First build finally completed completed only only to brake on my first flight

[BudManLXXIX]

Hi all, hope everyone is having a lovely day. Some might remember me from a month back when I was asking questions about building my first drone in the first drone thread. After lots of research and nearly banging my head against the computer more than one time I finally got everything working.

I have two questions though. First one is what is the maximum voltage anyone has ever tried on me FS ia6b receiver? It says on the receiver 4 - 8.4 volts. Well without reading this first I mistakenly hooked it up to the 12 volts of my pdb. But strangely and work fine. Did not burn it up at all as most would fear would be what would happen. Whenever I realized my error. I quickly rectified it buy desoldering it from the 12 volts and putting it on the correct 5 volts of my pdb. But that was after several flights. So question is can it really take 12 volts a 3s battery without burning up the receiver or is it a losing battle and eventually it will burn it up in the long run?

Second question is I'm only have this drone working for about a week granted it's only the cheapest of DIY kits. Which now I'm finding out oddly enough you could no longer find on Amazon the product is gone. looks like the seller packed his bags or either got booted from Amazon for selling bad parts maybe. who knows. Anyways I added a picture of all the components in the DIY kit. If this information is helpful for you. But back to my question everything was working great the other day and I tried taking off in a little bit too high of grass and the grass caught the blades on one side and flip the drone upside down without the drone even leave in the ground no big deal right. No damage done everything should be good to go. Well after that I could not get it to rearm show me being needed drones I thought some sort of failsafe took effect and I didn't know how to disable it. After a little bit of tinkering I come to realize the 5 volts thunder pdb stop working for some reason all the other voltage supplies from the pdb got the correct voltages but the 5 volts is completely dead. I tried by passing it was a second battery the power my receiver which I thought would work just to test if this was the problem. Also my LEDs which is powered by the 5 volts also stopped working which is what first led me to notice the 5 volts was out. So I'm assuming my brand new 1 week in use power distribution board has burn up for no apparent reason. Has anyone ever had this happen to them before. And yes I checked for shorts and found none. You think I may have been pulling too much power running the LEDs and the receiver off the 5 volts is there a amperage limit. It is so I'm not even sure what amps these LEDs and the receiver use or for that matter what the maximum amperage is on the power distribution board. I just thought it odd that just the 5 volts would stop working and only the 5 bolts. And I find it odd that when I add an external 5 volts to the receiver I still can't get the quad arm. I did order a new pdb board just in case. But I would like some experience quad builders insight on what I might be going through. Are these pdb boards and flight controllers so delicate that that a mere flip on the ground could damaged a housed electric circuit board. I mean it didn't even leave the ground I just flipped completely upside down not much g-force in that. It may just be a coincidence I even checked for wires that may have shorted across from being flipped. But all seemed fine I couldn't find any crossed wires or anything that could cross if touched incorrectly

 

[wafflejock]

Regarding checking power consumption on things it is really handy to have a bench power supply, it's basically a box with two knobs that lets you adjust the max current and the voltage output (mine does DC voltage from 0-32V and up to 5A so around 150W of power can pass through it which is plenty for passing power to a balance charger and for testing various components). When you set the voltage to say 5V you can hook up a device and can limit current to say 1A or 2A depending on the device requirements then you can be pretty sure you aren't going to accidentally pass high current through anything (high current will heat the components/wiring and cause them to cook themselves). Alternative to bench power supply since that will run you like $80-100 you could also just use a multimeter and put it in current measuring mode then get it inline with the power supply to your device, best way to know how much current things are drawing is just to measure.

Regarding the FS ia6b I'm not familiar with the receiver however if you crack the lid on the PCB and can find the voltage regulator component (usually little black rectangle with 3 pins on it) then you can look up specs on that to see what actual limits it has, they may say 8.4V because it matches up with 2S voltage or something similar for marketing reasons. That said usually if you drive any component over it's rated voltage it will experience a shorter life (generally more current will flow it in than it was designed for and the heat will not be properly dissipated, added heatsinks/cooling can help in some cases to drive things above spec but best not to push it if you don't need to).

