BigQuad Deck – Motors stopping and starting

[r-bt]

I am using the BigQuad deck with the Crazyflie 2.1.

I followed the setup instructions from here. I connected my 4 Flycolor 20A Brushless ESC to the Big Quad Deck, enabled the Support the BigQuad deck and Require arming to be able to start motors and takeoff in menuconfig, and mapped a controller to the drone.

When I increase the thrust, such that in cfclient it stays at roughly 80% thrust, the motors turn on and off, as shown in the below video:

big-quad-deck-motors.mp4

Is this the expected behaviour?

[r-bt]

I tested again after putting propellers on the motors, and I get the same behaviour, where the motors don't remain on and therefore the drone can't takeoff.

Some more info. In menuconfig my ESCs are set to use OneShot125.

[r-bt]

Here's a video from cfclient for when the motors are stuttering like above.

Screen.Recording.2026-04-02.at.3.45.05.PM.mov

When I check the console I have warnings:

SYS: Crazyflie 2.1 is up and running!
SYS: Build 51:ee39e61fdaec (2025.12.1 +51) CLEAN
SYS: I am 0x383134373135511000410055 and I have 1024KB of flash!
CFGBLK: v1, verification [OK]
DECK_DISCOVERY: Backend found: onewire
DECK_DISCOVERY: Backend found: deckctrl
DECK_CORE: 2 deck(s) found
DECK_CORE: Calling INIT on driver bcLighthouse4 for deck 0
DECK_CORE: Calling INIT on driver bcBigQuad for deck 1
BIGQUAD: Switching to brushless.
MTR-DRV: Using brushless motor driver
IMU: BMI088: Using I2C interface.
IMU: BMI088 Gyro connection [OK].
IMU: BMI088 Accel connection [OK]
IMU: BMP388 I2C connection [OK]
ESTKALMAN: Attitude reversion deactivated by deck
ESTIMATOR: Using Kalman (2) estimator
CONTROLLER: Using PID (1) controller
SYS: About to run tests in system.c.
SYS: NRF51 version: 2025.12 (CF21)
EEPROM: I2C connection [OK].
STORAGE: Storage check [OK].
IMU: BMI088 gyro self-test [OK]
DECK_CORE: Deck 1 test [OK].
SYS: Self test passed!
STAB: Wait for sensor calibration...
SYS: Free heap: 16536 bytes
LHFL: Lighthouse bootloader version: 2
LHFL: Bitstream CRC32: 112BC794 [PASS]
LHFL: Firmware version 6 verified, booting deck!
STAB: Starting stabilizer loop
ESTKALMAN: State out of bounds, resetting
ESTKALMAN: Attitude reversion deactivated by deck
ESTKALMAN: State out of bounds, resetting
ESTKALMAN: Attitude reversion deactivated by deck
ESTKALMAN: State out of bounds, resetting
ESTKALMAN: Attitude reversion deactivated by deck
ESTKALMAN: State out of bounds, resetting
ESTKALMAN: Attitude reversion deactivated by deck
SUP: Ready to fly
STAB: Warning: motor thrust saturated
STAB: Warning: motor thrust saturated
STAB: Warning: motor thrust saturated
SUP: Disarming
SUP: Ready to fly
STAB: Warning: motor thrust saturated
SUP: Disarming
ESTKALMAN: State out of bounds, resetting
ESTKALMAN: Attitude reversion deactivated by deck
SUP: Ready to fly
STAB: Warning: motor thrust saturated
STAB: Warning: motor thrust saturated
ESTKALMAN: State out of bounds, resetting
ESTKALMAN: Attitude reversion deactivated by deck
STAB: Warning: motor thrust saturated
STAB: Warning: motor thrust saturated
STAB: Warning: motor thrust saturated
SUP: Disarming
SUP: Ready to fly
STAB: Warning: motor thrust saturated
STAB: Warning: motor thrust saturated
STAB: Warning: motor thrust saturated
ESTKALMAN: State out of bounds, resetting
ESTKALMAN: Attitude reversion deactivated by deck
SUP: Disarming
SUP: Ready to fly
ESTKALMAN: State out of bounds, resetting
ESTKALMAN: Attitude reversion deactivated by deck
STAB: Warning: motor thrust saturated
STAB: Warning: motor thrust saturated
SUP: Disarming
ESTKALMAN: State out of bounds, resetting
ESTKALMAN: Attitude reversion deactivated by deck
ESTKALMAN: State out of bounds, resetting
ESTKALMAN: Attitude reversion deactivated by deck

[r-bt]

I have checked that the motors do work fine by going to motorPowerSet in the Parameters tab, and setting enable to 1 and then m1 to 20000 and then the motor runs continuously

[tobbeanton]

Hi! Hard to tell why it is not working. I just tried latest master here with a bigquad setup and it worked. The ESC you use says they support OneSHot125 but maybe it is worth trying PWM to see if it makes a difference. My guess is that it has to do with the ESC not reading the signal correctly. Are you powering the BigQuad with 5V? Do you have the possibility to "scope" the ESC signal?

The forceArm parameter is deprecated and instead a arming command is needed.

[r-bt]

Thanks for the response @tobbeanton . When I tried switching the ESC Protocol to Standard PWM on the latest master the motors still stutter on and off.

Correct, the BigQuad is being powered with 5V from one of the ESCs. I will try scope the ESC signal and report back. Based on the fact that the motors respond to power commands from the motorPowerSet and this issue doesn't appear in older firmware versions, I don't think it's the ESCs at fault, but I'll try verify that.

[r-bt]

Also @tobbeanton do you have any thoughts about the issue where the motor commands are not changing when I increase the thrust with the gamepad. The GUI is reporting that the command itself is not increasing which would indicate a software problem

[r-bt]

@tobbeanton Update, I switched to the 2025.09.1 release and that works without the motors stuttering and so far without the issue where motors commands are not changing. The 2025.12 version does not without stuttering, so I think there was a regression there.

[tobbeanton]

Interesting find. If it works with motorPowerSet without stuttering then we know the low level motor output is working. Could it be something with the controller, that gotten wrong tuning parameters or similar and start to send noisy commands? I'm thinking e.g. the persistent parameters might be the difference between the version.