On my hexacopter with ArduPilot I have a camera gimbal with two MG995 servos. These servos are quite large and therefor draws a lot of amperage, especially when they move fast. This caused my flight controller board to reset and me loosing my OSD amongst others. Hence I needed an external power source for the servos. Since I have six Turnigy Plush 25A I have five BECs to spare, so why not use one of them?
Since I first published this article I have made a second version of the power distribution. But since de older version also works I figured I'd leave that tutorial on the bottom of this article.
############################## VERSION 2 ##################################
I didn't want to cut the servo leads so I had to come up with something to connect the power lead and the ground from the servo to my BEC whilst still having my signal connected to my flight controller (FC).
Here is what I was trying to accomplish.
On the left hand side id where I will connect my two servos. One for roll and one for tilt. On the top right is the two signal wires to my FC and on the bottom right is my BEC.
The wiring is all done. As you might see in the picture the bottom two pins in the bottom left doesn't seem to be connected, but to spare some room I wired those on the bottom of the board.
The two bottom pins are wired on the backside of the board.
Here is what it looks like when a servo is connected to the top left, a BEC to the bottom right and two signal wires to the top right.
To clarify a bit:
Top left yellow - servo signal
Top left red - servo power
Top left brown - servo ground
Top right yellow - receiver/FC signal to servo 1
Top right orange - receiver/FC signal to servo 2
Bottom right red - power from BEC
Bottom right brown - ground from BEC
In the comments on the bottom of this article you can read why I made these changes.
To make things a bit less comprehencable, here is what it looks like when the board is connected to my hexacopter. =)
Just to be clear. Both version 1 and version 2 works just fine. In version 2, the signal grounds through the BEC and in version 1 the servo power grounds through the receiver/FC/APM.
############################## VERSION 1 #################################
I didn't want to cut the servo leads so I had to come up with something to connect the power lead from the servo to my BEC whilst still having my ground and signal connected to my APM.
Here is the oh so professional wiring diagram of what I wanted.
On the left side I connect my servos, two of them, on the right side I connect the APM and on the bottom right my power source.
The signal and ground wire is quite simple, it's just a direct connection.
The middle wire (the positive, red one) is connected to the power pin. Although I ultimately ended up removing this pin and replaced it with a wire.
All done. Now all it needs is a bit of shrink tube.
In hindsight, I should have used a 3-pin on the right side too. This way I could have used an ordinary male-to-male lead. Well, you live and learn.
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