Finally regarding components breaking, it does happen sometimes in weird ways... I've had ESCs burn up from being stuck for a moment and have smashed my quad into a tree at near full speed and been able to fly away. Long story short it just depends, there are a lot of little components on all the PCB boards so chances of one having a not great solder connection or not being picked and placed exactly into the right location is pretty high so manufacturer faults can happen, more expensive stuff typically goes through more testing but still some things will fall through the cracks, that said typically if you get a good board delivered it can survive quite a bit of abuse. I would guess either manufacturer error or given you are new to all of this you may have caused an issue while soldering things or a short may have happened while the craft flipped, in general components are not that delicate (that said get everything in the body of a CF frame or similar strength body and ideally none of your components are undergoing too much stress even in a crash).

 

[BudManLXXIX]

Here are some more images of my first build especially like how I mounted the transmitter receiver antennas I got the landing gears off of an old bug 3 as this kid did not come with any type of landing gears and the exposed wiring on bottom from the LEDs need protection from being Scuffed up on the concrete during takeoff and landing. Also provided me a great place well away from the carbon fiber of the frame to place my antennas. Right now just got him held down with some electrical tape but later I plan on doing a more professional mounting.

 

[wafflejock]

Just a couple things to note based on the pics, since it does seem to be a CF frame would check if it's conductive (it should be) just be aware of that and make sure anything electronic has a bit of electric tape or mounting tape between the component and the frame. Second thing is the solder joints on the 90 degree pins coming out the board look a little questionable, it's hard to say from the pics since they are bit out of focus in the pic. Anyhow basically you should be able to hook the FC to the computer over USB and check that you can update the config and things are acting as expected, the receiver can also be tested by connecting to FC and powering over USB (USB is 5V power, usually 500mA limit on computers more if you use a USB charger to power it) but basically saying you can take everything away from the PDB powering it to see that all your electronics are good otherwise, for ESCs they typically draw power right off the battery so again no real need for PDB there if you want to take it out of the mix for testing everything else.

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Also regarding power draw (amperage) on the 5V regulator on the PDB it will have some limit all regulators do but would have to actually test the LEDs with a given voltage to see what the amp draw is on them (typically you can adjust the PWM signal sent to light the LED to have higher or lower "duty cycle" or "on time" which effectively dims them, I'm not really sure how deep the settings get with betaflight for LEDs since I only have the 4 on my ESCs that are controlled by BL-Heli32 config of the ESCs).

 

[Dugdog47]

I've never experienced it but I've heard a lot of the quad guys saying the regulated voltage on pdb and fcbs have a tendency to quit working. It's a common problem.

The main problem I've had were with the cheaper cloned boards bought from banggood start smoking and just quit working for no apparent reason lol.

 

[wafflejock]

Overall pretty clean build too especially for first time so good job on that, sucks you didn't have such a great initial experience but think it's fair to say most people stumble through a few things on their first few builds.

 

[BudManLXXIX]

When you set the voltage to say 5V you can hook up a device and can limit current to say 1A or 2A depending on the the device requirements then you can be pretty sure you aren't going to accidentally pass high current through anything (high current will heat the components/wiring and cause them to cook themselves).

I'm not a super expert on electronics but I did take the year in ITT tech electronic engineering and one thing I do remember from that was I was told that amps does not matter as long as you supply more amps then the object you're trying to power needs then you're good to go the only thing you have to match up is the voltage. so I can be supplying 400 amps to my quad but it's only going to pull the amps that it need. correct me if I'm wrong but this is been my understanding of it for a long time. I hoard power supplies. I've got an entire filing cabinet full of them with all different voltage ratings and amperage ratings. So when I'm looking to power something with one of these power supplies the thing I'm always trying to match up is the volts. And if the device requires 2 amps and my power supply says it has four then that is it power supply that I can use. only reason why I'm so confident about this is because I've been doing this for years has never caused any problems with any of my other electronic devices I build stuff all the time I can show you some crazy poop.

you could also just use a multimeter and put it in current measuring mode then get it inline with the power supply to your device, best way to know how much current things are drawing is just to measure.

Problem with this is I don't know how much current is needed for the LEDs and the receiver. Sure I can pick up my voltage meter and measure the amperage coming out of the 5 volt connections on the PDB. But without knowing what the requirements are for the LEDs in the receiver that information will help me. I guess I'm just trying to make sure my power distribution board is powerful enough to run both the LEDs and the receiver or did I just get a fluke board that had some sort of manufacturer defect. I leaning towards the latter because I find it highly unlikely they would make a pdb they did supply enough current to run low current cost LEDs and a measly receiver on top of me supposed to be hooking up my fpv under the same voltage. By the way I'm using the basic power distribution board and f3 flight controller. There's a link to the pdb so you know what exact kind I'm using. <a href="pdb">
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Distrib...ateway&sprefix=Pdb,aps,209&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1</a> I forgot how to make a clickable link I'll fix this later my mom's hungry and giving me the evil eye.

