Basic ESC making chattering sound and getting hot without PWM output

Blue Robotics Products Speed Controllers (ESCs)
1

Hi guys,
I am facing some problem with a new Pixhawk(Ardurover) + 2x BasicESC + 2x T200 Thruster. The two thrusters are mounted on a Inflatable Boat. Initial tests went fine. It was mostly operated in Manual mode for a couple of hours.

In the latest tests we wanted to run autonomous mission for which some tuning was required on the ArduRover PID parameters. During the tests we observed that the autopilot would reboot after a few minutes of operations. Trying to reproduce the problem, we found out that the reboots mostly happened when we were providing very small throttle inputs. The power is supplied to the ESCs via a Pixhawk PM06 . The power supply is a 42 Ah 12.8V LiFePo4 battery with constant current rating of 50A and burst of upto 100A. There is no other significant load on the Power module.

On close inspection in the office following observations were made:

  1. It was found that one of the ESC was making chattering sounds (tik…tik…tik…) at a rate probably dependent on the throttle input. This happened even after removing the motors from the ESCs, so under no load for ESCs.

  2. The same ESC was getting hot even under no throttle input. So when left connected to Power for a few minutes, the problematic ESC would get hot but the other ESC would remain cool.

Did anyone has had similar problem before? Is the ESC dead? I am happy to share more information if needed. Thanks for the help in advance.

– khedar

2

Hi @khedar,

That definitely doesn’t sound like a healthy ESC - I’d recommend you contact support@bluerobotics.com to discuss a possible replacement/refund. It would be helpful if you link to this thread, and also provide the order number if you can :slight_smile:

3

Thanks @EliotBR . I contacted the Support on the email provided by you.

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