I received my little red box from SF today with my ArduPilot in it. I got right to work soldering but I had to stop when I got to the part about how things are powered. I would like some power redundancy in the system but I don't want to add too much weight. I also have to power a video system. I thought about powering the motor and ArduPilot with the main battery, the receiver/servos with another and a third for the video system.
What are your thoughts? It sounds very "weighty" to me.
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Unless you've got a big plane with some serious amps, I don't really see a big need for power redundancy. The analogous situation is stand-along BECs. They're only recommended for 4C and above. What problem are you trying to solve, exactly?
(that said, I would use a separate battery for the video system. It really can put quite a strain on a regular BEC)
I can agree to tycinis post,
However, my feeling is that the total wight of battery usually is fixed. Then adding redundancy would imply splitting one big amount of battery into several. Only makes sence if the biggest portion is left for the most critical parts of the uav, eg if unsure of how much energy the video parts might consume. (Just as partitioning one big harddrive into several - often implyes that more space is left unused/unusable).
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(that said, I would use a separate battery for the video system. It really can put quite a strain on a regular BEC)
My buddy and me are building a glider (with motor) and planning on just stacking 3 4400ma batters together
However, my feeling is that the total wight of battery usually is fixed. Then adding redundancy would imply splitting one big amount of battery into several. Only makes sence if the biggest portion is left for the most critical parts of the uav, eg if unsure of how much energy the video parts might consume. (Just as partitioning one big harddrive into several - often implyes that more space is left unused/unusable).