Disable starting noise

[wordsmith]

Could you have a bit of grit or sand in one of your motors? Inspect them thoroughly with a bright light, try spin them gently and see if there is more resistance in one over the others. Maybe get a vacuum cleaner to them. After that I'd be taking off the top shell and inspecting for any loose connections. Let us know how you get on or maybe post a new thread so more can chime in mate.

Thanks for the suggestion, Mal. I'll check the motors tonight. I tried posting a thread a little over a week ago. It's here:
NEED SOME "ESC WARNING" ADVICE | DJI Phantom Quadcopter Forum
but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of info about the problem. If your suggestion works, I'll post it on the above thread. Thanks again for your input.
Update: tried your suggestion Mal. No resistance in any of the motors, but carefully blew them all out with canned compressed air. No visible debris inside. Restarted P3, performed calibrations, and still no joy in Mudville. Thanks anyway.

 

[wordsmith]

Run all your calibrations too. Imu, compas, then gimbal.

Thanks for the suggestion. I did run all the calibrations after updating the firmware and they all came out fine. No errors. It was only when I tried to start up the motors that the esc error occurred.
But...I'll try it again. You never know. Thanks again.

 

[Chuck Young]

I think those tones are to harmonic to be anything but a boot-up tune set in the bios of the machine. I will record them and analyze their frequency spectrum tomorrow. Most likely some piezo speaker somewhere on the bird/board.

 

[Phantom751874]

I thought they came from the camera. I read somewhere here or on RC Groups that the camera has a speaker in it.

 

[Mal_PV2_Ireland]

Read back on the post guys there is no speaker. I miss the much longer start up chirping from the p2v

 

[Skip holden]

It was just a question if some technical peaople could give me a succesful answer..............
so it seems to be NO
for the rest the PH3P with V1.1.9 and 2.0.0 flies oke and I am just waiting for flying the long promised
Waypoints..............

Motor acts as a speaker.
Speakers have magnets and coils of wire.
Motors have magnets and coils of wire.
ESC sends waveform to motors coil and the motor (speaker) plays the tone.

 

[VoicOfReason]

DJI needs to add the ability to use the startup noise to FIND the Phantom in the event that it goes down and you can't find it but you know the general area. Just have this sound go off continuously. It would actually be quite useful this way.

 

[vgt]

Think about it this way:

All four ESC banks are driving all 4 motors to make exactly the same sound.

If there was any tiny almost imperceptible issue, what's the best way to show that to a human? Sound !

The happy noise has all been drilled into our heads. If there's a loose cable, or other issue with an individual phase of a motor, we would immediately hear something wrong with the happy sound, and know something was off.

There are very few stimuli us humans can differentiate at these frequencies, but a coordinated sound is one we might actually notice. It's pretty clever really...

Except the startup sound is the same even in the event of a damaged or inoperable ESC. It's just a cute sound for starting up,not a diagnostic tool.

 

[Shammyh]

Except the startup sound is the same even in the event of a damaged or inoperable ESC. It's just a cute sound for starting up,not a diagnostic tool.

How is that possible?

Even in the event of a failed ESC, the startup sound should be affected... As one of the four motors will not make sound.

Or are you saying from experience that a broken ESC will still drive the motor to make the jingle?

 

[vgt]

How is that possible?

Even in the event of a failed ESC, the startup sound should be affected... As one of the four motors will not make sound.

Or are you saying from experience that a broken ESC will still drive the motor to make the jingle?

I have a P3P with a damaged ESC, no disparity on startup noise.

 

[Shammyh]

Interesting!

Mind elaborating a bit as to what sort of damage? Will it drive the motor at all?

Are you certain it's not 25% quieter when doing the sound? And/or if you put your hand on the motor with the damaged ESC can you feel it making the noise at start up?

Also just generally interested in the ESC failure, as I don't recall having seen any so far with the new P3.

 

[SteveMann]

Every drone that I've bought or built over the past four years does the ESC startup chirps. It is a low-level diagnostic tool just like the startup beeps from your PC. Most PC's don't have a speaker on the motherboard any more, the POST (Power On Self Test) beeps are still there.

Depending on the ESC manufacturer, and DJI is not being very helpful here, the ESC startup tones are indicating the input voltage. In my 3DR hex the four beeps at the end indicate that the ESC detects an input voltage typical of a 4s battery. But in my Phantom 2, the battery specs say it's a 3s battery, yet I get four beeps. The musical scale, again depending on who made the ESC, indicate if the ESC is receiving a valid throttle signal from the Flight Controller (FC) and/or the throttle stick position. Other failure indicators change the frequency or the period of the beeps. Again, no help from DJI, but on my 3DR hex, if the battery is low, I get a "beep-beep-pause" that repeats forever. If the throttle stick is not all the way down, I get a very rapid alert tone of about four beeps per second.

Did I mention that DJI isn't being very helpful here?

 

[wordsmith]

Interesting!

Mind elaborating a bit as to what sort of damage? Will it drive the motor at all?

Are you certain it's not 25% quieter when doing the sound? And/or if you put your hand on the motor with the damaged ESC can you feel it making the noise at start up?

Also just generally interested in the ESC failure, as I don't recall having seen any so far with the new P3.

My P3 also suffers from the "ESC failure" problem. After a crash left my shell bent and cracked, I tested it post crash and everything still worked, including the motors. I transferred everything to a new shell, did the update and calibrations, tried to start the motors, and got an ESC warning. I can tell you from experience that there is no difference in the startup sound. As the ESC's are part of the MC board, there is no way to determine which controller is the problem - the motors simply will not start and the warning message appears on screen in the app. There does not appear to be any wiring issues, broken pins on the board, or scorch marks that might indicate a burn out. So although conventional wisdom has it that these sounds are associated with the ESC's and their connection to the motors, they seem to be of little diagnostic help. Just a cheery sound to say "let's go flying!"

 

[Shammyh]

My P3 also suffers from the "ESC failure" problem. After a crash left my shell bent and cracked, I tested it post crash and everything still worked, including the motors. I transferred everything to a new shell, did the update and calibrations, tried to start the motors, and got an ESC warning. I can tell you from experience that there is no difference in the startup sound. As the ESC's are part of the MC board, there is no way to determine which controller is the problem - the motors simply will not start and the warning message appears on screen in the app. There does not appear to be any wiring issues, broken pins on the board, or scorch marks that might indicate a burn out. So although conventional wisdom has it that these sounds are associated with the ESC's and their connection to the motors, they seem to be of little diagnostic help. Just a cheery sound to say "let's go flying!"

The plot thickens...

So it looks like the Flight Controller is able to better read stats from the ESCs themselves in the P3 model.

In the P2, there was not bi-directional communication between the ESC and Flight Controller.

If that's the case, the ESC is probably not badly damaged, rather, it probably has some value out of whack which the Flight Controller is using to prevent takeoff.