Comment by Paul Har on June 30, 2009 at 9:54am

I think I have a similar problem I also use the rx battery. I ordered 2 new boards

Developer Comment by Ryan Beall on June 30, 2009 at 1:06pm

great I just ordered one.....Hope this isn't the consensus on all of them....

Comment by Damon Pipenberg on June 30, 2009 at 1:26pm

No, I don't think this is the consensus, I haven't heard of many people having this issue. That said, if you want to power it with a battery (and not through an ESC), it is probably a good idea to put a regulator in between. I've been planning on using mine with a 2-cell lithium and a switching regulator to step the voltage down, but haven't gotten to that yet.

3D Robotics Comment by Chris Anderson on June 30, 2009 at 3:57pm

Just out of curiosity, why are you powering it directly with a battery? We set up that power regulator so you could, but to be honest we could never think of a reason why anyone would want to when it's just as easy to power the RC Rx and then power the board through that. What's the advantage of doing it your way?

3D Robotics Comment by Chris Anderson on June 30, 2009 at 3:58pm

BTW, this is the first time we've heard about the issue, and nearly 1,000 ArduPilots have been sold. So I think it's safe to say that it's rare to the point of being unique.

Comment by Damon Pipenberg on June 30, 2009 at 4:22pm

I'm setting this up in a glider, thus I don't have an ESC. My plan is to use a 2-cell LiPo battery with a 5V regulator connecting it to the receiver and ArduPilot. I figured that a 4.8V battery would be safe to use for testing before I made that.

I'm not convinced that it was the battery that caused the problem. I measured the battery on a full charge to be 5.3V and the max supply voltage on the multiplexer is 5.5V, so it should have been fine.

Developer Comment by Mark Colwell on June 30, 2009 at 4:37pm

Using a small switching dc-dc converter is te way to go, I don't think your 4.8 v battery caused the problem, I would suspect that too much current was sourced by mux chip, try to replace it .

3D Robotics Comment by Chris Anderson on June 30, 2009 at 4:47pm

Did you switch the solder jumper to BATT?

Comment by Damon Pipenberg on June 30, 2009 at 5:59pm

No, I did not. I decided that since the battery voltage would be under the max voltage of the devices, it would be ok. I'd expect this to cause other problems, such as drifting A/D values as the battery voltage decreased, but I doubt it would fry the multiplexer.

3D Robotics Comment by Chris Anderson on July 1, 2009 at 4:40am

Oh. Well, that was a mistake. You ran power through the board without a power regulator. You almost certainly fried it. Power regulator's don't just limit voltage, they limit current, too. The manual is pretty clear on the need to switch the jumper. I think you need a new board.

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