Hi folks
I was using a castle 10amp BEC to power receiver and ardupilotmega. Yesterday, I plugged my battery to do more testing on the arducopter firmware. The arducopter just would not initialize correctly, and after much troubleshooting I discoverec the problem was that the BEC was putting out 12.4 V instead of the 5.1v it is set too. needless to say the ardu is "partially" shot. If I connect by USB it boots and in APM planner the sensors all appear to be working (artifical horizon works as expected, GPS, and mag etc) However, the ESCs don't initialize and the radio is not detected.
I have never had a BEC fail this way. (ie it just passes the input voltage to the BEC output servo lead) but I am assuming that the input portion of tthe ardupilot mega has been fried, but the rest of the board and the shield have survived?
I have ordered another ardupilotmega board, but i am wondering if I can fix the other board, or is it not worth the effort??
I Sent a note to castle creations regarding the bec failure
Thanks
Al
Replies
Hi Al,
The blue LED turns on when the MEGA328P chip is flashed with the bootloader, so the LED not turning on may indicate damage to the PPM encoder. Repairing the board may be as simple as replacing the 328 chip if no other components were damaged.
Hi Al,
When boards are fried, replacement is usually easier since repairs may require replacing many parts. Do the PPM lights (gold and blue LED's) still turn on? Is the 5V voltage regulator on the APM board still working properly?
Sounds to me like you have the same problem as you started with. I don't have a castle BEC, but I know have switching regulators work. Did you measure the output voltage with out any load on it? If so your meter my be fooling you because it has a 10 Mohm input impedance and does not load the BEC and you are just reading the battery voltage. Try a 50 or 100 ohm resistor for a load and check the voltage again.
I would think that 12 volts would have fried everything including your receiver.