Like many of you I do make shift jobs with wiring and creative soldering to move my power around and distribute the correct power to the correct areas.
And like most of you know, the APM cannot really give power to components (it can but it is not advised).
So on the end of the day is you have a lot of cable ties holding a bunch of wiring together and if you need to change something e.g the FPV transmitter you have to disassemble a lot and reassemble.
Now with this board I want to print I am going to eradicate most of the wiring and issues surrounding the connection of apm sensors.
I am thinking of putting a voltage regulator between the 12v and 5v so I can just plug an extra lipo (11.1 1000mah) in the 12 volt and all of my sensor equipment is getting the correct power.
Also what I have done is removed the radio connections power from the apm (one would cut the ground and voltage wire coming from the apm)
So if someone could make a change to this, what would it be and why am I eagerly awaiting your input.
Comments
These are all very good ideas, I am going to sit with my PCB manufacturer and start incorporating LED's and a relay voltage regulator so one can plug in any voltage and the 5v will be good.
@Taylor the power supply will be at the bottom where you see the 4 12v outputs, the 5v outputs will be for extra servos or just extra 5v power for what ever you need it for (Lawmate 1.2ghz transmitter is 5v).
@Lefebvre Putting an RX on it is not a bad idea I first want to see how version one works :)
yes it s a good idea lefebvre
it will be great to see this in the market
Yep, good idea. I did something like this a while ago because I got tired of the rats nest of wiring I always have. I wanted to internalize everything I could. So I made a daughterboard that sits on top of the APM:
It includes the voltage dividers, voltage regulator, and the actual Rx.
I like the multiple radio ports you have, I have run into this problem myself while using a telemetry radio and a arduino.
A driver chip for external status LEDs would be nice to have.
A voltage divider would be good for sensing the main battery voltage.
This looks like a great idea. How about adding power supply for fpv camera and transmitter, etc. Is there an error in the top of your schematic for the 5volt output? Looks like maybe a black is switched with a red?