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Showing posts from August, 2017

Powering the flight controller

I tried to get the flight controller powered. Photo of ESC wired to PDB. Thanks for sharing, Gideon Tong

Soldering ESC cables to the flight controller

I'm running out of time to post these, so I'm going to dump as many as I can with video link and pictures, caption them, and come back and describe what they are. As school starts on Wednesday, I'll try and do my best to finish up the posts, but check back soon for the full post and details while I simply throw videos and photos everywhere! The back of the flight controller with the ESC data cables soldered. I appreciate your time reading this, Gideon Tong

Connecting FPV and VTx to PDB without mounts

As you might recall, the PDB I used was a Matek Systems PDB with built-in voltage regulators for 5V and 12V. All the components I bought were 5V components, and thus I would have to fit everything onto the 5V solder pad. Something I didn't do was use the ground for the 12V, as you'll see: In addition, I also did not use any of the ESC solder pads for the PDB, thus the only thing it was used for was the 5V pad. In hindsight, if a cheap voltage regulator existed, I might have used it because it might have provided more space to solder things onto it as well as additional mounting options, but alas that is not what I did. The photo I have placed below is the original photo of the PDB and where I decided to mount it. As you can see, I did not actually mount it due to the lack of space, but I still put screws in because I plan to mount it to the flight controller, and just let it rest against the top of the frame. Underneath you can see the bare ESC, since I decided to remov

Trying to mount the PDB on top of the ESC

Hey, so in this video I do my best to try and start to mount the PDB onto the ESC: I did have some troubles with it, such as the screws not being high enough for me to put the ESC on and then standoffs, and I could barely fit the PDB on top, but as the stack also needs me to mount the flight controller, I am left wondering what I can do about that, since there is not a lot of room for me to do anything. Freestanding is a risky but plausible option, since the idea is that the limited space of the craft would keep it from jostling around too much. In the image below, I was able to get the original PDB that I had placed into my quadcopter out without doing any desoldering to the ESC. This was because I did not solder the wires to the ESC very tightly and unintentionally left a lot of slack. However, this slack does come in helpful at this time. The original PDB out of the frame. One of the things I had to do that disappointed me a lot was desolder the battery connection to

Swapping the included PDB with a Matek Systems PDB

So what happened is that I discovered the PDB that was included with my frame, the Martian II, actually is that it only is for the ESC, which I didn't even use because I am using a 4 in 1 ESC. The other problem is that my VTX, Tx and flight controller all use 5 volts, and the PDB does not have a voltage regulator. At first I was getting work done preparing to connect the ESC to the flight controller, as you can see in the photo below, but I quickly realized that I would need a way to power 5V and the batteries I use are all 12V, 18V type batteries. ESC connector (I've blurred my fingerprint) That's all I did this time! Gideon Tong