Electric Stunt > Gettin all AMP'ed up!

Odd instance with Fiorotti timer

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Matt Brown:
Wednesday morning at the Nats, I went to put in a warm up flight over on the grass circles. I did everything as usual. Right after the outside loops the blue led lit up, 10 seconds later the motor shut off. I thought maybe I did something wrong but couldn’t think of anything. I unplugged the battery and plugged it back in. Everything worked perfectly and had a full flight. I made it through the Nats just fine. Yesterday I was out flying again. Third flight of the day I noticed the led pop on during the square 8’s. It shut off again after the normal 10 seconds. Next flight it all worked perfectly again. I probably have over 100 cycles on this timer. All but these two have worked perfectly.
Any ideas? I really don’t want this to do this during an official flight!

Thanks, Matt

Douglas Bykoff:
Are you using a resistor to avoid spark when plugging battery?

The most critical moment in the operation of the microcontroller is the exact moment it is energized.

 The voltage fluctuation at the moment the microcontroller initializes may induce an error in reading the EEPROM memory where the flight parameters are stored. But this type of error could/should occur in any other flight parameter.

Abstracting the spark at the moment the battery is connected it is difficult to imagine any other possibility other than a failure in the microcontroller.

Same code, same hardware works on hundreds of other devices.

 

Matt Brown:
No spark resistors on the connectors.

Matt

Ken Culbertson:
Would using a switch in the off position when connecting the battery protect the timer?  I have had several times over the years where the timer did not want to arm.  Switching it off then on again cured it.  Could it have been that I had the switch in the wrong position when I plugged in the battery? 

Ken

Douglas Bykoff:
When the battery is connected, the ESC capacitors charge suddenly and cause a spark in the connectors, which can cause a voltage fluctuation at the very moment when the program execution is reading the flight parameters recorded in the EEPROM.

Until you solve the spark problem, you can try this: connect the battery and then disconnect it, wait 3 seconds, connect it again and fly. The second time you turn it on you will no longer hear the spark popping. If the problem is actually caused by the spark, this procedure I hope you may solve your problem.

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