everything should work, right? Well, I have to check all my wire connections, because I need to do the whole setup wizard all over again, because clearing the board to default removed the settings.

Well, surely now it'll work right? Actually, now one of the motors isn't responding! So now there's a problem there! Let's shuffle the wires around to pinpoint the problem... and it's the electronic speed controller. Something must have messed with the connections to the signal wire, because now when the board tries to communicate with the speed controller, all I get is a constant vibrating motor.

You know what? I'm giving up for now and returning to this problem when I feel better about all this.

Remote location

January 24, 2015:

It's been a while since my last update! A few days ago, I got my replacement battery in the mail, so now I've been trying to get the quadcopter working.

No pictures this time. I didn't have someone around to take 'em.

Battery's plugged in, the motors are armed, they're beeping in wait for a signal, so I turn on the remote transmitter and... nothing.

I puzzled over this for a bit, when I realized I had forgotten something basic.

I never bound the receiver to the transmitter.

Whoops.

In my attempts to bind the two, I found another problem: My flight controller board couldn't power the receiver. I don't know what's going on there, but a little fiddling around and following YouTube instructional videos let me at least bind the transmitter and receiver, taking power from one of the ESCs.

Now, the problem with the flight controller could be from any place, really. The Electronic Speed Controllers could have faulty connections to the board or something.

To test that, I ignored the flight controller entirely and plugged each electronic speed controller directly into the receiver. After a little period in which the motors stopped beeping, they all began spinning.

No problem there.

So I tried connecting everything back to the flight controller, and then supplying it with an external power source. Really, it was just a USB-to-miniUSB wire that led to a outlet. The transmitter is on, the motors are armed and... still nothing.

I even reloaded the software on the board, double-checking the configuration file. It still didn't work.

There's definitely something wrong with my flight controller. This requires further investigation...

I warrant there's a reason to all this.

January 16, 2015:

Wow, it's really been a while since my last post. I should start catching up, even if nothing has really happened.

So, I asked about my defective battery on live chat. The person directed me to fill out an RMA Form. This was on January 7th.

Live chat! Hopefully it'll work out...

The form filled out and the battery sent, all I have to do now is wait!

...and keep waiting. What's the holdup?

So tonight, more than a week later, I entered another live chat session with support.

Time zones, how do they work?

Well, there's your problem! Turns out they thought I was past the 30 day warranty period because of timezone differences! At least that's cleared up, so now instead of waiting for a response, I'll be waiting for the shipment to arrive.

It's still waiting, but hey I'll take what I can get.

Free of charge

January 4, 2014:

No pictures this time, just a quick update.

So some online research over the past few days has told me the most likely problem that's affecting this project. Apparently, if the voltage in one of the cells is too low, the charger won't charge the battery as a safety measure.

Why a safety measure? Well, there are some people who have given advice on how to force a charge on your lithium polymer battery, and they say that you should not attempt this without professional guidance, preferably in an open area.

Because there's a chance that the cell is dead and charging it will cause it to explode.

...I'm just going to leave this to the experts. My dad thankfully has a coworker who can force a charge on it, so I'm trusting him to return the battery in a state that's chargeable, or I'm gonna have to buy either a new battery or a higher-quality charger.

We're pinned down here!

December 31, 2014:

So, how is everyone this fine evening? It's the last blog post of 2014, assuming I can publish it before midnight!

Today, I decided to wire everything up. Now, that's a bit of a problem, because right now, there are no pins on the flight controller to connect to the receiver for the radio controller.

Bring out the soldering kit!

Soldering in action! Precise work here...

After soldering the pins on, problem number 2 arose: I'm gonna have to plug everything in. A quick online search showed me the right way to connect the pins on to everything. Man, that's convenient!

Amazing, what resources you can find on the internet!

So everything's plugged in, the batteries are in the radio controller, and I flip the switch... and nothing.

Pictured: Disappointment

Attempts to charge the battery have failed. The charger doesn't respond at all to the battery being plugged in, so I'm a bit at a loss for what to do here.

Must have a screw loose

December 26, 2014:

It's after Christmas, now I don't have any excuse not to get some work done on my quadcopter.

So I did!

Those hex screw stick things make this much easier.

I've mounted all the motors onto the frame!

And decided roughly where to put everything.

We've got a lot of zip ties just sitting around, so I put them to use to secure some of the inner bits. On the hardware side of things, my quadcopter is nearly complete!

Zip ties, man's greatest invention. Secures anything!

On the software side of things, I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING. But I leveled the flight controller so it knows what flat actually is. It's a start, especially after loading the confusing Arduino code and staring at it to no avail. Turns out MultiWii has a program specifically for configuring your flight controller.

Pictured: Complete confusion. But with some clicking around I've made progress. Slowly.