Help Needed: Troubleshooting Parallax Elev-8 Hexcopter

fullonaviator

Hey guys,

My name is Drew and I am in need of some help with a Parallax Elev-8 Hexcopter. I am the CS Tech Lab Aid aide at a small university and have been tasked with getting the an older drone in the air. I have looked online for some help and cant find what I am looking for so I thought I would jump in here and see if anyone had a starting place for me. If you guys can help here that would be awesome or any pointers to other resources would be awesome too.

So far I have plugged in the battery and gotten chimes (from the rotors I think) I turned the controller on (Spektrum Dx6i) and gotten them to connect. I was not sure of the arming sequence but a video I saw had them move the left stick once to the left and then to the right. The indicator light then turned green but only one rotor spin when I throttled up and that one was super weak and only went back and forth.

I am very new to this and have never worked with this type of drone so any info would be much appreciated.

Thanks for your answers in advance!!

--Drew

Publison

Drew,
Welcome to the forum!

Don't know how many of the ELEV pilots are still around but I will try and help. I have built Ver1, Ver2, and Ver3. Could you take a picture of the rig you have to see what we are dealing with.

fullonaviator

Hey @Publison,

thank you so much for responding so quickly. I wish I had seen this sooner. I just got back in the lab for the week and grabbed a few pictures.

I'll be in the lab a lot more this week so I will be much quicker in responding.

thanks for the help!

Publison

Looks like Version 1

Here is the link to the build site.


https://www.parallax.com/sites/default/files/downloads/80000-ELEV-8-Quadcopter-Info-Assembly-Guide-v1.1_0.pdf

I will try and get the files for the Hoverfly controller board.

Publison

Controller manual

Duane Degn

I don't know if it's any use to you or not but here's some HoverFlyOpen code I found on my hard drive. It's setup for a quadcopter not a hexacopter so I don't know if it will help or not.

Publison

I could not find any local programs on my hard drive to program or update my Hoverfly. They were all based on a link to Hoverfly. You may need to contact them directly:

https://hoverflytech.com/contact/

Ltech

hoverflyupdate.com/updateClient/publish.htm

Publison

Ltech wrote: »

hoverflyupdate.com/updateClient/publish.htm

I suppose it was right in front of me, it should have bitten me!

Buck Rogers

Publison wrote: »

Ltech wrote: »

hoverflyupdate.com/updateClient/publish.htm

I suppose it was right in front of me, it should have bitten me!

I don't know about that, but....
However.... That's an interesting concept, for how long did the company sell the ELEV family member UAV?

Publison

The ELEV-8 was sold by Parallax.

2012 Version 1 with Hoverfly controller.
2014 Version 2 with Hoverfly controller.
2016 Version 3 with Parallax controller.

fullonaviator

thanks so much for the resources! @Publison , @Ltech @"Duane Degn" & @"Buck Rogers" I have started working through the manuals to get familiar with it and will go from there!

Publison

Keep us updated. I helped write the assembly manuals.

DrPop

I found both the Hoverfly firmware.exe and Hoverfly setup.exe files on my hard drive if you need them. Please just let me know. Donated our entire pile of Parallax bots & parts to my old high school in Alaska, mostly hung up the land based robotics and got into UAV building the last two years. (Somewhat sadly) left the Elev-8 far behind with the builds my daughter and I are doing these days, that's why I'm hardly on here anymore. But the Elev-8 Ver. 2 and 3 were our first quads, so they will always have a special place in my heart.

fullonaviator

So I was trying to connect the Hoverfly to the computer, and couldn't find the usb. Turns out this (pictures attached) is why I found the connector and it looks like it got ripped off by someone pulling the cord. What are my chances of successfully soldering this back on? Do I need a new usb connector or am I looking at a new flight controller?

Duane Degn

Darn, it looks like the pads were ripped off. It's possible to repair but it will be a huge pain.

kwinn

Duane Degn wrote: »

Darn, it looks like the pads were ripped off. It's possible to repair but it will be a huge pain.

Looks like the connector is ok so you could solder it back to the board but you will have to use kynar (wire wrap) wire to connect the signal pins to the appropriate microcontroller pins. Done that a few times myself to repair "gorilla fingers" problems.

Duane Degn

kwinn wrote: »

Duane Degn wrote: »

Darn, it looks like the pads were ripped off. It's possible to repair but it will be a huge pain.

Looks like the connector is ok so you could solder it back to the board but you will have to use kynar (wire wrap) wire to connect the signal pins to the appropriate microcontroller pins. Done that a few times myself to repair "gorilla fingers" problems.

You and I have done this but it's a bit of a trick for someone new to soldering (I'm not sure @fullonaviator is new to soldering).

If the repair is attempted, (and it think it should be) then I'd suggest using a small USB breakout like this one.



It looks like the ID pin isn't used and the other pins should be connected as shown in the photo below.



If shiping back and forth to Idaho USA isn't expensvie, you could send it to me and I'd fix it for you. I have extra USB breakout boards for just this sort of repair. It turns out ripped out USB connectors isn't very rare.