Why are we losing connection to the bot?

We’re building our first robot (UK antweight: two wheels, no weapon) and we’re experiencing a problem. I’m wondering if any of you have experienced something similar or might be able to help diagnose the problem.

After a few seconds of driving the robot we appear to lose the transmitter/receiver connection. The green LED light on the receiver turns off at this point. We wait a few seconds then hear a beep, the green light comes back on and we are able to drive the robot again for a few more seconds. This pattern repeats.

We are mostly using standard antweight parts: a 7.4V LiPo battery, a BBB Dual ESC v3, and a pair of N20 gearmotors. We are also using a Microzone 6C mini transmitter and Microzone MC7RE receiver.

We’re new to electronics so we’re struggling to figure out what is going wrong, but we have noticed that the fault (signal drop-out) occurs when we are driving the robot, i.e. if it is sitting idle the connection will not be lost. I’m wondering whether driving the robot leads to the motors requiring too much battery power, such that the ESC can’t supply enough power to the receiver, hence why its light goes off and contact is briefly lost.

Any thoughts or suggestions about how we might solve this problem would be greatly appreciated.

Hey Colin, welcome to the forum!

I’ve not come across this Tx & Rx before but I’d fully charge your lipo (and check it’s healthy and not got a dead cell with the charger or a multimeter (should be ~8.4V fully charged) as a first thing

The dual esc usually supplies plenty of current for a receiver, but if you do have a multimeter see what voltage is coming out of the red servo wire off that too as it could potentially be a BEC failure.

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