Newbie: My HV drone and fried boards

Thank you for making me a member of this forum. I am an electric bike builder and longtime member of www.endless-sphere.com/forums which is another free forum discussing light electric vehicle transportation. In 2005 began my search for energy independence and by 2008 had given up fossil fuels all together. I now live completely off the grid. My life has been forever changed by this move and I couldn't have done it without the Sphere. Somewhere Plato is smiling.

I have wanted to own a drone since I was a little kid. I would imagine the Millenium Falcon or that ship the hawk man had from Buck Rogers gliding along next to our car on vacations. Me and my father assembled a gas powered plane, painstakingly assembled from balsa and tissue only to disappear out of range almost immediately or burst into flames. But I still, as an adult would look out the window on long rides and imagine a little tiny Han Solo following my truck.

Now as an adult I can justify spending the money for what I need. So here need; a drone that can fold up, go into the trailer of my electric two wheeled drive off road bike (of which I am a proud designer), launch on the trail (backwoods) and rise above the trees to give me a birds eye view of which way to go. Why? I do the scouting for large scale camping expeditions. You can look at all the maps in the world but nothing beats putting your eyes on a chosen spot. With a drone I could confirm water sources and clearings without having to drive there and find out its flooded or such things. So that's what I need.

What do I have? Well, l I started out with those tiny cheap copters to get a feel, then I bought the UDI 818a and learned the fly a quad in my drafty but large tobacco barn. I have 10 count 5000 mAh 7s Zippy compacts that I run in series for 14s 25 Ah to run my bikes ( have some other lipo laying around too. I have the iCharger 208b with Meanwell power supply for bulk charging. A solar bike trailer to charge everything in the field. I purchased a lot of my stuff but not all from Hobby King(mitake). I have the Predator 650 folding quad, Multistar Elite HV motors, Afro HV 20 amp esc. HKpilot 2.7 master set and am still waiting to purchase a good radio.

So now to the stumbling block. I have waited patiently for the parts so I could work on this in the dead of winter, in the mean time I have watched all the tutorials I can find. I hooked everything up, even had the video playing in the background, I was going through the calibrations when the minimOSD got hot (pretty sure) and everything shut down. I unhooked it all and tried to run just the board again to see what happened. All the lights come on in the specified times but it won't upload firmware, I get the "no Connection; connection error" I know now that I probably burnt out the flight controller, OSD and one telemetry unit by hooking up the power module and the usb at the same time. I have since ordered another APM 2.6 and am looking at a new OSD and radios. What else could be burnt? GPS also, everything was hooked up. Please help, I am not giving up.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Maybe my first mistake was not joining this forum earlier. Thank you in advance for any help or advice you can give. Knowledge is our final freedom...

Ok that's a little better, I would like to make this a build thread from beginning to end(if I need to move this somewhere, I will). So what I have in the picture above is the Hobby King Predator 650. I chose this because this bird will have to go with me, sometimes for weeks, into the woods and provide actual usable data. In theory I bought my components for the higher voltage batteries I already have, but also for longer flight times. So my two goals are flight time and durability.

So this brings me to what is on the Predators back, It's the case for one of my electric bikes. its aluminum and the case itself was meant to be a heat sink for a 12 fet controller. I don't like the naked boards and wires, they will never last in my world. Am I thinking crazy? All the boards fit in perfect, flight controller, minimosd, telemetry radio and I believe the receiver. I could even put the gps on top with the folding antenna I ordered that didn't come with the HK set. Or will it interfere or shield it the aluminum? I have rubber grommets so the whole thing will be as free from vibration as it can be.

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OG January 18, 2015 at 8:58am

yes the power regulator can be replaceable .

your radios may still be working so don't throw them out, the port on the board is no longer working. you can use the other serial port on the board as work around your PWM may not be working as well
- Shannon McCormick > OG January 21, 2015 at 7:43am
  
  Ok here's a picture of my project, I am sure you guys have seen a Predator 650 but this one is going to go through some major changes to suit what I need.
  
  685.jpg
  - Shannon McCormick > Shannon McCormick January 22, 2015 at 6:11am
    - Shannon McCormick > Shannon McCormick January 22, 2015 at 6:34am
      
           Ok that's a little better, I would like to make this a build thread from beginning to end(if I need to move this somewhere, I will). So what I have in the picture above is the Hobby King Predator 650. I chose this because this bird will have to go with me, sometimes for weeks, into the woods and provide actual usable data. In theory I bought my components for the higher voltage batteries I already have, but also for longer flight times. So my two goals are flight time and durability.
      
           So this brings me to what is on the Predators back, It's the case for one of my electric bikes. its aluminum and the case itself was meant to be a heat sink for a 12 fet controller. I don't like the naked boards and wires, they will never last in my world. Am I thinking crazy? All the boards fit in perfect, flight controller, minimosd, telemetry radio and I believe the receiver. I could even put the gps on top with the folding antenna I ordered that didn't come with the HK set. Or will it interfere or shield it the aluminum? I have rubber grommets so the whole thing will be as free from vibration as it can be.
OG January 18, 2015 at 7:13am

seen this before as well see if you can upgrade your APM great not that bad, if not you need to use ftdi on second serial port on the board. to connect to the board, the USB will not work, telemetry serial port will no longer work you need to use the other serial port from now, un till you repair the power regulator on the board.
- Shannon McCormick > OG January 18, 2015 at 8:51am
  
  I really appreciate this. I will consult the wiki section on where these things are located. So I might be able to get this board to work if I replace the power modulator? or maybe work around it? Seems just the stuff related to the telemetry was affected. I have some interesting mods I want to make on the Predator and want to post pictures. What is the best way? I believe I can lower my pixel rating on my camera so they will post easily. Then maybe someone can learn from my build as it happens.
Shannon McCormick January 18, 2015 at 7:04am

Thank you for the prompt reply. So far I can visually see the OSD is fried. The flight controllers lights come on but "no connection". The telemetry radio that was hooked to OSD has nothing, no lights. The GPS has one green light on constant, ublox GPS. I guess what I am asking is what should I buy now? Already ordered the new flight controller. What about ESCs they were hooked up but are high voltage models? Try to learn...
OG January 18, 2015 at 6:48am

hello,

it is possible you burnt out every thing , but not likely the gps may work still 3DR radio may still work
Shannon McCormick January 18, 2015 at 6:04am

I apologize if this is reposted but I am unfamiliar with this forums set up...

This reply was deleted.

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Newbie: My HV drone and fried boards

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