I'm having problems with my ArduCopter suddenly flipping over and crashing. I'm wondering if this is cauased by a brownout. I have connected a micro servo for camera control, so it's drawing a little more current than a standard ArduCopter.
I have a 5V HobbyWing BEC which is rated for 3A continious/5A peak. Is that sufficient?
Replies
Jahn, In generally if you do not have anything else expect normal electronics running, BECs on ESCs are more than enough. If you have extra servos etc on your frame, external BEC is a good idea to have. In generally 2-3Amp BEC is more than enough for most of the applications.
I primarily use a heli instead of a quad but I had numerous crashes which turned out to be brownouts. Now for me I have all the regular electronics and 4 digital servos so it's no wonder. One servo doesn't sound like it's too much for a 3A BEC. Presumably power for all the 'peripherals' is coming from the right-angle-headers? You're not relying on the APM's internal regulator right? I think the internal regulator can't handle too much...doesn't sound like this is your problem.
What I did to check that my bec was sufficient was I simply attached a volt meter to the bottom two pins on the right-angle-headers and wiggled my servos around madly to see if I could make the voltage drop. I had problem if it dropped by 0.3V. When I used a strong enough bec that my voltage didn't drop by more than 0.08 things got better.
And a followup question: do I need to connect the ground from the PDB to the BEC's output ground?