Bitcraze Forums

Hello all,

I just started the assembly of my crazyflie yesterday. Unfortunately mine won't even pass the power-on test.

I figured the cable was at fault so I went down to radio shack today and the guy was nice enough to pull out a gold-plated ($35) micro USB cable to test with and that didn't power on the drone either.

From the instructions I've read, it should power up and blink 5 times with the green LED. My PC recognizes a device being plugged in as soon as I connect the micro-USB to the crazyflie but I'm not seeing any indication of power on the crazyflie. This tells me maybe it's salvageable because the PC does recognize something being connected.

Do I have a DOA crazyflie or am I missing something completely obvious here?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Kevin

Is the battery connected?

Have you soldered any of the motor wires yet, or is this fresh out of the box? You can test your motor connections for short-circuits with a multimeter, you should read 2 ohms and change across the pair of pads for each motor. If you get significantly less, then the pads are bridged (or you have a bad motor), and the short-circuit may keep the Crazyflie from booting up (I think I read that somewhere...)

You can check the voltage between the +/- pads on the top side near the USB jack, should be ~5V when charging, otherwise something is wrong with the USB jack. VCC to DGND (pads near the center of the top) should be ~3V whether charging or powered on, otherwise something is wrong with the voltage regulator.

jweather wrote:Is the battery connected?

Have you soldered any of the motor wires yet, or is this fresh out of the box? You can test your motor connections for short-circuits with a multimeter, you should read 2 ohms and change across the pair of pads for each motor. If you get significantly less, then the pads are bridged (or you have a bad motor), and the short-circuit may keep the Crazyflie from booting up (I think I read that somewhere...)

You can check the voltage between the +/- pads on the top side near the USB jack, should be ~5V when charging, otherwise something is wrong with the USB jack. VCC to DGND (pads near the center of the top) should be ~3V whether charging or powered on, otherwise something is wrong with the voltage regulator.

Thanks for your reply jweather.

I haven't done anything to the crazyflie yet. I was following the instructions here -- http://wiki.bitcraze.se/projects:crazyf ... s:assembly and it says:

Before you go ahead and assemble the Crazyflie check the Crazyflie control board and the Crazyradio electronics:

1. Attach a powered micro-USB cable to the Crazyflie control board. It should power up and blink 5 times with the green LED. After that the green LED should be fully on and the red LED should blink.

---

So I can't even complete step #1 and didn't really want to continue working on it if my unit won't even pass the power-on test. The instructions don't mention anything of turning the power switch on but I also tried doing that with it plugged in with no avail. No lights whatsoever come on.

Hope that helps to clarify better.

Thanks,

Kevin

If the blue LEDs doesn't even turn on when the micro USB is connected then it could be a DOA . This shouldn't happen as every board is tested in the factory and shipping certainly shouldn't break it.

Try connecting the battery and power it up pressing the push-button. Check if the board gets hot anywhere, and before it gets to hot remove the battery.

Anyway you should open a support errand at Seeedstudio to get replacement. Sorry about this

kevinthecyborg wrote:I haven't done anything to the crazyflie yet. I was following the instructions here -- http://wiki.bitcraze.se/projects:crazyf ... s:assembly and it says:

No worries, I hadn't seen the new assembly instructions yet. Sorry to hear about your DOA, but Seeed appears to be very good at taking care of their customers, fortunately.

@tobias

I tried powering it on with the battery inserted as you recommended and when I press the power button, the blue, green and red lights all come on. The blue power light stays on, the green light turns off right away, then stays off for about a second and flashes once more and the red light stays flashing.

So the whole board isn't bad it looks like, must just be a bad USB connector on the board perhaps?

*EDIT* - I also checked for hot sections on the board with the batter in and the crazyflie powered "on" and there were no hot spots at all.

Thanks a ton for the help! I feel like I'm a step in the right direction at least. Been waiting for this for months so I'm pretty bummed out that I can't use it.

Thanks,

Kevin

Bump

kevinthecyborg wrote:Bump

Do the motors spin for a second also?
This is close to what you should see. Mine does basically the same thing except the green light flashes quickly a few times before turning off.

Have you tried connecting to the crazyradio?

atomicdog wrote: Do the motors spin for a second also?
This is close to what you should see. Mine does basically the same thing except the green light flashes quickly a few times before turning off.

Have you tried connecting to the crazyradio?

Nope, I don't have anything built yet. Still trying to determine if the unit is broken before I start tinkering with it as I don't want the blame being put on me.

Thanks,

Kevin

kevinthecyborg wrote:

atomicdog wrote: Do the motors spin for a second also?
This is close to what you should see. Mine does basically the same thing except the green light flashes quickly a few times before turning off.

Have you tried connecting to the crazyradio?

Nope, I don't have anything built yet. Still trying to determine if the unit is broken before I start tinkering with it as I don't want the blame being put on me.

Thanks,

Kevin

so you haven't tried to connect to the CR either?