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AdminPermalink Reply by Thomas J Coyle III on October 20, 2010 at 7:21pm

Paulo,

I do not believe that the APM is designed to work on a direct input of 6.55vdc from the receiver. It might be best to power the APM through its 5 v regulator input and separate the APM power from the servo power provided by the receiver.

Regards,
TCIII

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Permalink Reply by hopslink on October 21, 2010 at 2:10am

The voltage regulator only works for power supplied from the external battery input, which should be greater than 7.4V.

Feeding power from the receiver inputs you bypass the regulator - there is no regulation, and at 6.55V you are overvolting your APM!, hence no worky.

There is no way to get a suitable voltage using your current setup. Your choices are to do as TCIII suggests and feed the battery input from a >7.4V source, or provide your own regulated 5V supply.

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Permalink Reply by Paulo Sousa on October 21, 2010 at 3:44pm

I guess that I now have 2 options:
1. Use the internal power supply, if the drain will not go over 1A (the peak limit on the LM317);
2. Get an external power regulator, if the setup requires more than 1A;

Thanks for your clear feedback.

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Permalink Reply by Jimmy P. on October 22, 2010 at 10:19pm

"7V to 14V source" - be careful w/ the higher voltages I have had heat problems w/ an 11.1V 3S.

Check out this page regarding powering the board: http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot-mega/wiki/Hardware

Also, be careful when plugging in the servo cables, if you plug the positive into the signal on accident, you'll fry the mux

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