/diy/ - Do It Yourself

I've been continuing my work on my bicopter which I have posted about back in July or so. Progress has been slow since I don't always have time to work on it.

I have run into a problem however. The program that I typically run to test my motors, along with any other program only works intermittently. A of right now, nothing works at all. I upload my program to the arduino, plug my ESC in, supply power, and....
the motor twitches. That is it.
This response is inconsistent as well. At times, I have gotten the motors working fine, but many hours are wasted figuring out what is wrong.

Can anyone help me figure out the issue? How do I fix it?

pic related: My setup for trust and motor tests.
it is typically clamped to the table.