It's what the kit came with. I started off with a cheap build so I can get to know what I'm doing before I go into the more expensive stuff. And there's only one five volt connection.

Regarding the FS ia6b I'm not familiar with the receiver however if you crack the lid on the PCB and can find the voltage regulator component (usually little black rectangle with 3 pins on it) then you can look up specs on that to see what actual limits it has

Great idea! I will do exactly that and then look up the data sheet on it.

I would guess either manufacturer error or given you are new to all of this you may have caused an issue while soldering things or a short may have happened while the craft flipped, in general components are not that delicate (that said get everything in the body of a CF frame or similar strength body and ideally none of your components are undergoing too much stress even in a crash).

I agree with you it is either human error on my part and there's a short somewhere that I could not see or the board came defective. I have some trouble soldering the motor wires to the board and a few times I may have actually touched a few of those smaller components with my soldering iron running at 800 degrees. there's a real good possibility I may have damaged one and it didn't finally break until it had enough of an impact to shock it into braking. Who knows what could have went wrong one of the reasons why I was asking about the12volt working on the receiver is because that would mean all I have to do is just unsolder the receiver from the pdb and hook it to the 12 volt and my quad would be up and running again. Maybe I will look into that after I pull apart the receiver and look up that chip like you suggested. Thanks for your help. I'm still needed all this but I'm learning slowly but surely my therapist said I needed to find a new hobby to occupy my time I sure did pick an expensive one though I tell you that. But I'm already in love so it's too late to turn around now.

 

[wafflejock]

You're correct that current flows as a result of a given resistance and a voltage applied, but if you have a short or something with reversed polarity then you can have high current flow that you didn't expect, this isn't something that would happen in the "normal" course of things when everything is on the "happy path", but when you make a mistake limiting the current "upstream" can help to avoid cooking things and give you a chance to correct them before a component is half baked and acting strange forever after . Also it's nice to just turn a knob to get different voltage for testing things instead of trying to find another supply with high enough current support (also also, nice to see the amps actually being used at a given voltage by a component).

Agree it isn't the cheapest hobby, but guess I can be glad I got into it with quads instead of Helis have seen how much those rigs go for and how catastrophically bad the crashes can be, it's pretty horrifying. I'm also a big fan of 3d printing and electric skateboards so none of my hobbies come cheap but I love all this tech!

 

[BudManLXXIX]

Oh I definitely want one of those power distribution regulator thingamajiggy I forgot what you call it been wanting one for a long time I even tried making one of an old PC power supply not as sophisticated are accurate is being able to dial up and down your current and voltages it will be something I've been looking into in the future though.

3D printing huh do you own your own 3D printer or do you outsource? And if you outsource how much does it usually run you to 3D print something

Sorry driving and can't really fix Google voices errors which seemed to be more and more recently

 

[wafflejock]

Hey no worries eyes on the road regarding 3d printing I actually started into the quadcopter hobby after getting my first DIY 3d printer kit (about $300 MK1 i3 clone kit). I wanted to use the printer to do something "useful" so I figured printing a quadcopter frame counted and found a guy (think painless 360) who made the Peon230 model on thingiverse and had some vids of it flying pretty well so I went with that. More recently after starting a new job and having some cash I got a genuine MK3 kit from Prusa (around $700) and been incredibly happy with that one, the first DIY one was a learning process and was meant to be but the Prusa is much more of a work-horse (auto bed leveling, filament runout detection, crash detection, power out detection, bendable removable spring steel sheet with PEI coating all things that make living with and using a printer easier). I added the auto bed leveling and replaced the old plastic frame on my first one with an all metal frame from aluminum extrusion too. Regarding print as a service there's 3dhubs.com that seems somewhat reasonable to me things cost more than you'd expect a similar consumer product to cost but it's for prototyping and very custom things so not something you'd use for bulk parts anyway most likely. Plastic only costs about $20-30 per roll (1kg) for most materials so small prints will be a dollar or less in material but it's mostly the time investment waiting on a print cleaning up the print etc.



Some pics of recent prints working on custom esk8 controller