Posted by David spencer on October 18, 2010 at 4:43am
Would someone be kind enough to have a look at my connection diagram below and let me know whether my assumptions for connecting power to the APM board are correct and maybe assist me with a connection location for a pan and tilt servo?
I've omitted to the Oilpan IMU from the diagram, but i do have one sitting above the APM…
Many thanks,
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Here are three options i have for powering my APM please could someone suggest which would be the best 'destruction free' route to take? I've added comments in black and questions in red.
Curious about this from the hardware-ardupilot-mega page.
However, the also has its own onboard power supply, if you want to power it with a separate battery (if, for example, you are not using it with an RC system). The built-in 5V power regulator (LM317) is capable of handling peaks of 1A. It also has 5V lines divided into two parts, one for the servos/receiver connectors and the other one for the main components of the board. You should use a battery with a voltage between 7V and 14V, but ideally 7.4v (2C battery).
Read through the pages of the manual and take a look at 'Technical details of the ArduPilot Mega board' in the Appendix. Your battery connection looks OK to me.
Maybe Chris could give a word of explanation about his advice.
You have only shown the signal connections for the Rx to ESC's / servos, which is fine but you need to ensure that you have a common link for the negative rails (ONLY !).
Why not connect the pan/tilt channels directly to the RX unless you want the APM to control sweep rates etc.
NO! Do NOT connect the battery straight to the APM board (power must always be supplied through a power regulator). Just connect it to your RC receiver and let it power the board through that.
You can connect Pan and Tilt servos to any free outputs on the APM board, but you'll have to write the code to drive them yourself for now. We haven't added pan/tilt to the native code yet.
Replies
Many thanks…
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---However, the also has its own onboard power supply, if you want to power it with a separate battery (if, for example, you are not using it with an RC system). The built-in 5V power regulator (LM317) is capable of handling peaks of 1A. It also has 5V lines divided into two parts, one for the servos/receiver connectors and the other one for the main components of the board. You should use a battery with a voltage between 7V and 14V, but ideally 7.4v (2C battery).
Maybe Chris could give a word of explanation about his advice.
You have only shown the signal connections for the Rx to ESC's / servos, which is fine but you need to ensure that you have a common link for the negative rails (ONLY !).
Why not connect the pan/tilt channels directly to the RX unless you want the APM to control sweep rates etc.
You can connect Pan and Tilt servos to any free outputs on the APM board, but you'll have to write the code to drive them yourself for now. We haven't added pan/tilt to the native code yet.