Hi droners. The subject of this thread is touched upon/discussed in some other threads, but I'm hoping that some EE's at 3DRobotics will chime in on this topic. Basically, I'm wondering what is the planned future of the MinimOSD hardware, espicially vis à vis the power supply issues?
A common problem, when powering the minimOSD as recommended in the wiki, it's quite common to burn out/fry/brick the minim OSD. I, myself, have one burned out minim OSD. I do quite like the minimOSD for other reasons, however, and want to support it's development and want to buy more of them for my various drone projects. It's tiny, light, simple to use and shows the status of the APM. My main interest is in smaller, lighter, simpler drones, so I don't want to have to add the weight and complexity of a separate battery just for a fragile OSD module, nor do I want to add the weight and complexity of a GPS receiver dedicated to the OSD (such as with Remzibi OSD). I'd also like to tinker with the firmware, to add some features it's lacking (such as a variometer).
I'm not sure how/why the minimOSD fries when powered off the main battery. Looking at the schematic it's not obvious to me. If anyone at 3DR wants to perform an autopsy on my minimOSD I'll happily return it to the factory. I know it can be powered by the APM, which I now do, but that's actually recommended against in the wiki, citing servo noise. I'll take servo noise over a fried piece of hardware, please.
Basically, is there a plan to make it safe to power the minimOSD from the main battery? If so, I'll order some more and also work on extending/improving the firmware. If a new version is coming out, sign me up for the public beta!
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OK, so I burned my minimosd today by using a single battery and separate analog and digital 5V.
Would it still have got destroyed if I used a single batt, but connect analog and digital supplies, and not connect the 12V?
I'm trying to avoid burning another one. By the way - this realy sucks.
I power mine via APM, which has never caused any problems (or any noticable servo noise), but I agree that it would be good to redesign to avoid the "frying" problem as I currently have a separate battery for my camera and VTx (probably why I get no noise)
It would also be nice to replace the ancient MAX7456 chip with something else that allows colour and transparency to be used in the OSD display.
Not sure if you have already seen this, but if you want much better firmware than the standard one, have a look at minimosd-extra http://code.google.com/p/minimosd-extra/. The guys have put a huge amount of work into this and it is very functional. Of course you can add features to it if yout have anything else in mind.
Cheers
James
If the MinimOSD gets "fried" will it still light up and get ok status' from the firmware updates when plugged into the PC? Mine was working fine, but it all of a sudden quit sending video feed to the vtx. Camera and vtx work when the osd is bypassed, so its got to be in the osd. Its powered and all, just not sending the video signal out anymore... ???
Can't agree more, I fried two of them by accidentally making common ground btw input and video power. Also, with this problem it's impossible to use minimOSD in tiny FPV/UAV projects, where only one battery can be used.
I'm talking about future versions. AFAIK, all versions suffer from the dreaded deadly frying effect of powering the minimOSD from the same battery as the APM. The one I fried has no version number screened onto it but is the most recent version, as of May. It has the switching power supply, as in the photo on store.diydrones.com.
Are you talking about the first version or V1.1?