Blinking light

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DOG
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Blinking light

Post by DOG »

Hi everyone. This evening while I was learning and programming my quads with Mr Derek "Thank You :)" on Skype. We notice that the bars in the front of my DX6 2nd gen TX keeps blinking after I turn the radio on. It should blink like once or twice before it becomes solid. It has done this a several times now. While the lights are blinking, nothing binds til it becomes solid. Does anyone have any idea what can be causing this? It got me worry :?
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Re: Blinking light

Post by Derek »

dx6.png
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I've marked the lights that DOG is talking about. I've never seen this issue, nor have I heard about this issue before. It was just odd. I had him turn the DX6 towards the camera, so that I could see, and sure enough, he would turn the tx on and that set of lights would blink. It would take nearly 60 seconds before it actually did become solid. Even more odd, after seeing this happen a few times, we couldn't get the tx to do it again. Turn the tx on and the light would blink once or twice and then become solid.

Any ideas?
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Graham Lawrie
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Re: Blinking light

Post by Graham Lawrie »

The blinking LED was put into the latest firmware as a tool to help you diagnose a certain problem. It is there to tell you that the receiver rebooted during operation (flight). The intent was that you would look at the LED before you launch to notice that it was solid, then look at it again when it came back. If it was flashing you knew you had some kind of power supply fault.

The side effect is that the LED will also flash under a few other conditions.

What happens is the receiver remembers the 2 "channels" that it was using when it last had power. If that matches with the two channels that it now finds the transmitter on, it will flash thinking it had a power outage. Under certain conditions this could happen after days of sitting at home waiting for the next flying day because the transmitter may start transmitting on exactly the same channels as the previous day (slim but not impossible). Also if you land and change batteries without turning the TX off, the receiver will power up and find the TX on the channels in memory and think again that it had a power outage (which it did since you just changed the battery).

How do you avoid this when you are just changing the battery? Turn the TX off before putting the new battery in the model. Yes this will power up the receiver first which many have been taught is a very bad thing to do, just turning the TX off and back on while the receiver is powered down may be enough to allow for a channel change (but I found this doesn't always work with the LP5DSM TX). The only sure fire way is to connect the receiver first, then wait more than 2 seconds for it to start scanning for the TX, then power up the TX.


MAKE SURE that you have the throttle failsafe set to the lowest throttle or you could get bitten by the model!!! This is especially true with electric models. Also check to make sure of the gear operation by holding the model up the first time you do this, just to make sure it boots and stays with the gear down. I do think I read this in the information that came with my receivers.
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Graham Lawrie
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Re: Blinking light

Post by Graham Lawrie »

It mentions it on page 43 of the manual in Troubleshooting Guide:)
Align 600
Align 550
Align 450 Pro V2 AR7200BX
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Mini-Quad 250/Emax NightHawk /Fossil V2/TBS Disco/Volt
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Blade mqx
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Re: Blinking light

Post by DOG »

I thank you so much Graham Lawrie for a excellent explanation :D I was hoping that my radio wasn't going bad. I will be keeping my eye on those bars, that's for sure. Manual huh... I should really learn how to read one of those things Lol. Thanks again 8-)
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