wiring help for my feather

[billy breach]

Folks,

I have drawn a rough wiring diagram for my feather weight bot. It is powered by two drill motors and a drill motor for the lifter.




It has the removable link and led light just before the battery.

Have is missed anything out? or is there any problems with the diagram?

cheers

[typhoon_driver]

Re: wiring help for my feather

everything is there that should be there. I would advise just joining the led to the two main power terminals and if you are using the electronize with a bec, to use that rather than a separate receiver battery but apart from that, it looks fine to me.

[PJ-27]

Re: wiring help for my feather

Currently your LED is just attached to the + side of the bat, no complete circuit, so do what Gary says.

If your using a normal LED use this calculator to figure out what resistor you need;

http://led.linear1.org/1led.wiz

LED's with a voltage rating will already have a resistor built in though.

If you using screw terminals to connect wires be warned the screws will come lose after EVERY bout. So be prepared to tighten them up a lot!

To get round this you can glue them, but I solder the wires together within the block and then just use the block as a mounting point and insulator.

Another neat solution is to use o-ring connectors on the end of the leads and then use a nut and bolt to hold them all together. This also has great mounting opportunities (if your robot isn't metal) but can be tricky to insulate.

On another note, try and keep questions about your robot in your build thread, then you don't have to start loads of new topics, plus it gives people trying to help you an idea of progression.

[billy breach]

Re: wiring help for my feather

Thanks for all the advice guys. Ill take note of the thread issue. My bad. So the led would be better connected to the first main terminal block. Would deans or bullet connectors be better rather than the blocks then?

Thanks for all the help.

[typhoon_driver]

Re: wiring help for my feather

In my bots I like to have a main set of terminal points, 1 positive, 1 negative. I have these so that it becomes a lot easier to put new electrical components into the machine. I've used two methods in the past, both with their own merits, to create these terminals.

The first is a bolt mounted onto a plastic sheet with the bolt head recessed into the plastic. A nut is used to hold the bolt securely in place. The connections are then main using crimped ring connectors of the right size. These are stacked onto the bolt with a second nut securing them in place. I like this method because it has never failed on me (it was the same method used in typhoon 2). The only issue is that you have to find a way to insulate the rest of the bolt and connectors from shorting.

The second method I used most recently in boner was to use a solid bar of copper (about an inch long, 5mm by 5mm square) and solder all the connections onto this. This method worked well as there is little to no resistance between the connections and it can take huge currents. The problem is that adding or removing connections becomes a pain because I have to use my large soldering iron (100w+) to heat up the layer of solder on the bar.

To connect batteries or any other removable component I would recommend deans style connectors. Don't bother getting the official ones as they cost a small bomb. You can pick up cheap ones on ebay that do the same job at a fraction of the price.

[jonny]

Re: wiring help for my feather

cheap deans can also be found on giantcod:

http://www.giantcod.co.uk/deans-ribbed- ... 05867.html

[PJ-27]

Re: wiring help for my feather

And those one's come with a grip!

[typhoon_driver]

Re: wiring help for my feather

ribbed for your combat pleasure

[billy breach]

Re: wiring help for my feather

Thanks for all the help guys. I have plenty of deans (as I sort airsoft guns for a few airsoft teams) When you use a bolt and crimp connectors, how did or what did you use/do to stop them shorting. surely if its all positive or all negative on the one bolt it shouldn't be a problem?

ALSO - with the wiring diagram above and for powering the RX i can use a electronize with a bec what is a bec and how does it wire to the RX to provide it with power? And where would a fail safe and v mixer fit into the above diagram?

cheers
Breach

[maddox10]

Re: wiring help for my feather

BEC= Battery Eliminator Circuit.

An electronical means to reduce the X volt of the main battery to 5-6V and low amperage to power the RX and/or light servo applications you have in your machine.

For combat robots it has 2 advantages.
1) No need for 2 batteries
2) eliminates forgetting to switch off the RX battery

[billy breach]

Re: wiring help for my feather

I see, so when the wire from the ESC is plugged into one on the channel sockets/slides on the RX it will power it also?.....or is there a seperate wire that goes from the ESC to the battery slide/socket ont the RX/?

thanks
billy

[PJ-27]

Re: wiring help for my feather

It's not clear, and really confused me too!

The orange and yellow wires (I think that's the colours) from one side of the esc need to be connected together, think of these as a switch for turning the BEC on/off.

When connected it'll serve 5v down the red cable of the standard 3 pin pig tail, powering your Rx.

Don't connect both BEC's, you just need one.

And in case you didn't know (I didn't!), all the pins of the Rx will most likely be on rails (all + connected in parallel) so you don't need anything connected to the dedicated Bat port of the Rx.

[maddox10]

Re: wiring help for my feather

The 3 servo wires can be seen as a + a - and a signal lead.


The BEC just uses the + and - to power the RX, and the 3 pins per servo lead just do the same. The electronics create a signal per servo lead pin, but the the 2 others are just common.

[billy breach]

Re: wiring help for my feather

ok, so the yellow and orange cables get connected together....but where do they get connected to after that? the ESC has black, red, yellow, blue and orange cables I think?

so the cables get connected to where then?

red gets connected to positive on battery
black gets connected to negative on battery
Yellow gets connected to motor positive
blue gets connected to motor negative
small red wire?
small orange wire?
servo wire (i know that's easy it gets connected to rx)

[PJ-27]

Re: wiring help for my feather

Orange and Red wires you connect to each other.

Servo wire's connect to the Rx and that's it.

The power is sent down the + wire of the servo connector.