Devlog #8: it finally works

oh my gosh. amazing and relieving day today.

i’d been pretty down about this for a while. my motors just wouldn’t spin during the bench test, and i’d already ordered three ESCs, new motors, and new wires trying to fix it. none of it worked, so i returned all of it. today my new ESC finally showed up. i leave for india on sunday for a month, so these next few days are my only window to get any hardware done.

so i sat down and meticulously (and painfully) soldered every joint, checking continuity with my multimeter over and over. a few connections literally fell apart while i was hooking up the wires, so i had to stop and resolder them. just wanted the wiring to be perfect this time.

then the worst moment: i tested it and nothing worked. again. i was genuinely gutted.

but then i noticed an orange cable just sitting there, not plugged in, and it clicked, that was the ground (GND). i connected the ESC ground to the FC ground, ran the motor test, and everything spun. all of it. no errors except some OSD stuff, which is just a missing SD card.

massive relief. that one unplugged ground wire was the whole thing.

next month in india i’ll be working on the code side of the drone, then test for flight again when i get back.