I am having a difficult time making a decision with respect to how to command my ESC. The setup is 1.6 meter diagonal motor to motor wheelbase Quad, Cube orange, 12S Mauch power supplies, APD 200A F3 ESCs, and KDE 8218 motors with 30.5" props. Everything I read says DSHOT 600, dont used bi-directional, and if telemetry is needed, use serial port. Yet… a $200k + drone is using PWM… What??? Why?? If DSHOT is a better protocol, then why would such a developed machine be using PWM??? Not criticizing, but what is the thinking? Is there something with the cube/Ardupilot that makes PWM (the otherwise lesser reliable method) the safer bet then DSHOT (the otherwise more reliable method)? Thoughts??
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I would bench test (MissionPlanner motor test) with Bidirectional DSHOT600, or drop down to DSHOT600 + telem wires to uart. Once it is all working, test and tune with that configuration, there should be no need to use PWM if you can avoid it.
The serial protocol of DSHOT should be more reliable and noise-immune than PWM. Many multirotors of all shapes and sizes are using DHSOT reliably.
APD extensively test their ESCs - a while ago you had to load their beta firmware to get Bidirectional DSHOT, not sure if they’ve moved that feature into their stable firmware yet.