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AttoPilot's battery/motor sensor board now available

Posted by Chris Anderson on January 8, 2009 at 12:30pm

Another one from Sparkfun, which is quickly becoming a serious UAV parts supplier: the power monitoring sensor board that Dean Goedde uses for AttoPilot. If you want to add motor current and battery voltage measurement to your autopilot, this is a good way to do it. Analog output, so you'd want to add it to a port with an ADC (ArduPilot has six free ones so it would work well with that). Oddly expensive at $26, given what's on the board, but perhaps that reflects the low production run. Woohoo! Now $12.95! (and half sold out immediately). Go Dean!
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Comments

  • mahziron April 14, 2010 at 3:08am
    Anybody knows how to use this thing with arduino to measure current and voltage. How do i convert the 12 bit to 10 bit arduino. From the datasheet, for 12 bit adc with 3.3 volt the resolution is =
    63.69mV / Volt
    36.60mV / Amp

    will i get the same value for 3.3 arduino.

    is this correct voltage = analogread(volt)* 63.69.
  • Casey March 28, 2010 at 10:30pm
    Great, thanks for pointing that out. I didn't know you could get a micro-controller setup so cheap.
  • Casey March 28, 2010 at 8:09pm
    Do you think something like this would work: http://store.gravitech.us/i2c128anco.html

    I can't really find a "cheap" mutli-channel USB or serial ADC. I've been search all day.
    I2C 12-Bit, 8-CH Analog-to-Digital Converter
    The I2C-ADC board is an I2C 12-bit, 8-CH Analog-to-Digital Converter module. The module can be configured as a Single-Ended Inputs Mode or Differenti…
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson March 28, 2010 at 7:23pm
    Casey, this is an analog device. You have to connect it to an ADC (either in the microprocessor or standalone) to read it.
  • Casey March 28, 2010 at 7:11pm
    Can anyone point me how I could connect this to a PC data interface? Preferably USB or serial, but also I2C or GPIO might work.
  • Dean December 12, 2009 at 9:55pm
    I have sold and shipped several (8) to Australia. I just need answers to a list of questions to start processing an export application, and the fee for that. There have been some problems with the webmail to the AttoPilot site (which is being corrected by moving to a new hosting service), so it would be better to e-mail a formal request to me at personal e-mail dmgoedde@gmail.com.
  • Michael December 12, 2009 at 9:50pm
    Dean,

    I am still trying to find out when atto will be available in Australia.
  • Dean December 12, 2009 at 12:09pm
    Yes. Have you looked at the spec sheet on the sparkfun site?
  • Colby sts December 11, 2009 at 4:24pm
    Do the leads connect to the battery and ESC?
  • Dean January 27, 2009 at 1:12am
    I sold another 100 of these to Sparkfun today. They got backordered by 47 units as of this morning. The 47 units on backorder as of this morning, the $12.95 price will be maintained. I told Nathan at Sparkfun that I would not sell them anymore at my cost of $7 each, and $12 was my new price (I deserve some profit for designing and making these). Nathan agreed. SO, the result is the price has now gone up to $19 (last I heard) from now on.

    If any DIY guys have heartburn at $19 retail for this unit which is smaller and better resolution than Intelligent Flight's $43 100 Amp power sensor, then my advice is that you can use the posted schematic on the Spec sheet posted on Sparkfun, and buy cut tape components from Digikey or Mouser, and roll your own.
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